This week, news broke that Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter, and the SEC filing came as a surprise, given that the SEC has also put the brakes on him by requiring him to get approval for “material” tweets about Tesla. It wasn’t clear (at the time) whether Elon would have any say in how Twitter operates or whether he was a passive investor, and Lauren Boebert hopped all over the place in excitement, claiming a free-speech victory in a move that seemed premature.
Well, maybe there was something to that. Twitter has now revealed (via Hollywood Reporter) that Elon is officially on the board of directors for the social media platform. In a new filing, in fact, the agreement is good until 2024, at least. The move’s also conditioned upon Elon not purchasing “more than 14.9 percent of Company’s common stock outstanding.”
That says a lot, both good and bad (remember, Elon made noises about starting his own platform not too long ago), but the bottom line is this: Elon will apparently have a say in the day-to-day operations of Twitter. And to that end, he’s tweeting something that will have Twitter users on his side: “Do you want an edit button?”
Do you want an edit button?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022
Well, in that case… a lotta people have asked for an edit button along the way. Ice-T has put forth a compelling case even while pointing out that, yes, people have made arguments against it. Yet if Twitter can provide an edit button (for correcting innocent typos, for example) and also allow for visible edit history (like Facebook does), then maybe it’s really worth giving the people what they want.
And Elon might get credit if this happens, which would be quite something, considering that Twitter tweeted this on April 1: “we are working on an edit button.”
we are working on an edit button
— Twitter (@Twitter) April 1, 2022
The timing suggests an April Fool’s joke, but maybe not?
(Via Hollywood Reporter)