Should Elon quit Twitter? Users vote Yes by a 15% margin • TechCrunch

Elon Musk’s reign over Twitter – marked by the chaos of his sudden decisions, mass layoffs and endless product reversals – could take its most dramatic turn yet, if Twitter users have a say. .

A poll put up by Musk on Sunday asking him if he should step down from the company’s leadership closed today, with users voting overwhelmingly in favor of his departure. Nearly 17.4 million people responded in 12 hours, and 57.5% of them voted “Yes” against 42.5% of them voting “No” – a margin of 15% supporting his departure. “I will respect the results of this poll,” Musk said. Noted in the survey.

We’ll detail here all the reasons why this shouldn’t be taken too strictly as a directive to Elon. But first, the very distinct takeaways. People are still on Twitter; people care about what’s going on; and those online – at least in the last 12 hours – don’t, in the majority, really want any more Elon Antics. That there is a way to give people a voice and that people express themselves is important in itself.

But now, for the main reason to not hold your breath or get too upset when nothing happens: Elon, ultimately, will do whatever he wants.

No, he’s not exactly good at his word, as we’ve seen many times. (Just ask Tesla shareholders how his promises worked.) And no, we have no way of verifying the poll results. And, yes, Musk could just decide to redo the survey until he gets the result he wants – whatever result he wants today, that is. Musk’s only predictable quality seems to be that he is unpredictable.

And because of all of the above, do we really know what his true motive was in holding the poll?

Does it: really give itself an exit option? Feeding potential investors with hypothetical alternatives? Scrappily generating mrubber ore traffic? The latter is a distinct possibility, given that Twitter – depleted by more than half the staff it had before Musk took over – has pretty much dropped the ball on all the sets he has built over the years to generate viewership and revenue.

Maybe he will ask this question next!

Musk has been to Qatar (uh, I think I can say that here on TC and not get banned on Twitter, yes?), apparently to watch the World Cup (but damn, are there a lot of wealthy people looking to invest more and more in the West). His tweet of the game were among the most viewed on Twitter regarding yesterday’s final.

Sure, his one-night takeover of the pace of sports curation was great, but at some point, someone has to clean up the mess in the stadium.