Is Elon Musk stepping down from Twitter?
AFTER less than two months at the helm of Twitter, Elon Musk started having second thoughts about the platform he paid $44billion for.
In December 2022, the sole executive and owner of the platform asked users in a poll if he should step down as CEO and his latest announcement stems from results he received months ago.
Is Elon Musk stepping down from Twitter?
On December 20, 2022, Elon Musk announced he was planning to step down as CEO as soon as he found someone "foolish enough" to take the job.
This comes following a poll on December 18 that read: "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll."
The final poll number came in at 57.5 percent for him to step down, against the 42.5 percent who voted for him to stay on.
But there's more to unpack than what meets the eye here.
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Elon stated in a follow-up tweet that he plans to replace the CEO but will: "Just run the software & servers teams."
He will still be the 100 percent owner of the social media platform, meaning that the CEO won't do much besides holding the title.
On May 11, 2023, Elon took to Twitter to announce his latest decision regarding the company's next CEO.
"Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!" he wrote.
"My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops."
The identity of Twitter's new officer has yet to be revealed.
Is Elon Musk in charge of Twitter?
Elon Musk is still currently in charge of Twitter.
Elon made good on his offer to buy Twitter on October 27, 2022, adding it to his other companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink.
He bought Twitter for $44billion - $2.5billion less than the original deal due to decreased Twitter stocks.
Twitter's former CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust, and safety, were all immediately fired, according to sources of The Washington Post.
On October 31, 2022, Musk dissolved the entire Twitter board and made himself the "sole director," according to reports.
The news followed his bio change to "Chief twit" after he acquired the company.
In a new move, Musk has also pulled 50 of his employees from the tech department at Tesla to his team at Twitter and the head of his family office Jared Birchall, angel investor Jason Calacanis, and founding PayPal COO and venture capitalist David Sacks.
As Musk moves to implement new strategies within the company, Twitter employees told CNBC they had not been told what headcount cuts will be made within their groups or what budgets and long-term strategies will be created.
However, The Washington Post reported Musk plans to lay off 25 percent of the workforce initially, amounting to about 7k people, which will be led by his long-term lawyer, Alex Spiro.
In addition to laying off Twitter's top executives, Musk has dismissed the company's board of directors.
At the time, Musk commented on his takeover of the CEO position in a post on Twitter, writing the move was "just temporary."
What has changed on Twitter since Musk took over?
Musk bought the social media platform on October 27, 2022, and less than a week later, he released a statement on Twitter to convey his reason for acquiring the company.
"There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has been wrong," he wrote.
"The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence."
"There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society."
He continues to criticize: "Traditional media" and claims the "relentless pursuit of clicks" continues to polarize Twitter users negatively.
He said: "That is why I bought Twitter. I didn't do it because it would be easy."
"I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love."
Since taking over Twitter, Elon has suspended several journalists who seemed to criticize him, which has taken away from his credibility in cleaning up the politics of the site.
It has also diminished his credibility in stabilizing the first amendment on Twitter.
Elon's first big announcement was that users would now be able to purchase verification, which was previously based on merit.
He also re-instated several big-name accounts, including former President Donald Trump's.
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Elon has announced one major policy shift: users on the platform are not allowed to share other users' personal information (in an attempt to dox them).
This change also means that live location updates are no longer available on the app.