Elon Musk did not reveal what suddenly prompted him to launch the poll
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has asked his 79 million followers on Twitter if they believed the social media platform was adhering to the principle of free speech being essential to a functioning democracy.
"Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?" Mr Musk wrote, giving yes and no as options. He asked them to vote carefully because the “consequences of this poll” would be important.
At the time of writing, the poll had received more than 7.92 lakh votes. Eighteen hours were still left before the end of the poll. More than 66 percent of the voters had said “No” and only about 33 percent said they believed Twitter was adhering to the free speech principle.
The SpaceX and Teslo CEO did not reveal what suddenly prompted him to launch the poll or what consequences he was talking about. He did not even say why he appeared to doubt Twitter's commitment to free speech.
Just a day ago, Mr Musk had launched another poll asking if Twitter's algorithm should be open source. With open-source algorithms, people would be able to know how Twitter decides what to show them in their feed.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as CEO of the company in November last year, was among the many people who responded to the tweet. Mr Dorsey said, “The choice of which algorithm to use (or not) should be open to everyone.”
Recently, replying to writer-illustrator Tim Urban's complaints about the Twitter algorithm, Mr Musk had raised concerns about a “de facto bias” embedded in the algorithm and its potential ripple effects on public discourse.
Later, Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus, who goes by the username Shibetoshi Nakamoto on Twitter, also joined the discussion, agreeing essentially with Mr Musk and others that social media companies and search companies can “greatly alter” public discourse with their algorithms.
“The algorithm needs to be open source,” Mr Musk demanded.