This past month, Musk reinstated Trump’s Twitter account after polling users about whether the platform should do so. Nearly 52% of users voted in favor of reinstating Trump’s account. Musk has also polled users about other decisions around account suspensions.
It is unclear how much the poll results influence Musk’s decisions. Last year he asked on Twitter whether he should sell Tesla stock at a time he had already committed to a share-sell program that wasn’t yet public.
Musk has been trying to boost user engagement in Twitter after lamenting even before closing the deal for the platform that it had lost its attraction to some big name users. He has also tried to make Twitter less dependent on digital advertising, which accounted for about 90% of its revenue. An effort to bolster Twitter’s paid-for subscription service suffered several false starts and was finally relaunched last week.
The policy change announced on Sunday took aim at the ability of users to link to rival platforms. Twitter said the ban on tweets and accounts engaging in “free promotion” affected platforms including Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Meta Platforms Inc., Mastodon, Truth Social—the platform set up by Trump—and others.
After the new rule was announced, Mr. Musk tweeted later Sunday that it would be modified: “Policy will be adjusted to suspending accounts only when that account’s *primary* purpose is promotion of competitors, which essentially falls under the no spam rule.”
While Musk fired off some tweets on Monday evening, posting statistics on Twitter usage during the epic World Cup final and retweeting posts from his Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX companies, it remains unclear if he will actually step down from his post at Twitter after vowing to “abide” by the results of the poll. By his own admission, there isn’t someone readily available to run the perilous platform. In one Sunday night tweet, Musk wrote, “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.”
Some Tesla investors, who have grown increasingly vocal, are hoping there is someone else who can take the reins at the social network. Musk last month said he would “find somebody else to run Twitter” and that he expected to “reduce” his time there. And while there are a host of names being floated, CNBC reported last week that Tesla shares have slid 28% since Musk took over Twitter.
Although it’s still too early in the day to imagine what the future of Twitter looks like,but something is clear,the company may not be the same again as we await the next line of action by controversial Musk and his many twists.
