Musk Says Twitter’s New CEO Could Be MrBeast, World’s Biggest YouTuber

SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk laughs as he arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Awards ceremony, in Berlin, Germany, on Dec. 1, 2020. Hannibal Hanschke/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Elon Musk has said he’s open to the possibility that Jimmy Donaldson, the world’s biggest YouTuber known as MrBeast, could become Twitter’s new CEO.

After earlier suggesting he would eventually quit being the chief executive at Twitter after taking over the social media platform in October, Musk ran a poll recently asking if he should step down.

Most people voted “yes,” with Musk later promising to vacate the position and sparking a number of offers to take the top job. One of those was made by Donaldson, aka MrBeast, whose Twitter account has 16.6 million followers and whose main YouTube channel boasts 121 million subscribers.

“Can I be the new Twitter CEO?” MrBeast said in a post on Twitter.

Musk replied: “It’s not out of the question.”

The search for Twitter’s new CEO comes as Musk said on Tuesday that he‘ll step down from the top job when he finds a suitable replacement though he added he’d continue to be involved in the social media platform’s operations.

“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” Musk said in a post on Twitter.

Just over 17.5 million people took part in Musk’s poll about stepping down, with 57.5 percent voting in favor of his departure.

Donaldson was one of those backing a change at the helm of Twitter. He replied to Musk’s poll, saying: “If you’re going to keep doing stuff like this, yes.”

The most-followed YouTuber was referring to a since-retracted policy recently released by Twitter that prohibited users from promoting other social media sites, like Facebook and YouTube, or redirecting their followers to their accounts on those platforms.

The policy would have made it harder for content creators like Donaldson from using Twitter to promote their work on other platforms.

The policy, called “Promotion of Alternative Social Platforms Policy,” appears to have been put on hold or withdrawn entirely, with the policy’s explanatory page now offline.

After the promotion policy was rolled out and sparked backlash, Musk took to Twitter to backtrack.

“Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes,” Musk wrote in a tweet. “My apologies. Won’t happen again.”

The social media company later released a poll via its Twitter Safety account, asking users to vote on whether there should be a policy in place “preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms.

More than 326,000 people voted, with 87 percent saying “no.”

While Musk has faced blowback for this, and other moves since taking over Twitter, he said that he would try out different things on the platform in a bid to make improvements and discard things that don’t work.

“Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works and change what doesn’t,” Musk said in a post earlier in November.