UPDATE 4/10: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced tonight that Elon Musk will not be joining the company's board. The appointment was supposed to be effective on April 9 following a background check and formal acceptance, but "Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board," Agrawal wrote in a statement posted to Twitter.
"I believe this is for the best," Agrawal added. "We have and always will value inpurt from our sharewholders whether they are on our board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we wiill remain open to his input."
Agrawal didn't elaborate, except to say that "there will be distractions ahead." Over the weekend, for example, Musk was tweeting about how he believes Twitter should revamp its subscription Blue service.
Musk has not yet posted about his decision not to join Twitter's board, though he did "like" a tweet that said "Elon was told to play nice and not speak freely."
UPDATE 4/5: In a surprise move, Twitter has confirmed that it is indeed working on an edit button. Before you get too excited, though, it'll arrive first for subscribers of the paid Twitter Blue service.
Original Story:The debate over a Twitter edit button has been raging for years, but now one of the platform's new high-profile shareholders—and board member—is asking the question.
Elon Musk hit the headlines yesterday after spending $2.98 billion to purchase a 9.2% stake in Twitter, much to the surprise of everyone. Such a large stake has led to speculation he will eventually attempt a buyout. It certainly got Twitter's attention; CEO Parag Agrawal announced this morning that the company is offering Musk a board seat.
"He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term," Agrawal added.
In response, Musk said he's "Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!"
One of those improvements may be pushing for the edit button. Musk posted a poll on Twitter last night asking: "Do you want an edit button?" It's hard to tell how serious he is being because the two options on the poll are "yse" and "on." That didn't stop Agrawal from retweeting the poll with the message: "The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully."
In 2020, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said there will probably never be an edit button. For April Fool's Day this year, the official Twitter account tweeted "we are working on an edit button." So for now, an edit button is about as likely to happen as it ever has been.
In 2018, Musk was ordered to pay a $20 million fine and step down as chairman of Tesla's board to settle securities fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. At issue was a tweet from Musk that said he was "considering taking Tesla private at $420" and asserted that he'd secured funding for the move. The SEC said Musk knew that funding had not yet been secured, but his tweet caused Tesla's stock price to jump by over 6% that day "and led to significant market disruption," the agency said.