US: Elon Musk polls Twitter users on exiled whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Julian Assange

The world’s richest man asked people to choose either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’—the two options he gave—to express what they thought on the matter.

"I am not expressing an opinion but did promise to conduct this poll. Should Assange and Snowden be pardoned?" Musk's tweet read.

Julian Assange and Edward Snowden fled the United States and have been living in exile after they revealed sensitive information revealing the alleged wrongdoings and illegal surveillance of US military and intelligence services.

In September, Snowden was granted Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin and yesterday received a Russian passport, as per media reports.

Julian Assange, currently, in London is struggling to block his extradition to the US.

Meanwhile, Musk’s poll received an overwhelming response with 1,297,152 votes in just about three hours. The tweet has been retweeted 52 thousand times and received 61.4 thousand likes so far.

The majority of the users who voted—over 79.8 percent of them—chose ‘yes’, supporting amnesty for Assange and Snowden.

The Tesla boss, who calls himself a ‘free speech absolutist’, has been conducting similar polls since buying out the microblogging site after months of back and forth.

He had often criticised the way Twitter worked. After taking over the social media site, Musk conducted polls to make important decisions like restoring blocked Twitter accounts and revising Twitter rules.

"Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?" he had tweeted.