Twitter users have overwhelmingly voted for Elon Musk to step aside as chief executive officer, placing his hands-on leadership of the company he bought this year in doubt.
The billionaire and business mogul had posted an online poll asking users if he should step aside as head of Twitter, pledging that he would "abide by the results."
More than 17 million users cast their vote, with 57.5 per cent voting in favour of Musk stepping down and 42.5 per cent voting for him to remain as CEO.
"As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might actually get it," Musk tweeted as the votes flowed in.
Replying to a Twitter user, Musk wrote that there "is no successor" waiting in the wings and that nobody who could keep the platform alive "wants the job". In another thread, he wrote that Twitter " has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May".
Musk owns Twitter as a private company and is under no legal obligation to respect the poll results and step aside as CEO.
Analysts have also pointed out that the stock price of Tesla has slumped by one-third since the Twitter takeover.
"It's hard to ignore the numbers since
Twitter had announced that the company would "no longer allow free promotion of specific social media platforms."
Users would thus be barred, for example, from posting "Follow me @username on Instagram," Twitter said.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey questioned the new policy with a one-word tweet: "Why?"
After some notable accounts were suspended under the new policy, including tech investor Paul Graham, Musk tweeted that instead of considering individual tweets, the policy would be limited to "suspending accounts only when that account's *primary* purpose is promotion of competitors."
Series of controversies
Musk has generated a series of controversies in his short tenure at the helm of Twitter, including layoffs, reinstatement of some far-right accounts and the suspension of several journalists.
Shortly after taking over the platform, he announced the site would charge $8 per month to verify account holders' identities, but had to suspend the "Twitter Blue" plan after an embarrassing rash of fake accounts. It has since been relaunched.
On November 4, with Musk saying the company was losing $4 million a day, Twitter laid off half its 7,500-strong staff.
Musk also reinstated the account of former president Donald Trump and said Twitter would no longer work to combat Covid-19 disinformation.
In recent days, he suspended the accounts of several journalists -- most recently, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz -- after complaining some had divulged details about the movements of his private jet that could endanger his family.
The suspension of the journalists -- employees of CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post were among those affected -- has drawn sharp criticism, including from the European Union and the United Nations.
The US Federal Trade Commission said it was tracking developments at Twitter "with deep concern."
The Washington Post's executive editor Sally Buzbee said the suspension of Lorenz's account "further undermines Elon Musk's claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech."
Some of the suspended accounts have since been reactivated.