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Update 11/04/2022: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has said that Musk has since decided to not join the Twitter board. In a tweet on April 11, Agrawal said: "Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input."
Elon Musk has suddenly found himself with even more influence at his favorite means of communicating with the common masses, Twitter. Yesterday, it was revealed the multi-multi-billionaire had become the largest shareholder of the social media giant and today it was announced he's now on Twitter's Board of Directors.
“Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” Twitter’s relatively new CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet on Tuesday.
The move quickly caused stocks to surge and promptly stirred conversation about a much-debated topic among Twitter users: is Musk interested in introducing an “edit” button to the platform?
A few hours before Agrawal’s announcement, the world’s richest human tweeted out a poll asking “Do you want an edit button?” with the options “yse” and “on.” Within hours of posting the poll, millions of users had responded with over 70 percent opting for "yse."
Musk is notorious for his trolling sense of humor and sarcasm on Twitter, so many are perceiving the poll to be a joke. However, he did appear to seriously discuss the topic with followers. One person suggested an edit button could work if it was only available for a few minutes after posting, to which Musk replied: "That sounds reasonable."
Agrawal quoted Musk's poll and said: "The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully." Once again, it’s unclear whether he was being serious or sarcastic. On April Fool’s Day 2022, the official Twitter account simply said: “We are working on an edit button,” suggesting that the idea isn’t being taken too seriously.
For the unaware, the question of the edit button is a frequent butt of jokes and divisive debate on Twitter. While the immutable quality of tweets has been a unique selling point of the platform, many users have pleaded for an edit button to fix issues like embarrassing typos. Covfefe, anyone?
On the other hand, opponents of the edit button say it could be used to deceive and mislead. For instance, someone could go viral for an innocent joke, then edit the Tweet to add nefarious content or simply shameless self-promotion.
Who knows what the top dogs of Twitter have up their sleeves, but Musk did note that he's looking forward to making some "significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!" Only time will tell what he believes these "significant improvements" to be.
