Twitter users say Elon Musk should step down as CEO in a poll

SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter users voted with a majority in a weekend poll indicating that Elon Musk should step down as CEO of the social media company.

Among the 17.5 million votes cast in Musk's 12-hour poll, which closed early Monday, 57.5 percent were in favor of his exit, with 42.5 percent indicating he should stay.

The move followed another day of controversy for the social media platform that has been embroiled in tumult since Musk bought it in October and subsequently laid off large swaths of employees, according to a report of The San Francisco Chronicle.

On Sunday morning, Twitter announced that it would prohibit users from steering their followers to their Instagram, Facebook, or Mastodon pages. It said accounts that repeatedly violated this new rule would be permanently suspended.

Vigorous blow-back from Twitter users followed, and Musk later Sunday tweeted an apology, saying that "going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes." By Sunday night, Twitter had taken down its posts and its website notice announcing the new policy about linking to the targeted social media platforms.

By that time, Musk had also invited Twitter users to vote "yes" or "no" to the question whether he should step down as the head of Twitter, and promised he'd follow the 12-hour poll's results.

Later Sunday, he tweeted, "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor."

Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that such a person "must like pain a lot" to run a company that "has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy."