Twitter majority shareholder Elon Musk asks followers if they want an edit button

[midian182]

What just happened? It appears that Twitter's new largest shareholder, Elon Musk, wants to bring changes to the platform, and the first could be a long-requested edit button. The Tesla boss posted a poll asking his 80 million followers if it's something they would like to see, and at the time of writing, almost three-quarters of respondents have voted in favor of the option.

Musk's poll, which was posted yesterday—the same day it was revealed he owns a 9.2% stake in Twitter—purposely misspells the word yes as yse, highlighting the long-running issue of being unable to correct a typo in a tweet once it's out there for all to see. Unlike Facebook, which lets users edit posts after they've hit the news feed, the only option for Twitter users is to delete the tweet.

Do you want an edit button?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022

At the time of writing, 73.6% of the 2,407,025 participants have voted yes (or yse) for an edit button.

A reply Musk gave to another user suggests the kind of functionality a Twitter edit button could offer

That sounds reasonable

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022

What's significant about Musk's poll is that Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal retweeted it. He wrote that the consequences of the outcome would be important and urged people to vote carefully.

The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. https://t.co/UDJIvznALB

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 5, 2022

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spent a lot of his time as head of the company wrestling with the idea of an edit button. In 2016, he said he was "thinking a lot" about adding the feature and hinted at its introduction again in 2018. During an appearance on the Joe Rogan show in 2019, Dorsey suggested that a Twitter edit option could offer "a 5-second to 30-second delay in the sending" so users could edit or delete the tweet before it went live.

But Dorsey appeared to backtrack in 2020, telling Wired that Twitter would "probably never" have one as the app started as an SMS text message service, and it wanted to retain that vibe and feeling—I.e., not being able to edit a message that's been sent.

A 13G filing released yesterday showed that on March 14, Musk purchased 73,486,938 Twitter shares, making him the largest shareholder. He has since posted polls asking user opinion on Twitter's stance toward free speech.

"Musk could try to take a more aggressive stance here on Twitter," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told CNBC. "This eventually could lead to some sort of buyout."

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https://www.techspot.com/news/94056-twitter-majority-shareholder-elon-musk-asks-followers-if.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

#1 An edit button
#2 a DISLIKE BUTTON or "Thumbs Down"
#3 a Block Button
#4 a "Hide User on my feed for 30 days" button

These sites that give a thumbs up - but no thumbs down: is the ultimate sign of cowardice.

Personally, I don't use Twitter because I think the interface looks terrible.

You could fix that too while you're at it.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

#2 a DISLIKE BUTTON or "Thumbs Down"

Techspot is also guilty of that as well.

 

[Dimitriid]

Oh come on, why go for the low hanging fruit Elon? Didn't you say that it needed more freezed peach? Put up or shut up and unban Trump as your very first order of business so we can communicate to all people to get out of there faster and crash your stupid stock you just purchased.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Techspot is also guilty of that as well.

I didn't name no names...

 

[envirovore]

Users on Fark have been asking for an edit button for 25 years now, and it'll never happen.

Too much potential for "bait and switch" posting, post something to get others worked up, go back and edit it just a little to seem not nearly as bad, then act the victim because everyone attacked you.

"If you say it, own it"

Edit functions should have an expiration on them though. If you don't edit within the first minute of posting, you lose the option to (to prevent such bait and switch situations)

As one that fumbles with his phone keyboard quite often and slacks when it comes to proof-reading, I appreciate the edit function here for that, but feel that a timer limit should be placed on it as well.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Techspot is also guilty of that as well.

The moment I saw Facebook pull that "emoji" crap, I knew it was all over.

Thumb Up, Happy, Angry, Laughter

It's so ridiculously vague that instead of a "Dislike" you get an angry or a laughter emoji.

So desperate to hide the truth of dissent.

Disgusting.

So now: I have to count on super rich billionaires buying sites and forcing them to give us free expression?

What is this?

Batman?

 

[Uncle Al]

Well, I give him credit for taking survey's and sometimes paying attention to what subscribers want, but until he has a much bigger stake in the company it will be hard to put those changes into effect. Still, he could be just what they need.

