Elon Musk sheepishly returned to Twitter Monday evening after a fairly quiet day, having spent most of the previous 24 hours in silence after creating a poll in which users voted for him to resign as CEO of the company.
Musk had not released a public statement per se, but began his return by engaging with convicted fraudster Kim Dotcom.
The internet personality had floated a baseless claim that the so-called “deep state” rigged the Twitter poll. Tweeting at @ElonMusk directly, DotCom claimed the U.S. government runs the “biggest bot army on Twitter” and offered the billionaire some advice: “let’s clean up and then run this poll again.” Musk simply commented: “Interesting.”
Then, Musk replied to an apparent Trump supporter who suggested that Twitter Blue subscribers – who pay $8 a month – should be the only ones that can vote in “policy related polls.” Just one minute later, Musk’s fingers found their strength. “Good point. Twitter will make that change,” he replied.
He then commented on a post from Twitter account “Wall Street Silver” that compared the number of votes in the poll to those who liked the actual tweet. “Did bots brigade the Elon poll yesterday?”
Elon replied tepidly once again: “Interesting.”
The billionaire launched the original poll on Sunday evening just as he faced an onslaught of criticism over a new policy banning users from linking to other social media sites.
Musk later announced that Twitter would revise the policy. More than 17 million people voted, with the results showing on Monday morning that 57.5 percent think he should step down.
Musk, who had tweeted up a storm in recent days, did not respond to a request for comment.