Elon Musk teases introducing 'edit' button on Twitter after becoming largest stakeholder

Tesla CEO Elon Musk only announced yesterday that he’d taken an almost $3bn (£2.3bn) stake in Twitter to become the social media platform's largest shareholder – but it looks like he’s already got big plans.

Musk has teased the introduction of an “edit” button, which has been talked about on the social media site for years, offering users the chance to change their tweets once they’d been posted.

Taking to the site, Musk put out a poll and asked his 80m followers what they thought about the potential new addition – misspelling “yes” and “no” for extra effect.

At the time of writing, 74 per cent voted yes while 26 per cent voted no.

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While many believed it would be a good thing for the site, people had a few thoughts for Musk when it came to more important changes in the comments.

“Getting rid of spam is probably higher priority,” one wrote.

Another expressed their concerns about the addition, writing: “Here's my argument against an edit button: What if a tweet goes viral, lots of retweets & millions of impressions, & then the author completely changes the meaning? Not just a grammatical fix, but a TOTAL ideological change? Or shameless self-promote?”

Another shared their thoughts about what would have to happen for an edit button to work, writing: “Under two conditions. It’s only available for a few minutes, 5-10 mins. And when an edit is made, there’s a small link that shows the edit.

“This keeps a public record but allows the tweeter the ability to fix a simple mistake and not re-notify their followers with a new tweet.”

While some Twitter users have asked for an edit button for years, Twitter’s chief executive officer Parag Agarwal cautioned users to “vote carefully”.

“The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully,” Agarwal said.

Musk announced the major investment this weekGetty Images

Musk took a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter, according to filings made to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday.

A tweet from Ben Thompson read, "Elon Musk has already made ~$750 million on his Twitter trade, which is approximately double Twitter’s net income for the last 3 years."

He’s already up, too.

Twitter's shares soared by more than a quarter in pre-market trading on the back of the news, adding about $8bn to its $31.5bn value, before easing back to 21 per cent up in early trading. As of late Monday, the share price was up 28 per cent, or the equivalent of about $800m for Musk's stake.