Elon Musk offers a Twitter edit button

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(Pocket-lint) – Elon Musk recently became Twitter’s largest shareholder, buying $2.8 billion worth of shares and securing a 9.2% stake in the company.

Shortly after the news broke, Musk posted a poll asking users if they wanted an edit button. Options are misspelled, as a humorous way of showing why the feature is needed.

Do you want an edit button?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022

The survey was then retweeted by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who added “The consequences of this poll will be significant. Please vote with caution.”

Twitter users have been asking for an edit button for over a decade, but we doubt anyone expects it to come via Elon Musk.

Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey said the website will “probably never” add an edit button during a Q&A with Wired in 2020.

He explained that the site started out as a kind of text messaging service and you can’t take back a text once it’s sent. The company has always insisted on maintaining this look, with the single exception of Twitter Blue’s timed undo button.

Since Twitter relies heavily on the retweet feature, an edit button could cause a lot of problems. For example, if you retweet something you agree with, it’s possible that the original author edits it after the fact by changing the sentiment.

It’s unclear how Musk envisions the edit button working, but so far the poll is very supportive of adding the feature. So maybe we’ll find out soon.

Written by Luke Baker. Edited by Rik Henderson.