Elon Musk Sends Twitter Into A Frenzy As He Pushes For An ‘Edit’ Button

It seems Elon Musk is looking to stir up some drama on Twitter.

The Tesla founder posted a poll on April 4 asking, “Do you want an edit button?” 2,969,005 votes have been cast so far, with 73.5% saying “yse” and 26.5% saying “on,” prompting everyone to weigh in on the debate.

The SpaceX founder launched the poll on the same day that it was announced that he had secured a 9.2% passive stake in the company, making him the largest shareholder in the social media giant, as per CNBC.

This prompted Twitter’s stock to rise 4% on the Nasdaq stock exchange, where it was trading around $51 dollars a share. Monday saw Twitter’s stock surging over 27%, which marked its best day of trading since its IPO in 2013.

On April 1, better known as April Fool’s Day, Twitter’s official account tweeted a message that said it was working on developing an edit button. When asked if it was a joke, they said, “We cannot confirm or deny but we may edit our statement later.”

In regards to Musk’s poll, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal wrote, “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.”

Although some fans would love to see an edit button implemented on the social media service, others warn that it could be problematic.

Host Liz Wheeler commented, “Here's my argument against an edit button: What if a tweet goes viral, lots of retweets & millions of impressions, & then the author completely changes the meaning? Not just a grammatical fix, but a TOTAL ideological change? Or shameless self-promote?”

The Meta CTO quickly chimed in, writing, “We solved this on Facebook a long time ago. You just include an indicator that it has been edited along with a change log. If you are really worried about embeds they can point to a specific revision in that history but with a link to the latest edit. Not a real issue.”

However, Elon Musk chimed into the conversation, replying, “Facebook gives me the willies.”

Tim Dodd commented, “Under two conditions. It’s only available for a few minutes, 5-10 mins. And when an edit is made, there’s a small link that shows the edit. This keeps a public record but allows the tweeter the ability to fix a simple mistake and not re-notify their followers with a new tweet.”

Elon Musk replied, “That sounds reasonable.”

One user wrote, “Twitter is seen as a news source, if there’s an edit button. It’ll be very easy to spread misinformation, which defeats the purpose.”

Another commented, “The fundamental issue with an edit button is it can be corrupted. You can tweet something, garner responses, and shares based on that tweet, then change the content of the tweet. Not sure that’s a good idea…”

Another user wrote, “Elon, after a retweet, somebody shouldn't be able to go back and change the original message. Edits are not a good idea.”

So will Twitter actually implement an edit button? Only time will tell!