Elon Musk's first move as a Twitter board member could fix one of the platform's biggest problems: A long-requested edit button
Twitter's most requested feature may finally come to the service as billionaire Elon Musk joins the social media company's board of directors.
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- Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk is joining Twitter's board of directors.
- Musk said he's planning "to make significant improvements to Twitter" in the coming months.
- At the top of that list appears to be Twitter's most requested feature: "Do you want an edit button?" he asked on Monday night.
On Tuesday morning, billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk added another title to his resume: Twitter board member.
Musk is joining Twitter's board after disclosing a 9.2% stake in the social media company earlier this week. The investment made him Twitter's largest shareholder virtually overnight.
"Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!" Musk said Tuesday morning on (where else?) Twitter.
But before the news of his appointment to Twitter's board had even been announced, Musk was publicly planning the "significant improvements" he wants to bring to the service.
"Do you want an edit button?" Musk asked his 80 million-plus followers on Monday night.
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A potential edit button has been a point of contention among Twitter users for so long that it's become a kind of inside joke.
Everyone from Kim Kardashian to, well, Elon Musk have publicly complained about the issue.
Currently, if you post a tweet with a misspelling or an incorrect link (or whatever other error you want to fix), there's no way to fix it. You can delete the tweet outright and re-post with the error removed, or you can affix an additional tweet into a thread correcting the previous error, but there's no way to simply edit the error out.
Twitter itself used the edit button as its April Fools' Day joke this year. "We are working on an edit button," the company said last week.
Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey told Wired in January 2020 that the service will "probably never" add edit functionality. The worry, he said, is that someone will "send a tweet, and then someone might retweet that, and then an hour later you completely change the content of that tweet."
Dorsey, however, stepped down as Twitter's CEO in November 2021, and was replaced by Parag Agrawal.
When Musk asked his followers on Monday night if they want an edit button for Twitter, it was reshared by a key figure: CEO Parag Agrawal.
"The consequences of this poll will be important," Agrawal said alongside Musk's tweet. "Please vote carefully."
—Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022
Twitter has been Musk's favorite mouthpiece for years. He's a longtime user, having joined the service in 2009.
He often uses his account to share memes, Tesla news, crude jokes, and even to criticize Twitter itself. It's also landed him in hot water.
Recently, Musk chimed into the ongoing debate around internet platforms and censorship when he tweeted last week: "Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?"
He also polled Twitter users then if they believe Twitter supports free speech. Musk added that "the consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully." Seventy percent of respondents answered "no."