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10th Apr 2022

Elon Musk asks followers if he should turn Twitter HQ into a homeless shelter

Simon Bland

Over a million people have responded to his Twitter poll so far

SpaceX billionaire and the current largest shareholder of Twitter, Elon Musk, has asked his followers if he should turn the social media giant’s HQ into a homeless shelter.

Posting on Twitter earlier today (April 10), the Tesla CEO asked his 81.2 million followers: “Convert Twitter SF HQ to homeless shelter since no one shows up anyway” accompanied by a poll inviting people to respond with either “yes” or “no”.

With 14 hours left to respond, the question has already racked up more than one million votes – with 91 per cent in favour of the decision and just 9 per cent against it at the time of writing.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512966135423066116?s=20&t=t9pfxUZR7AIbF8L5Ovnz1g

Early last month, Musk bought a $2.89bn (£2.20bn) stake in Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder and causing the social media company’s shares to soar by 25 per cent.

Today’s poll was one of two posted by the always controversial tech icon. Shortly after inviting his followers to decide on the fate of Twitter HQ, he posted a second question asking whether he should “delete the w in twitter” – offering followers the choice of two fairly unanimous answers: “Yes” and “of course”.

As with many of the questions Musk has directed to his social media audience in recent months, there’s no word on whether he actually plans on actioning any of these decisions. However as alluded to in his first poll, the question could be in response to the suggestion that “no one shows up anyway” to Twitter’s San Francisco office.

Musk’s followers wasted no time in poking fun at his latest poll – which clearly divided opinion.

“Can you livestream the next board meeting?” asked one person.

“Making it Doge shelter would be pretty cool too,” said another.

Meanwhile, others rightfully took a more serious approach to the billionaire’s flippant comments about a very serious situation regarding the state’s homeless community.

“You’re the richest person in the world, don’t pretend like you suddenly care about homeless population, you could give away a fraction of your wealth and do much more for them than the Twitter HQ could ever do,” said one tweeter.

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