Twitter polls will become exclusive for Blue subscribers, according to platform owner Elon Musk on Tuesday.
Musk previously ran several polls deciding policy changes including un-banning former President Donald Trump’s account along with general amnesty for other previously banned accounts. Both polls resulted with users in favor of the measure.
The tech billionaire responded to previous poll results saying, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,”a Latin term which translates to “the voice of people is the voice of God.”
“Blue subscribers should be the only ones that can vote in policy related polls,” said one user who is a Twitter Blue subscriber. “We actually have skin in the game.”
“Good point. Twitter will make that change,” Musk responded to the user.
Good point. Twitter will make that change.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2022
On Sunday, Musk ran a poll asking users if he should step down as interim CEO saying he would “abide by the results.” The poll followed pushback from an earlier Sunday policy update informing users Twitter would no longer allow “free advertising” for other platforms.
“Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again,” Musk announced.
Over 57 percent of 17.5 million users agreed Musk should step down while 42.5% voted in favor of Musk remaining “Chief Twit.”
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
The tech billionaire further commented on the possibility of appointing a new CEO saying, “no one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive.” “There is no successor.”
Musk followed up the poll tweeting, “as the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”
“Hey [Elon Musk], 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. Let’s clean up and then run this poll again. The majority has faith in you,” said Twitter user Kim Dotcom.
The user said they hoped the poll was a “honeypot” to catch “deep state bots.”
“The dataset for this poll will contain most of them. Some good data-mining and he could kill them all in one go.”
Users previously suggested Musk used polls to attract and take down bot accounts triggered by posts containing key words and topics.
“While some people might cry about how this is like social credit (it isn’t) it’s actually close to what the Founding Fathers intended—only landowners could vote,” noted journalist Ian Miles Cheong regarding the proposition. “It’s a good policy. Democracy must not become a tyranny of the mob.”
“Crucially, Twitter Blue works like Voter ID,” Cheong continued. “The fact of the matter is that anyone can make as many free accounts as they want and use that to influence polls unfairly for users who only voted once.”
Musk has not addressed the poll results as of Tuesday afternoon.
