PM Jacinda Ardern acknowledged that social media platforms can do ‘a huge amount of harm’ if misused and hopes that new owner Elon Musk will stick to his ‘principal of transparency'. Video / NZ Herald
Elon Musk has confirmed he will resign as the CEO of Twitter as soon as he can find “someone foolish enough to take the job”.
It comes after the billionaire asked the website’s users to decide his future at the firm, an astonishing democratisation of decision-making for the company that he paid $69 billion (US$44b) for.
The world’s second wealthiest person confirmed his future role at the company would be to “run the software and servers teams” in a post on Twitter at 12.20pm on Wednesday.
On Monday Musk started a poll on Twitter asking if he should “step down as head of Twitter”.
He promised that he would “abide by the results of this poll”, which ended at 10.19pm on Monday.
He also followed up by writing: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”
There was no insight into who will take the reins when Musk comes good with his promise.
Many people have put their hands up, some jokingly. Popular artificial intelligence researcher and podcast host Lex Fridman offered to temporarily run the website free of charge.
Musk is currently the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter. He is also president of the charitable Musk Foundation.
Last week, he lost the title of the world’s richest person to French businessman Bernard Arnault.
It comes as a number of Tesla shareholders lash out at Musk after watching the company’s stock plunge 62.55 per cent over the past year. Tesla shares were selling for US$150.23 this morning.
Musk has sold about US$23 billion (NZ$36 billion) worth of Tesla stock this year — which has hurt the stock price — despite promising in April to stop selling shares.
Critics say Musk’s Twitter takeover earlier this year has distracted the enigmatic businessman’s attention away from Tesla.
He was given a US$56 billion (NZ$86 billion) pay package in 2018 to run Tesla, the largest in American corporate history.
Photo / AP
A lawsuit by Tesla shareholders examining the compensation package wrapped up on November 18 this year.
The tech magnate was spotted at the World Cup final between France and Argentina in Qatar today with Jared Kushner, who is Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner recently received a US$2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
In October it was revealed that Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his investment firm was the second-largest investor in Twitter.
Musk moved quickly to make major changes when he acquired Twitter, firing key executives and sacking staff. Major advertisers melted away over fears he would relax moderation policies as he bolstered “free speech”. He introduced a blue checkmark subscription service in a bid to verify users and create income for the company. Internal documents from Twitter were also shared by Musk with independent journalists - dubbed the Twitter Files.
Musk was widely criticised after a number of prominent journalists, including from CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other news outlets, were abruptly suspended over the weekend.
They were pinged for sharing links to an account that releases publicly available flight information about Musk’s private jet. Musk reinstated most of the accounts after running a separate poll on Twitter.
Musk’s decision to start the poll astounded many on social media.
“The idea that someone makes decisions on a company he bought for $44b by running a Twitter poll is astonishing,” COTA director Lesley Podesta wrote.
“Seems like Tesla shareholders would really like it if you stopped spending all of your time alienating wealthy libs who love buying Teslas,” journalist Ben Greyfuss wrote.
Others alleged that Musk had already planned to quit as CEO.
“I suspect Elon already has his replacement selected and this is just a poll to make it seem like we are deciding,” the Wall Street Silver account posted.