 

[envirovore]

Well, I give him credit for taking survey's and sometimes paying attention to what subscribers want, but until he has a much bigger stake in the company it will be hard to put those changes into effect. Still, he could be just what they need.

First paragraph...Majority Shareholder.
He doesnt need a larger stake, he is the larger stake now, as is the only reason Jack whateverhisnameis is even considering this now after saying 2 years ago it wouldnt happen.
Majority Shareholders get what they want, or they no longer invest. Or they straight up buy out and run things as they see fit.

Edit: see, stupid fat thumbs and tiny letters...

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Well, I give him credit for taking survey's and sometimes paying attention to what subscribers want, but until he has a much bigger stake in the company it will be hard to put those changes into effect. Still, he could be just what they need.

Every single Tesla from the Model 3 to the Model X should have heated/ ventilated seats, heated steering wheel steering wheel adjustment switches and mirror adjustment switches.

 

[Dimitriid]

Users on Fark have been asking for an edit button for 25 years now, and it'll never happen.

Too much potential for "bait and switch" posting, post something to get others worked up, go back and edit it just a little to seem not nearly as bad, then act the victim because everyone attacked you.

"If you say it, own it"

Edit functions should have an expiration on them though. If you don't edit within the first minute of posting, you lose the option to (to prevent such bait and switch situations)

As one that fumbles with his phone keyboard quite often and slacks when it comes to proof-reading, I appreciate the edit function here for that, but feel that a timer limit should be placed on it as well.

I think just enforcing an "EDITED" label on any edited tweet is sufficient in most cases: People making spelling mistakes can be overlooked for having a popular tweet with an "EDITED" label and people wanting to get away with gas lighting? Don't worry there's many other ways to attempt that: From blocking to dog pilling to bury something or even deleting the originals. It's not for nothing that most people on twitter already reflexively screenshot any tweet that even has a potential to have a negative outcome because they know the author can and will try to get away from it (And because it also prevents name searching and dog piling of anyone being critical) and why now people resort to the like to reply and quote tweet ratio or "Ratio" instead.

Just adding an edit button will do extremely little to change much of current Twitter culture around the limitations as they've grown to build it's dialect already. So don't get fooled by Musk: an edit button is very inconsequential. It's even a current feature if you're willing to pay Twitter a subscription fee it's called Twitter Blue.

 

[envirovore]

I think just enforcing an "EDITED" label on any edited tweet is sufficient in most cases: People making spelling mistakes can be overlooked for having a popular tweet with an "EDITED" label and people wanting to get away with gas lighting? Don't worry there's many other ways to attempt that: From blocking to dog pilling to bury something or even deleting the originals. It's not for nothing that most people on twitter already reflexively screenshot any tweet that even has a potential to have a negative outcome because they know the author can and will try to get away from it (And because it also prevents name searching and dog piling of anyone being critical) and why now people resort to the like to reply and quote tweet ratio or "Ratio" instead.

Just adding an edit button will do extremely little to change much of current Twitter culture around the limitations as they've grown to build it's dialect already. So don't get fooled by Musk: an edit button is very inconsequential. It's even a current feature if you're willing to pay Twitter a subscription fee it's called Twitter Blue.

As one that only very rarely clicks through to a twitter thread linked from other sites (I dont use Twitter), only had a vague understanding of how it all works.

But yeah, seems a simple 'edited' tag should suffice then, given how rabid its user base seems to be to bite the neck out of anything they perceive as wrong collectively.

 

[Dimitriid]

As one that only very rarely clicks through to a twitter thread linked from other sites (I dont use Twitter), only had a vague understanding of how it all works.

But yeah, seems a simple 'edited' tag should suffice then, given how rabid its user base seems to be to bite the neck out of anything they perceive as wrong collectively.

This is very accurate but I should clarify that Twitter encourages dogpiling with it's very features so to them it's not something that's an issue, it's a feature: By putting metrics like "Likes" "Replies" "Quote Tweets" and on a per user level "Followers" and "Following" you actively encourage people to not only be instantly rewarded with social recognition for their post but to create a gregarious adversarial environment where if you see an account that's bigger than you in terms of followers you're encouraged to immediately react more negatively than you normally would because in the context of Twitter interaction it is an interaction with someone with overtly more social power than you that the platform is actively broadcasting to the entire world and to an influx of users that will defer to them. That creates hyper vigilance and on the other side of course if you see a smaller account doing something you disapprove of you can instantly shut that down by quote tweeting them and not only making it likely your larger audience will get on board but making it almost an inevitability by forcing it into their timelines.

