December 19 – A Twitter survey asked should Elon Musk continue on in his role as CEO or should he find someone else to head up the social media giant?
These polls seem to be a trend that Musk has been doing for the past few weeks, including ones asking if Donald Trump should be reinstated or should the banned journalists be returned?
Attorney Clint Barkdoll said, “Thus far, he follows whatever the polling results, what the majority rules.”
Over the weekend, Musk asked should I step down as Twitter CEO? The poll closed this morning with more than 17 million votes and the overwhelming answer was yes – users want Musk gone.
Barkdoll said, “He has not issued a statement yet since this poll was released. It’s not clear if he’s going to follow this advice, this poll.”
Late last night the Wall Street Journal reported that Twitter is bleeding money – the company is losing more than $4 million a day. Advertisers are leaving in droves.
Barkdoll said, “Yesterday some big, big Twitter users and not political types said we’re just leaving the platform. We can’t keep up with all of this drama and the ever-changing policies. Some of these were computer tech people that had millions of followers. MrBeast, any parent of young children knows who MrBeast is, he has about 17 million Twitter followers and he said yesterday, ‘I’m prepared to leave because I use Twitter to promote my YouTube videos.’ You start losing some of these major people that have those kind of followings on Twitter, that of course erodes into advertising and the monetization of the platform. My guess is he very well may step down. Who steps forward, though, to fill the position is another open question at this point. Will anyone even emerge that would want to take on this job?”
Michele Jansen of NewsTalk 103.7FM said, “I think the idea of him stepping down from that position within this company he still will own, I assume that is what we’re talking about here, the person who’s going to be the day to day operations person, that kind of makes sense to me because it feels like he has just been caught up in this and he can’t resist paying attention to it all the time. I don’t know that’s actually good for him and his other businesses.”
Barkdoll said, “That is precisely the point some of these observers, the Wall Street Journal is making.”
Tesla stock is down almost 60 percent this year. A number of investors think he’s spending too much time on Twitter.
Barkdoll said, “The Wall Street Journal reporting is saying that a few weeks ago, Musk said that Twitter may have to file bankruptcy. He’s trying to raise more money from investors, but everything is drying up very quickly. My theory is does he actually want to get out? Was this kind of the easy off ramp for him? Saying I’ll put this out as a poll, secretly hoping that the voters would say yes and is this a way he can just kind of gracefully exit? He still would own the company. He can now put someone else in charge of the day to day operations.”
Pat Ryan of NewsTalk 103.7FM said, “Let’s talk about the theory on this one. Here is mine. I think this is a bot harvesting project of his. I think he remains as CEO and I think he pulls back the curtain on the truth behind the numbers of this vote.”
“That’s an interesting theory,” Barkdoll said. “I had not thought of that. That would be a fascinating experiment. If he goes that route, he’d have to somehow comment on these various other polls he’s been doing the last few weeks. Were they all AI bots or were they real votes? My theory has just been: does he actually want to get out of this? He can say I’m just following what the users want. I’m going to step away now, realizing he really does want to just step away and get back to focusing on cars and spaceships and all those other things where he made so much money.”
