New Delhi: Twitter Chief Elon Musk on Monday asked users to decide whether or not he should stay in charge of the social media platform as he acknowledged making a mistake in launching severe speech restrictions with a bid to ban mentions of rival social media websites.
In a drastic policy change, Twitter had announced that users will be “prohibited” to share post links to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, and other platforms.
The move generated a lot of immediate backlash leading to Twitter’s new billionaire owner Musk promising not to make any more major policy changes without an online survey of users.
Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
“My apologies. Won’t happen again,” Musk tweeted, before initiating a new 12-hour poll asking if he should step down as head of Twitter. “I will abide by the results of this poll.”
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
Twitter is trying to block competitors amid Musk’s crackdown on a host of accounts. Last week, he shut down a Twitter account that was tracking the flights of his private jet, he also suspended the Twitter handles of journalists who he accused of “doxxing” him. He reversed the suspensions on journos after conducting a Twitter poll.
More On It: ‘People Have Spoken’: Twitter To Restore Suspended Accounts Of Journalists After 59% Vote In Favour
Twitter Bans Handels Of Other Social Media Platforms
Twitter accounts of Facebook, Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post, and former US president Donald Trump’s Truth Social have been blacklisted. Twitter did not explained why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok, or LinkedIn
Twitter on Sunday said that it will remove accounts created solely for promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames.
The move would impact content from social media platforms like Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram, along with Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr, and Post while allowing cross-content posting, Twitter support informed in a tweet which has now been deleted.
“We still allow cross-posting content from any social media platform. Posting links or usernames to social media platforms not listed above are also not in violation of this policy,” the Twitter thread had mentioned.
Short video-platform TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd, was not included in the list.
Musk has previously stated that he did not want to be Twitter CEO, hinting that he would find someone else for the job. He is currently CEO of Tesla Inc, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and the Musk Foundation