Elon Musk has a poll on Twitter, warns 'consequences will be important'

Billionaire Elon Musk asked on Twitter if people believe that the social media giant “rigorously adheres” to the principle of free speech. Putting out the poll, the Tesla Inc Chief Executive warned the consequences of this voting exercise will be important.

“Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” he tweeted, giving two options to his social media users to vote: yes or no.

The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022

In a little over two hours, over 4.33 people had cast their votes, with over 64 per cent people voting for “no”.

This comes less than 24 hours after Musk put out another poll, seeking responses on whether Twitter’s algorithm should be open source.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who quit as the CEO of the company last November, responded to Elon Musk’s poll on Thursday, saying “the choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone”.

The choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone https://t.co/o2DkSTWW0O — jack (@jack) March 25, 2022

Seven hours before the poll closed, over 10.27 lakh people had voted, with over 82 per cent voting in favour of Twitter algorithm being open source.

The entrepreneur had said that he is worried about the "de facto bias" in the algorithm of Twitter.

In November 2021, Musk had put out another poll on Twitter, asking users if he should sell 10 per cent of his stock in Tesla. More than half of the people voted in favour of him selling his Tesla stock.