Musk Asks Twittersphere ‘Do You Want an Edit Button?' After Buying His Way to Largest Shareholder

Elon Musk, founder and chief engineer of SpaceX, speaks at the 2020 Satellite Conference and Exhibition in Washington on March 9, 2020. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday created a Twitter poll asking users if they want an edit button on the platform, shortly after becoming the social media giant’s biggest individual shareholder.

“Do you want an edit button?” he asked the Twittersphere.

Musk on Monday took a 9.2 percent stake in the company, according to a U.S. securities filing. He bought nearly 73.5 million shares of Twitter on March 14, and according to Twitter’s closing price on April 1, Musk’s stake in the company was worth $2.89 billion.

The platform’s founder, Jack Dorsey, has a 2.25 percent stake in Twitter.

The poll marks Musk’s second tweet after becoming the social media platform’s largest shareholder.

On Monday, Musk wrote on the platform, “oh hi lol.” That post gained a lot of traction on the site, receiving over half a million likes and nearly 50,000 retweets at the time of writing.

News of the purchase sent Twitter shares soaring by more than 20 percent in pre-market trading on April 4, sharply boosting the value of Musk’s stake.

Musk posts regularly on the platform, where he has more than 80 million followers.

Weeks earlier, Musk questioned the platform’s attitude toward free speech.

Musk wrote on Twitter that “free speech is essential to a functioning democracy” and asked his followers whether they believe Twitter “rigorously adheres” to this principle.

In a follow-on tweet, Musk asked his followers to “vote carefully,” as the “consequences of this poll will be important.”

Over 2 million Twitter users weighed in, with 70.4 percent voting “no.”

A day later, sharing the results of the poll, Musk described Twitter as “the de facto public town square,” adding that “failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” before asking, “What should be done?”

Twitter has been repeatedly accused of censoring some minority and politically conservative viewpoints, claims the company denies. 

Twitter users have long been asking for an edit button, and the social media platform appeared to tease on April 1 that it was “working on an edit button.” 

In 2019, Twitter’s product lead Kayvon Beykpour said that an edit button was a feature “I think we should build at some point, but it’s not anywhere near the top of our priorities.”

In January 2020, Dorsey told Wired that Twitter would “probably never” roll out an edit button, saying that Twitter began in 2006 as a text message service, and that ”we wanted to preserve that vibe” that “when you send a text, you can’t really take it back.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Twitter for additional comment.

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.