Elon Musk Already Wants To Make A Major Change To Twitter
While to the outside observer, it would appear that Elon Musk is already making the moves he promised after sinking his teeth into Twitter...
While we’re sure the rest of Twitter’s board of directors are rolling their eyes and giving exasperated sighs, Elon Musk is certain to be chuckling to himself as he’s been added to join the crew of overseers. In case you’ve missed out on the drama that’s been playing out between the billionaire and the social media juggernaut, Musk recently became the company’s largest shareholder after acquiring a whopping $2.9 billion in their stocks. He now plans to make radical adjustments to the way the platform conducts its business both on and off the screens of phones and laptops.
Elon Musk isn’t wasting any time. Over the last day, the Tesla CEO shared a tweet asking his 80 million+ followers if they’d like to have the ability to edit their tweets after they’ve been shared. In the past, Twitter has been against this idea, citing the possibility of edits being used to manipulate readers after the original post shared less than savory opinions. He had a sassy way of asking the question, by misspelling the options on the poll seen below.
With this example of missuse for an edit button being very much in the realm of possibilities, avid Twitter users are still hoping for a middle ground to be reached in order to allow typos and other small edits to be made, something that Elon Musk appears to be aware of. One thought came from a user who suggested that there could be a short time frame in order to fix a tweet, thus leaving the space open for someone to correct a mistake, but not to disguise what they were saying should it be harmful. To this idea, Musk said, “that sounds reasonable,” giving us a sliver of faith in some of the decisions that may come.
While to the outside observer, it would appear that Elon Musk is already making the moves he promised after sinking his teeth into Twitter, the leaders behind the social media platform may have already beat him. On April first, otherwise known as April Fool’s Day, three days before Musk’s edit poll, Twitter put out a tweet of their own claiming that they were in the midst of solving the edit button conundrum. While many thought this was just another April Fool’s Day prank, Twitter product lead, Michael Sayman, assured followers that this wasn’t the case and that the company really was looking into options surrounding the feature.
Perhaps some of consumer’s doubts come from the fact that their voices on the matter have never been listened to. Twitter’s former CEO, Jack Dorsey, even commented back in 2020 that the platform would “probably never” allow users to edit posts.
While Elon Musk has said that he plans to work closely with the board of directors and CEO of Twitter to make sure that user’s voices are heard, we’ll need to wait and see about that. In the past, the billionaire had expressed plans to create his own social media company, something the leaders at Twitter may be wishing he would have just done. An avid supporter of free speech no matter what the cost, Musk’s latest drive to leave his imprint on the world of Twitter comes after Starlink announced that it intended to work with governments in an attempt to shut down false reports coming from Russia surrounding their war with Ukraine. Whether it be a fight for free speech or the “edit” button, the folks at Twitter are sure to have their hands full with their newest leading investor.
