Much controversy has surrounded Elon Musk since his purchase of Twitter, but the consensus is that Musk needs to leave. 

Musk purchased the platform with the idea that he could make it a place for people to speak openly, “to help humanity,” Musk wrote in a tweet. 

Almost immediately after his purchase, Musk moved ahead with changes, firing nearly half of the Twitter employees. As a businessman, he made a good choice, but from a moral standpoint the choice was wrong. 

Dustin Barbre, a junior business management major, understands the complexity behind a decision to fire a large number of people.  

“If anything it (Twitter) has gotten slightly better, functionality-wise, and he’s doing that with 33% of his staff that he originally had. So, obviously, those extra people that were there weren’t super helpful or useful in making Twitter a better place,” Barbre said. “If you can cut out all those people, then you don’t have to pay all of them and then you still end up with a similar if not better product, then it’s probably, as far as from a business perspective, a good thing, right?” 

In addition to firing many employees, Musk added a new verification system to the platform which was met with great chaos. 

Users can now pay $7.99 a month to have a blue check mark by their name. The issue with the new verification process was that anyone could create an account with a username and photo of their choosing and purchase a blue check mark. Several individuals created fake accounts for other companies such as PepsiCo, Eli Lilly and Nintendo, reported Security Intelligence.  

Shortly after the verification chaos, a new policy was implemented with a different color scheme. Companies could receive a gold check, government accounts could have a gray check and individuals could have a blue check. 

It was no secret that many wanted to see Musk step down from Twitter, so Musk decided to conduct an informal poll asking his audience whether he should leave the platform. 

The poll’s results showed the majority of voters wished Musk to step down, with 57.5% voting for him to leave and 42.5% voting for him to stay. 

Musk has claimed that he will step down as CEO of the platform; he just needs to find someone “foolish enough” to be his successor, and from then on he will focus on running software and servers teams, he wrote in a tweet. 

Barbre believes Musk should step down as CEO of Twitter; not for the way he has chosen to run Twitter, but because Twitter has taken up too much of his attention and his other companies are beginning to suffer. 

“It’s more important that he spends his time paying attention to those other businesses because those are being affected more and stockholders in those companies have a right to have their CEO focused in on making (sure) they’re doing well,” Barbre said. 

Tesla lost over $700 billion in revenue, nearly 65% of its value over the course of 2022, reported OPB. 

It is clear that Musk has a strong vision for the platform, however, the plan for that vision still needs much improvement. Musk is stretched too thin. Something has got to go and it looks like it might be Twitter.