How Elon Musk Is Already Changing Things At Twitter
Earlier this week, we learned that Elon Musk was Twitter's new biggest stakeholder with a 9.2% share. Today, Twitter's CEO, Parag Agrawal, announced that the company is putting Musk on its board of directors. This move may have been in the works for a while, as Agrawal revealed conversations with Musk led the company to believe that he would "bring great value" to their board. In a subsequent tweet, Agrawal added that the Tesla chief is a passionate believer in Twitter as well as an intense critic of the platform and that these contributions are needed to make the brand "stronger in the long term." Agrawal is not wrong here. A majority of announcements covering Musk's portfolio of companies are made on Twitter. From announcing progress on Starship development to discussing Tesla's full self-driving (FSD) issues, Twitter is where Musk drops the big news.
At the same time, Musk has targeted Twitter over allegedly curtailing freedom of speech and even admitted that he was considering his very own social media platform that would prioritize freedom of speech above all. Now that Musk is on Twitter's board, it appears that he wants to do some heavy lifting for Twitter in order to appease the desires of its users.
Musk is chasing the elusive edit button
Soon after Parag Agrawal's announcement, Elon Musk conducted a Twitter poll, asking if his followers want an edit button. At the time of writing this, more than 3 million Twitter users have responded to it and over 73% have voted in favor of an edit button. It looks like this poll is going to carry some weight; retweeting Musk's poll, Agrawal wrote that the poll's results will be important.
Do you want an edit button?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022
It is a clear sign that, after years of requests from Twitter users — including Musk — the company is finally warming up to the idea that an edit button might be necessary. Over the platform's tumultuous tenure as the internet's text-centric social media platform of choice, a debate has raged over whether an edit button would be convenient or ruinous. On the bright side, the ability to correct typos and mistakes in crucial announcements sounds like a no-brainer. But Twitter also happens to be a Wild West of hot takes and a place where historically significant public messages are posted.
The potential for chaos is very real. Bringing an edit button to Twitter is as much an ethical dilemma as it is a question of user convenience, and far more important than a simple Twitter poll would suggest. It remains to be seen if Musk's first moves as Twitter's largest shareholder will indicate his intended level of influence over its future.