The Tesla billionaire said only Twitter Blue subscribers will be allowed to vote in policy-related polls in the future
Elon Musk was seen engaging with deep state conspiracy theorists after Twitter users voted overwhelmingly in favour of him stepping down as CEO of the social media platform.
The Tesla billionaire was seen interacting with Kim Dotcom in the aftermath of the saga, a tech entrepreneur who was convicted on charges of computer fraud in 1994.
Dotcom suggested that Musk was “unwise to run a poll” when he is now “deep state enemy #1”.
“They have the biggest bot army on Twitter”, he said, before adding that the poll could have been used as a “honeypot” to catch “all the deep state bots”.
Interesting
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022
In the same thread, Musk announced that only Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to vote in future policy-related polls on the platform after 57.5 per cent of the more than 17.5 million accounts that voted said he should withdraw from his role.
Normally a prolific user of the platform, Mr Musk did not tweet in the immediate hours following the poll.
His silence was finally broken just before 11.30pm on Monday, when he responded “Interesting” to a suggestion from Kim Dotcom, founder of the once wildly popular file-sharing website Megaupload, that the results of the poll were skewed by fake accounts.
Replying to another user’s suggestion that “Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls”, Mr Musk said: “Good point. Twitter will make that change.”
Good point. Twitter will make that change.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022
His Twitter stream continued into the early hours of Tuesday morning, linking to the site’s World Cup statistics and laughing at a satirical take on Bruce Wayne running a poll about stepping down as Batman.
Twitter Blue is a paid-for subscription which allows anyone to buy a blue tick verified badge for their account.
Musk’s poll on Sunday night came after weeks of controversial decisions.
These have included loosening Twitter’s content moderation approach and allowing previously banned users to return, but also banning and then reinstating some journalists reporting on Musk and introducing and then appearing to remove a policy which banned users from tweeting links to certain other social media platforms.
Some online safety groups have accused the billionaire of allowing hate, abuse and misinformation to more easily circulate on the platform because of his free speech principles.
During his tenure, Musk has also laid off more than half of the company’s global workforce.
While it remains unclear who could replace Musk if he does step down, several commentators have noted that the billionaire would still have the final say on major decisions as Twitter’s owner.
Related links:
- Elon Musk ‘stunned’ after being ‘booed relentlessly’ at Dave Chappelle show
- Alyssa Milano gave back her Tesla after Elon Musk bought Twitter
- Elon Musk insists he is not suicidal and if he dies unexpectedly it wasn’t his own doing
