Did Bots Skew Elon Musk’s Twitter Poll?

When Elon Musk finally clinched the deal to buy Twitter, those of us concerned about censorship on the platform breathed a sigh of relief: finally someone who would bring balance to the force. After all the meddling of the past few years – the banning of right-leaning accounts, the politically motivated ‘fact-checks’, the one-sided interference – we assumed the platform was now in safe hands.

Musk’s first few weeks at the helm have been far from perfect: some accounts were suspended that didn’t deserve to be; links to other social media platforms were banned, sparking a backlash; and the rules seemed to be changing day-by-day or even hour-by-hour. But he is a quick learner, we thought, and he’d soon get into his stride.

So it was with some surprise that we learned Musk was putting his leadership to a vote. On December 19th, he posted the following tweet:

Musk asks his followers whether to step down.

After 17.5 million votes, 57.5% said he should step down – versus only 42.5% who wanted him to continue as head of Twitter.

The next day, however, the market research firm HarrisX announced they had run a proper poll, with a very different result: 61% of U.S. Twitter users (and 53% of U.S. adults) wanted Musk to stay on as head of Twitter. HarrisX used systematic sampling and weighting to make sure their sample was nationally representative.

Of course, lack of representativeness isn’t the only reason why Musk’s poll got a different result. His was open to anyone in any country, whereas HarrisX’s poll was only open to U.S. adults. Having said that, America has by far the most active Twitter users, and may account for the majority of those who speak English and take an interest in company leadership.

Interestingly, Musk himself responded to HarrisX on Twitter. “Suggest that maybe we might still have an itsy bitsy bot problem on Twitter”, he said. Some other large accounts, such as ‘internet entrepreneur’ Kim Dotcom, had already claimed that bots might have skewed the results of his poll.

Does this mean Musk isn’t stepping down after all? Apparently not: seven hours after replying to HarrisX, Musk confirmed, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” He added, “After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.”

Given that Musk is already CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla, President of the Musk Foundation and father to ten children, he must be a busy man. Conspiracy theorists might wonder whether he fixed the poll result himself once he realised how much of a headache running Twitter would be.

In any event, Musk’s purchase looks to be a big net plus from a free speech standpoint. He’s ditched the ‘Trust and Safety’ council, reinstated a bunch of banned accounts, and disclosed the Twitter Files to the world. Three Cheers! Let’s hope his replacement follows in the same tradition.