Elon Musk has launched a ballot on Twitter asking his greater than 80 million followers in the event that they’d wish to see an edit button on the microblogging service, with the overwhelming majority of voters to date overwhelmingly in favor of such a characteristic.
The tweet (beneath) comes on the identical day it was introduced that the billionaire entrepreneur had acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter value $2.9 billion, making him the corporate’s largest single shareholder.
Would you like an edit button?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022
Notably, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal retweeted Musk’s tweet, along with the message: “The results of this ballot will probably be necessary. Please vote rigorously.”
Musk is certainly one of Twitter’s most high-profile customers in addition to certainly one of its harshest critics, so it is going to be attention-grabbing to see if Monday’s submit about an edit button marks the beginning of a brand new wave of provocative tweets about points of the service that he’d wish to see modified.
Many Twitter customers have lengthy known as for an edit button, however the San Francisco-based firm has at all times held again from introducing such a characteristic.
Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, whose 2.3% stake in Twitter is 4 occasions lower than Musk’s, has mentioned in recent times that his staff has been “considering so much” about creating an edit button, however insisted that it must be completed “in the correct method,” explaining, “We will’t make one thing which is distracting or takes something away from the general public document.”
As a visitor on Joe Rogan’s widespread podcast in 2019, Dorsey mentioned that if Twitter ever supplied an edit button, it most likely wouldn’t enable customers to edit tweets from the distant previous, and even ones that had simply been posted.
As an alternative, he mentioned it might most likely provide a “a 5-second to 30-second delay within the sending,” much like how some electronic mail providers provide an undo button within the seconds after hitting ship. In that method, the tweet would by no means be stay in the course of the time by which it may very well be modified, although it might nonetheless provide an opportunity to repair a typo or rethink the choice to submit.
We’ve heard little a couple of attainable edit button within the final couple of years, although on April Fools’ Day Twitter tweeted to the service’s greater than 200 million every day energetic customers: “We’re engaged on an edit button.”
Musk’s sizable stake within the firm and up to date criticisms of Twitter as a platform — together with questioning whether or not the service actually adheres to free speech ideas — point out that he may very well be seeking to exert some management over the corporate.
“We’d anticipate this passive stake as simply the beginning of broader conversations with the Twitter board/administration that would in the end result in an energetic stake and a possible extra aggressive possession position of Twitter,” Dan Ives of WedBush Securities mentioned in extensively reported feedback linked to Musk’s share buy.
This text has been up to date to incorporate details about Parag Agrawal’s retweet.
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