Elon Musk thinks bots may have botched up his poll on stepping down as Twitter CEO

Elon Musk had a single word response for a Twitter user who suggested bot interference in his poll.

After 57.5 per cent of Twitter users (around 10 million) voted in favour of Elon Musk stepping down as Twitter head on a poll posted by Musk himself, the tech billionaire now appears to agree with other users that bots may have jeopardised the poll.

When Twitter user @WallStreetSilv suggested that bots may have attacked the poll because the number of votes were far more than the number of reactions to the tweet, Musk responded with a single word: "Interesting."

Interesting

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— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2022

Another Twitter user Alfredo Duvalle (@DuvalleAlfredo) commented, "I was checking in the poll. It went from 56 percent 'No' and 800K votes to 58 per cent yes and 1.6 million votes in maybe five minutes."

There were, however, others who suggested that bots may after all have had nothing to do with the poll.

"Two possible reasons: 1) Musk could have lost support during the four weeks between the two polls; 2) Most people don’t participate in polls but felt this was important and participated without liking it (2M more votes cast). It’s quite a stretch to conclude it was bots," wrote Gary Black (@garyblack00).

Culling Twitter bots was one of Musk's priorities when he took over Twitter. In fact, in his attempts to remove them, Twitter had recently blocked thousands of real users from accessing their accounts.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who had promised to "abide by the results" of the poll has maintained a careful silence except when he claimed that no one wanted to step into his shoes as the Twitter CEO.

Responding to a Twitter user who assumed that the billionaire had already chosen a successor, Musk tweeted, "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor."

No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022

Musk had told a Delaware court in November that he would reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the company.