The billionaire has reportedly found someone to run the social media company, but he says he?ll keep his role as owner and ultimate decision-maker. Despite this, his tenure at Twitter has been turbulent since he acquired it in October, with massive rounds of layoffs and controversial changes to the platform.
He has reshaped the executive team, upended its verification policy and rolled out policies that critics say have made the site less hospitable to conservative users while allowing far-right extremists free rein. Twitter has also suffered from a number of technical glitches and a steep drop in advertising revenue under Musk.
Many employees have left the company in recent months, and he recently sent a memo to staff calling them “extremely hardcore” and demanding that they work 80-hour weeks or risk being fired. The company recently dropped its work-from-home policy, but employees could still telecommute. The company has a small handful of senior executives remaining, while rank-and-file workers from before the purchase have largely been let go or quit.
Some current and former employees, social media academics and human rights activists are worried that he will transform the platform into a cesspool of toxic content, and that he has used his influence to silence criticism of his other businesses. He has already been criticized for suspending accounts of journalists who have covered his companies, and he?s pushed back against accusations that he?s using Twitter to censor speech he disagrees with.
Other critics fear that he will be distracted by running Twitter, which will hurt the growth of his best-known company, Tesla. Investors have been concerned that he has spent too much time on the social media company at the expense of boosting production of its electric cars.
If he steps down, it will likely mean that the new CEO of Twitter will have a much more limited role than in the past, because he will likely be overseeing fewer aspects of the business. In the past, he has often delegated decisions to senior executives at the company, including vice presidents of product and engineering, but those people may no longer be there to pick up the slack.
The news comes a day after a Twitter poll asked users whether they want to see Musk step down as CEO, and the result was clear: 57.5% said he should do so. The company remained quiet on the result for several hours, before confirming the results in a tweet to users of Twitter Blue, the paid service.
It?s not clear how much actual control Musk will have over Twitter when he leaves, but he will probably continue to insist that major decisions be made in public. That strategy has been a favored tactic of his, especially when it comes to reversing controversial policy decisions. For example, he once quickly accepted the results of a Twitter poll that asked users whether Trump should be allowed back on the site after his account was suspended, even though the result was narrowly in favor of reviving him.