Elon Musk will join Twitter's board. Will users finally get an edit button?

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April 5th, 2022

Elon Musk-Twitter-Edit Button
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, attends the opening of the Tesla factory Berlin Brandenburg in Gruenheide, Germany, March 22, 2022. Musk, who is now Twitter's largest shareholder and newly appointed board member, may have thoughts on a long-standing request from users: Should there be an edit button? On Monday evening, Musk launched a Twitter poll about whether they want an edit button. More than 3 million people have voted as of Tuesday, April 5, 2022. The poll closes Tuesday evening Eastern time. (Patrick Pleul/Pool via AP)

Billionaire businessman Elon Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors, an announcement that came just hours after news broke that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO became the social media company’s largest shareholder.

“I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board!” Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted Tuesday morning.

“He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!” Agrawal added.

One day earlier, after it became public that Musk had taken a 9% stake in the company, he asked Twitter users if they wanted what a vocal group of them have been seeking for years: the ability to edit their tweets.

“Do you want an edit button?” Musk asked in a poll.

The answers, cheekily, were “yse” or “on.”

“The consequences of this poll will be important,” Agrawal said in response, an apparent reference to one of Musk’s tweets from last month. “Please vote carefully.”

The social media site allows users to post 280-character tweets, but tweets cannot be edited once they’re sent — only deleted.

Musk has become a vocal critic of Twitter’s limits on what users can say, suggesting that they run counter to free speech.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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