Elon Musk, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal wade straight into old debate over edit button

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk didn’t take long to start stirring things up for Twitter Inc. -- and its new CEO, Parag Agrawal.

Less than 24 hours after revealing he’s acquired a 9.2% passive stake in the company, the Tesla Inc. chief queried Twitter users whether they wanted an edit button, offering misspelled “yes” and “no” options in his usual eccentric style. The billionaire has posted recently about what he views as shortcomings of the service, where he has more than 80 million followers and has filled the void left by Donald Trump as one of the most influential accounts. 

Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, who succeeded Jack Dorsey as CEO in November, quickly quote-tweeted the poll and recited words Musk had used earlier about Twitter’s adherence to free speech principles: “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.” The Twitter CEO may have been mocking Musk’s query, though the action shows he’s keeping a close eye on the account of the Tesla and SpaceX chief.

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Twitter’s official account posted a message on April 1 saying “we are working on an edit button,” which may have been intended as an April Fool’s joke; however it collected more than 1.3 million likes, suggesting the demand for such a facility is high.

The option to edit posts after publishing has been a longstanding request of Twitter users frustrated with the inability to fix typos on published posts or correct misstatements on viral tweets. Musk’s poll had nearly 2.3 million votes late on Monday, split 74% for “yse” and 26% for “on.”