The billionaire and self-dubbed “Chief Twit” purchased the company for $44 billion in October and made himself chief executive. Since then, it has become a frequent subject of his tweets, and employees have said he’s been a regular presence at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
But that has raised concerns among investors — particularly in Tesla — that the entrepreneur is stretched too thin. Some have questioned his effectiveness as CEO of two large technology companies, wondering whether he can effectively serve in both roles at once in addition to head of the rocket company SpaceX.
Adding fuel to the fire, Musk is known for running polls to affirm decisions he’s already made, perhaps most famously when he asked Twitter if he should sell off 10 percent of his stake in Tesla. Later, filings showed Musk had already adopted a trading plan, calling the poll at least partially into question.
Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.
Musk has made a rash of changes at Twitter, where he has said a chief priority is fixing the company’s code. He laid off approximately half the company’s 7,500 employees, issued an ultimatum mandating a hardcore culture that caused hundreds more to leave, and changed Twitter’s rules on the fly and by relying on polls — including reinstating former president Donald Trump.
It’s not immediately clear how much would change if Musk steps down as chief executive, considering he would still own the company, along with his co-investors.
Musk previously signaled that he didn’t plan to stay in charge of Twitter long term. He testified in Delaware court last month that he planned to find someone else to run Twitter and scale back his time at the company. He took the stand in response to a Tesla shareholder lawsuit, which argued that he was overpaid for his work in a 2018 compensation package from the automotive company, while he was splitting his time among several other companies
The unscientific and unrepresentative poll regarding Musk’s leadership came after a whirlwind week for Musk. Tesla’s stock price sank about 15 percent last week, capping off a dismal performance for the past few months, as some investors called on him to step aside from leadership at one of his companies to better focus.
On Wednesday, Musk abruptly suspended an account that tracked his private jet by drawing on publicly available data. He followed that the next day by suspending reporters who had apparently tweeted about it — accusing them of posting “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family. Musk launched a poll Thursday in which users voted to reinstate those banned.
By Sunday, as Musk tweeted from the World Cup finale, watching next to former Trump adviser Jared Kushner, Twitter enacted new rules prohibiting users from repeatedly promoting rival social media networks on the site, calling “free promotion” against the rules. Hordes of users, including some of Musk’s own supporters, rejected the new policy as draconian, despite Musk’s pledge to restore what he called “free speech” to the site.
Musk’s new policy also prohibited promotion of Facebook, Instagram and the app Truth Social, which was co-founded by Trump.
Musk issued a rare apology on Sunday after Twitter enacted new rules prohibiting users from repeatedly promoting rival social media networks on the site, saying he would put future policy decisions to a vote.
Later that night, @TwitterSafety tweeted a poll asking, “Should we have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms?”
The tweets and page outlining the new policies prohibiting content from outside networks also appeared to have been deleted.
Musk’s poll about his leadership was set to expire early Monday morning, before the opening of trading on Wall Street, where Tesla has lost half of its more than $1 trillion valuation from the spring.
“Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it,” Musk tweeted late Sunday, as millions of users voted and the poll trended toward his stepping down.
