Elon Musk Starts Twitter Poll on Donald Trump’s Account for Recovery
Elon Musk started a Twitter poll late Friday asking fans to vote on whether to restore former US President Donald Trump’s account on the platform, with early results showing nearly 60 percent voted yes.
“Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk said on Twitter, a Latin phrase roughly meaning “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” Voting was open for 24 hours.
Musk, the new owner of Twitter, said in May he would lift Twitter’s ban on Trump, whose account was suspended after last year’s attack on the US Capitol.
Musk said earlier in the day that no decision had been made to restore Trump’s account, and that Twitter had restored other controversial accounts that had been banned or suspended, including the satirical website Babylon Bee and comedian Kathy Griffin.
Musk’s decision to ask Twitter users for guidance on who should be on stage is part of a major restructuring of the company, including major layoffs.
In a Friday memo to remaining employees seen by Reuters, Musk asked those writing software code to report to the 10th floor of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters early in the morning.
The billionaire said in a follow-up email: “If possible, I would appreciate it if you could fly to SF to be there in person,” adding that he would be in the office until midnight and return Saturday morning.
He asked employees to email him a summary of what their software code had “achieved” in the past six months, “and up to 10 screenshots of the most important lines of code.”
“There will be short, technical discussions that allow me to better understand Twitter’s technology stack,” Musk wrote in one of the emails, and asked engineers to report at 2pm on Friday.
The emails came a day after hundreds of Twitter workers were estimated to have decided to leave the troubled social media company following a Thursday deadline from Musk for workers to log “long hours at a high intensity.”
The move adds to the upheaval and turmoil that has marked Musk’s first three weeks as Twitter owner. He fired senior executives including former CEO Parag Agarwal and senior officials in charge of security and privacy, and took a close look at the regulator.
A White House official hit back, saying Twitter should tell Americans how the company protects their information.
Tech website Platformer reported on Friday that Robin Wheeler, the ad marketing company’s chief executive, has been fired.
Wheeler, who told staff in a memo last week that he was staying, wrote on Twitter on Friday: “To the team and my customers… you’ve always meant nothing but me”, with a greeting emoji taken as a send-off. closed to departing employees.
Twitter told employees on Thursday that it would close its offices and restrict access to the badge until Monday, according to two sources. Reuters could not immediately confirm whether the headquarters had reopened.
By Friday afternoon, the company had begun shutting down access to company systems for some employees who refused to accept Musk’s request, three people told Reuters.
Another source said the company plans to close one of Twitter’s three US data centers, the SMF1 facility near Sacramento, to save costs.
In his first email to Twitter employees this month, Musk warned that Twitter may not be able to “survive the next recession.” He also said, “We are also changing Twitter’s policy that remote work is no longer allowed, unless you have something special.”
Amidst these changes, Moody’s withdrew its B1 credit rating from Twitter, saying it did not have enough information to maintain the rating.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