These are mechanics built to generate what Twitter likes to call "Engagement" but what the rest of us see as just intentionally creating a platform that ecourages people to fight with each other. This is the end result of the types of social network mechanics Twitter pioneered.

 

[Burty117]

#2 a DISLIKE BUTTON or "Thumbs Down"

These sites that give a thumbs up - but no thumbs down: is the ultimate sign of cowardice.

You and me may not see eye-to-eye in most comment sections, this I'm in complete agreement with.

It also helps websites self-regulate since anything spammy or truly offensive just get's disliked to oblivion and out of sight. There's more reasons to have a dislike button than any argument not to.

 

[QuantumPhysics]

You and me may not see eye-to-eye in most comment sections, this I'm in complete agreement with.

It also helps websites self-regulate since anything spammy or truly offensive just get's disliked to oblivion and out of sight. There's more reasons to have a dislike button than any argument not to.

IT's a form of cowardice.

I think the best way to solve this is every dislike "dims" a comment more and more until it becomes invisible.

This is also another way to deal with people who post "First".

How about comments get sorted by popularity?

But the admins already know exactly why they don't want this: the free market and self-regulation would actually WORK.

 

[bexwhitt]

Edit of poor (fat finger) spelling sure, anything else no.

 

[RudyBob]

I don't have a twit account

 

[ScottSoapbox]

5 minute window to edit is the perfect solution.

 

[thew118]

I thought you needed over 50% to be a majority shareholder?

 

[Lew Zealand]

Edit buttons are for trolls and everyone here knows that's just how it'll be used. Sure regular people would like it and use it on occasion, but maybe they could just read their frantic reaction before posting it and edit it then.

But the real editors will use it for trolling people and then changing their posts. Please explain how that could be a good business decision for Twitter.

Exact same thing for the Dislike button. It's the troll button. Again, not good for business.

 

[psycros]

Oh come on, why go for the low hanging fruit Elon? Didn't you say that it needed more freezed peach? Put up or shut up and unban Trump as your very first order of business so we can communicate to all people to get out of there faster and crash your stupid stock you just purchased.

LOL, Trump did nothing but cause Twitter stock to skyrocket and he'd do it again. What would be even funnier is if Elon bought it out and put Trump on the board. Watching the left's meltdown would be hilarious.

 

[Axle Grease]

A time limited edit button, say of 5 minutes, would be good.

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

Why is he investing in twitter when Truth Social is the future

 

[GamerNerves]

Why everything needs to be so simplified? Twitter should introduce an edit button with editing history. This means you can view the very original tweet and all it's variations between edits. It should be easy to program a pointer that clearly shows what part was edited for easy observation. Also, if post is edited, then label it as edited with a time stamp, and additionally the author can add a short reasoning straight next to this label.

"Like buttons", "dislike buttons", these are all good if they don't manipulate the visibility of the tweet, the factor how likely it is shown, since that would skew the idea of free speech, since actually the very offenders of free speech are often those Reddit spirited people who downvote controversial and unpopular opinions. Over simplifying and too much automatic moderation are risks to me more than anything else.
Also, if we want to avoid overuse of the edit option, then make it so that after you push 'post', have a 60 second or so timer that requires to click another confirmation after the countdown to actually post the tweet. This surely would push careless people to check their tweet twice and in general make people consider their words just a moment before the actual publication.

All mentioned and further features could be accessible via some button on the tweet if people don't like cluttered interfaces. From this menu/window you could see the amount of likes and dislikes and all kinds of additional info, you name it.
Say it out loud yourself: Information and options are not a problem!

Disclaimer: I don't use Twitter, so I might not understand the appeal of Twitter perfectly and I certainly didn't know SMS like approach being the origin of this social service.

 

[PEnnn]

The Edit button is a politician's version of a wet dream.

Especially those with the "Alternate Truth" tweets when they're caught sticking their feet into their pieholes.