Musk recently closed the Twitter accounts of well-known journalists from many American media, including Voice of America, on the pretext that the whereabouts of his private jet were exposed and affected the privacy and safety of him and his family. Therefore, it caused an uproar and strong criticism and protests including from the United Nations. Many journalists whose accounts were shut down have since been restored one after another.
Musk once conducted a poll on Twitter on whether the accounts of these reporters should be restarted. As a result, the vast majority of interviewed users supported the restart of the accounts of these reporters.
Musk conducted a new poll of Twitter users late Sunday, asking whether he should step down as Twitter's chief administrative officer. A total of 57.5 percent of respondents to the survey said "yes" when it closed Monday, while 42.5 percent opposed his resignation.
Musk said Sunday he would abide by the polls, but offered no details on when he would step down.
A total of more than 17.5 million Twitter users participated in the poll.
In addition to serving as CEO of his recently acquired Twitter company, Musk is also the boss of Tesla, the world's leading electric car company. Shares of Tesla rose 5% in premarket trading Monday.
Musk was once the richest man in the world, but he lost that crown earlier this month. After Musk spent a huge amount of money to acquire Twitter, Tesla investors have doubts about Musk's interests and dabbling in too many fields.
Shares of Tesla have plummeted nearly 60 percent this year as they, like other automakers, struggle with supply chain issues and growing competition in the electric-vehicle space.
Musk told a Delaware court last month that he would spend less time tweeting and would eventually find a new leader to run Twitter. But he said on Sunday, in response to a Twitter user's comments about the replacement of Twitter's CEO, "there is no successor yet.Musk's current difficulties may not be limited to Twitter and Tesla. Musk's other brain-computer interface technology company, Neuralink, is also under investigation by the federal government for possible violations of animal rights. Internal employees of Neural Connection complained that because Musk was eager to pursue a breakthrough in brain-computer interface technology, the company's animal experiments were too hasty, resulting in unnecessary animal suffering and death.
According to the latest report from Reuters, the investigation of the "Neural Connection" company's violations of animal rights has expanded to investigate whether the US Department of Agriculture's regulators are due diligence in reviewing and supervising "Neural Connection" and other companies that conduct animal experiments.
Reuters quoted unnamed people familiar with the matter as saying that in the past three years, the US Department of Agriculture has inspected the facilities of the "Neural Connection" company eight times to check whether there are violations of animal rights, but no problems have been found. Both on-site inspections let the company pass.
A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture told Reuters that the Department of Agriculture does not respond to any questions about the "Neural Link" company and referred reporters to the Department of Agriculture's Inspector General's Office, but the Attorney General's Office not only did not answer questions about "Neural Link" company, and declined to respond to questions about its oversight of animal testing across the country.
The Agriculture Department's inspector general's office has complained for years about understaffed and ineffective oversight of animal testing.
