Elon Musk appears to back out from Twitter poll voting him out

Elon Musk appears to be backing out from abiding by the results of a Twitter poll voting him out as head of the social media platform.

Tesla investors thought that they might see the beginning of the end of their Twitter nightmare with Musk releasing a poll this weekend to ask people if he should remain the head of the social media platform.

The CEO said at the time that he would abide by the results of the poll, and by the end of it yesterday morning, a strong 57% majority of the more than 17 million voters voted him out.

Tesla investors had been pushing for something to change in the last few weeks after first complaining that Musk was spending all his time on Twitter rather than Tesla, a company of which he is still CEO

And more recently, there also started to be evidence that Tesla’s own reputation is being negatively affected by the more controversial decisions made at Twitter and Musk’s own use of the platform.

Musk stepping down from leading Twitter seemed to be a step in the right direction and was welcomed by Tesla investors, but now it’s not clear if Musk actually plans to abide by the results of the poll.

The CEO has yet to directly comment on the results or the next step, but he is instead questioning the legitimacy of his own poll.

Musk first responded “interesting” to a comment by Kim Dotcom suggesting that the “deep state” rigged the poll with bots:

He then responded the same thing to a theory that the number of likes on his poll suggests something wrong with it:

Finally, the CEO also said that important polls going forward will only include votes from people who purchase Twitter Blue:

However, Musk never directly commented on whether or not he plans to abide by the poll results, as he said he would.

Electrek’s Take

This is ridiculous. It makes more sense to him that the poll is rigged rather than people actually not liking what he is doing right now.

This is in inline with him being booed at the Dave Chappelle show earlier this month and then claiming that “90% of people were actually cheering.” Why are you frozen onstage if 90% of the people are cheering?

Speaking of rigged, the poll being accessible for Twitter-Blue-only subscribers would be rigging it since we are talking about only allowing people who are willing to give Elon Musk $8 a month for features that were free before to vote. It’s not too difficult to figure out which way those people will be voting.

It’s sad, but Musk is starting to sound more and more like Trump. When the results don’t match his expectations, they are rigged. Then he starts agreeing to comments talking about the “deep state”?

I think he is losing credibility at an incredible rate, and it’s hurting his own leadership at Tesla. It’s wild how a sliver of hope that things could return to normal was quickly squashed and now is even making things worse.