Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced today that Elon Musk has officially joined the company’s board of directors. And it looks like things are already being shaken up by the Tesla CEO after polling users on whether they want an edit button to be added to the social media site.
When the poll for an edit button was posted, the Twitter community’s opinion was very clear, with an overwhelming 73.4 percent of 3.2 million voters siding with the addition of the option. Agrawal also quote-retweeted the poll and said that the consequences of the results will be important and that users should vote carefully.
The 50-year-old entrepreneur recently acquired a 9.2-percent passive stake in Twitter and is “both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service,” according to Agrawal. This news also comes after a month in which Musk has risen specific questions around Twitter’s practices on his own social media profile, like whether or not Twitter adheres to the principles of free speech.
An edit button has been on the wish lists of thousands of Twitter users for a long time since it would allow people to fix any typos or mistakes in their posts, instead of having to delete them entirely. But some people brought up concerns about how users could edit tweets to change their message entirely after gaining multiple likes and retweets.
As a result, one user suggested that Twitter could reset all edited tweets to zero likes and retweets, while another said to give people the ability to view what the edited tweet was originally. Ultimately, an edit button would most likely be accepted and used by all but would need to be regulated so that no abuse can occur.
