Elon Musk to quit as Twitter CEO when replacement found

Elon Musk has said he will resign as Twitter’s chief executive officer when he finds someone “foolish enough to take the job”.

The billionaire had promised to abide by the result of a Twitter poll which saw 57.5% of users vote “yes” to him quitting the role.

He says he will still run the software and servers teams after his replacement is found.

Changes on the platform since his takeover have been much criticised.

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Since Mr Musk bought the social media site in October, he has fired about half of its staff and attempted a rollout of Twitter’s paid-for verification feature before putting it on pause. The feature was relaunched last week.

Civil liberties groups have also criticised his approach to content moderation, accusing him of taking steps that will increase hate speech and misinformation.

On Friday, Mr Musk was condemned by the United Nations and European Union over Twitter’s decision to suspend some journalists who cover the social media firm.

The UN tweeted that media freedom was “not a toy”, while the EU threatened Twitter with sanctions.

This is the first time the multibillionaire has responded to the poll launched on Sunday asking if he should resign. More than 17.5 million users voted, with 42.5% voting no to Mr Musk stepping down.

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Finding someone to take over the social media platform may be a challenge, according to Mr Musk. After laying off Twitter staff last month, the billionaire reportedly told remaining workers that the company he just bought could see “net negative cash flow of several billion dollars” in 2023 and “bankruptcy is not out of the question”.

“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive,” he tweeted following this week’s poll.

Some people speculate Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey could also come back to run the company. He resigned as chief executive in November 2021.

Other names mentioned as possible replacements include Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s former chief operating officer, Sriram Krishnan, engineer and close confidante to Mr Musk, and Jared Kushner, US former presidential adviser and son-in-law of Donald Trump.

In the past Mr Musk has obeyed Twitter polls. He is fond of quoting the Latin phrase vox populi, vox dei which roughly means “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.

But on Tuesday, he confirmed Twitter would only allow paid subscribers with a blue tick to vote on changes to policy in future.

It came after one user claimed that so-called bots appeared to have voted heavily in the poll about Mr Musk’s role at the firm. Mr Musk said he found the claim “interesting”.