It hasn’t taken long for Elon Musk’s presence to be felt at Twitter. A day after the SpaceX CEO became the largest shareholder in the company, Twitter announced it was working to create an edit button.
Musk had tweeted his followers to canvas their opinions on whether it should be possible for users to edit Tweets that had already been posted.
According to the BBC:
Many users have long called for an edit button but there are concerns about how to execute it.
Twitter said it would start testing the idea in the coming months.
The social media firm’s communications team tweeted: “Now that everyone is asking… yes, we’ve been working on an edit feature since last year!
“No, we didn’t get the idea from a poll 😉,” it added.
“We’re kicking off testing within @TwitterBlue Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible.”
Jay Sullivan, the company’s vice president of consumer product, said it had been “the most requested Twitter feature for many years” in a thread on Tuesday.
However, he said the company was exploring how to build the feature “in a safe manner”.
“Without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation,” he said. “Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work.”
During a talk in 2018, former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey said the firm would “probably never” add the feature amid concerns about transparency.
It seems amazing to me that – even in independent media circles – there are those who actually believe that Twitter will improve now that Musk is on board, even if he’s not on the board.
Where’s the evidence that he’s a champion of freedom of expression?
Sure, he’s Tweeted in the past that cancel culture should be cancelled and that woke comics will eventually cancel themselves, but that’s it.
He has questioned the reliability of covid tests and in March last year he said there’s “some debate” about the safety of the covid jabs.
However he later changed his mind and said that he supports vaccination “specifically the covid vaccines.”
If you think Twitter will be a more open platform with Musk, think again.
It’ll be business as usual.
