Elon Musk ‘actively looking’ for new Twitter CEO after user poll – live updates

The billionaire asked the lawmaker from California if he had approved “hidden state censorship in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.”

Mr Schiff was quick to turn the tables on Twitter’s owner.

“I don’t support censorship. Or hate speech. As the (outgoing) CEO of Twitter, how about you? Why not do more to stop slurs against Black people, LGBTQ+ people, Jewish people, and others? Do you commit to providing the public with actual answers and data, not just tweets?” he wrote.

The price of Tesla shares fell a further 6 per cent on Tuesday after a string of brokerages cut their price targets for the electric vehicle-makers stock.

This came in the wake of Elon Musk’s $44bn purchase of Twitter and the chaos that has happened at the social media platform ever since.

Tesla’s share price hit $140.86 on Tuesday, a more than two-year low, reported Reuters.

Tesla investors are reportedly fuming over what they see as a major distraction for Musk. The electric car maker is currently experiencing the biggest stock sell-off since going public 12 years ago (see chart below), and the CEO’s antics on Twitter are seen as a significant factor in this $600 billion slide.

We’ve heard from Antoine Argouges the founder of ethical investment group Tulipshare:

The chief Twit – at least for now – is back tweeting.

Ignoring the current speculation about who might replace him at the social media firm, Musk is instead back on his other favorite topic of recent days: The Twitter Files.

“Government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public,” he wrote, while retweeting ‘Part 7’ of the Twitter Files.

“Other social media companies too,” he added, “not just Twitter.”

Elon Musk is reportedly “actively searching” for a new CEO of Twitter, according to sources cited by CNBC.

There’s no word on who might be a potential successor, despite several figures putting their name forward – including the rapper Snoop Dogg and computer scientist Lex Fridman.

“The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive,” Musk tweeted on Sunday night.

Shares of Tesla have taken a hammering since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, with some of the electric car maker’s major shareholders lamenting their CEO being distracted by Twitter.

Since their peak in November 2021, Tesla shares are down by more than 62 per cent. This is Tesla’s worst sell-off since the firm went public in 2010.

Musk addressed the stock drop last Friday, blaming the loss of $600 billion worth of value on forces outside of his control. “Tesla is executing better than ever!” he tweeted. We don’t control the Federal Reserve. That is the real problem here.”

Mr Musk on Monday night appeared to fuel a theory that bots were to blame for his defeat in the poll asking whether he should remain Twitter CEO.

Earlier on Monday, an account with the username Wall Street Silver quote-tweeted a side-by-side comparison of the poll on the question of reinstating the account of former President Donald Trump with the poll on the question of Mr Musk’s ongoing Twitter leadership.

The former poll had roughly 15m votes and 836,000 likes, while the later poll had nearly 15m votes and just 312,000 likes. This led Wall Street Silver to wonder “Did bots brigade the Elon poll yesterday?”

Mr Musk replied, “Interesting.” It is not clear why there would be any relationship between voting in a poll on Twitter and liking a tweet, two different actions that do not seem to have any direct relationship.

Even if Elon Musk steps down as the head of Twitter, picking out a successor may not be so simple.

“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive,” he tweeted overnight. “There is no successor.”

One of those stepping forward to offer their services is Lex Fridman, an AI researcher, computer scientist and popular podcast host.

“Let me run Twitter for a bit,” he tweeted to Musk. “No salary. All in. Focus on great engineering and increasing the amount of love in the world. Just offering my help in the unlikely case it’s useful.”

Musk replied: “You must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings on Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?

Twitter on Monday announced not Mr Musk’s resignation as CEO, but a new Twitter Blue for Business feature that “lets businesses distinguish their brands and key employees on Twitter.”

Businesses will now be distinguished with square profile pictures and gold checkmarks, as opposed to circular pictures and blue checkmarks for other accounts. Verified existing businesses have already been folded into the new program and now have gold checkmarks and square pictures.

Twitter is currently piloting the program with a select number of businesses and plans to roll out it fully next year.

Will Elon Musk step down as chief executive of Twitter? I have no idea. He might have done it by the time this is published, or he might not. Maybe he’ll have made it illegal to use the letter “a” by then, or banned non-binary people from the app altogether. Who knows.

Musk tweeted a poll asking users if they thought he should step down and those users – your columnist very much included – did, at the time of writing, just tell him precisely where to stick it. It is unclear whether anything will change.

What is certain, on the other hand, is that the chaos will continue in one form or another for the foreseeable future.

In the Elon Musk era, there isn’t such a thing as a quiet Twitter news week, writes Marie Le Conte.