Elon Musk has spoken out after a poll he created to determine whether he should stay on as Twitter CEO ended with users voting him out.
On Sunday night, the 51-year-old billionaire posed the question to Twitter users: "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll."
Perhaps much to Musk's dismay - the outcome was that users want him to step down. The poll attracted 17,502,391 votes, with 42.5% voting no and 57.5% wanting him gone.
Musk followed up the poll with an incredibly cryptic tweet: "Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it," which could indicate his intention to abide by the result of the poll.
If he is a man of his word, then the hunt for a new Twitter boss will have already begun - But a new interaction on the social media platform puts question marks on whether Musk believes the legitimacy of the poll.
Kim Dotcom - founder of the file-sharing website Megaupload - took to the social media platform to claim that the poll had been infiltrated by "bots."
Kim said: "it’s unwise to run a poll like this when you are now deep state enemy #1. They have the biggest bot army on Twitter. They have 100k ‘analysts’ with 30-40 accounts all voting against you."
He also stated that he hoped Musk did the poll as a "honeypot" attempt to attract "bots" so he can "kill them all in one go". Musk saw the claims and as a man of few words simply replied "interesting."
Twitter user WallStreetSilver also questioned the results of the poll: "Very interesting when you compared the number of votes versus the number of likes on the tweets. Did bots brigade the Elon poll yesterday?"
Again, Musk rather elaborately replied "interesting". This now poses the question: will the Twitter boss abide by the result of the poll like he originally claimed?
Another suggestion put to Musk was that only Twitter blue subscribers should be allowed to vote in polls regarding policy changes to the social media platform.
The Tesla CEO didn't need much convincing as he responded: "Good point. Twitter will make that change."
Twitter blue is a paid subscription that allows users to receive a verification badge for their accounts - and now apparently vote on the goings on of the platform.
Musk claims to be fighting for free speech, so making people pay to have a voice is an interesting way to go about it.