Less than two months after taking over as CEO of the social media network, Elon Musk faced outrage from Twitter users who voted in a poll for him to resign.
According to the poll the billionaire started on Sunday night, almost 57.5% of votes were in favor of Musk stepping down as the Twitter CEO, while 42.5% were opposed. The voting was attended by more than 17.5 million people.
Musk declared on Sunday that he would follow the poll’s findings, although he did not specify when he would resign if the findings called for it. In premarket trade, shares of Tesla Inc., the electric vehicle manufacturer that Musk leads, were up about 5%.
Musk, who earlier this month lost the title of richest man in the world, launched the tunneling company Boring Company, supports the Neuralink medical device company, and runs the SpaceX rocket company.
Investors at Tesla have expressed fear that Musk has become overextended as a result of the Twitter transaction. As it struggles with supply chain challenges and escalating competition in the EV market, like other automakers, Tesla shares have already lost roughly 60% of their value this year.
Last month, Musk testified in front of a Delaware court that he would work less at Twitter and eventually find a new CEO. Musk responded on Sunday to a Twitter user’s remark about a potential change in the CEO by saying, “There is no succession.”
On Monday, some of the most trending topics on Twitter included “Elon”, “CEO of Twitter”, “vote Yes” and “vote No”.
The survey was conducted following Twitter’s Sunday policy change, which forbade the creation of accounts purely for the purpose of promoting competing social media companies as well as the posting of content that contains links to or usernames for such sites.
