Elon Musk says he will quit as Twitter CEO as soon as he finds someone ‘foolish enough’ to take the job

‘After that, I will just run the software and servers teams’

Billionaire Elon Musk said he will step down as Twitter’s CEO after finding a successor for the job.

“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job,” he said in a tweet on Tuesday. “After that, I will just run the software and servers teams.”

His statement comes two days after a defeat in a poll where he asked Twitter users if he should quit as the head of the social media platform. “I will abide by the results of this poll,” he had then said.

More than 17 million users participated in the poll held on Sunday, with 57 per cent voting “Yes”.

Following a brief silence on the loss, Mr Musk went on to question the result of the poll.

He said Twitter would restrict voting on significant policy decisions only to the paying Twitter Blue subscribers.

“Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related [sic] polls. We actually have skin in the game,” wrote a Twitter user.

“Good point. Twitter will make that change,” Mr Musk replied.

His poll came at the heels of an uproar over a policy that barred users from linking to certain rival social media websites, including Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon.

After facing backlash, the policy was reversed within hours. “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again,” he added.

Earlier on Monday, the Tesla and SpaceX boss said to Twitter followers that the person replacing him “must like pain a lot” to run a company that he said has been “in the fast lane to bankruptcy”.

“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Mr Musk had said.

The billionaire only took control of the platform two months ago, but his tenure has been turbulent.

Some of his actions have unnerved Twitter advertisers and users and turned both away from the platform.

The Tesla billionaire’s actions have included laying off half of Twitter’s workforce, letting go contract content moderators, disbanding a council of trust and safety advisers and suspending the accounts of several journalists who he accused of doxing.