The edit button is a feature that is being requested by Twitter users for so long that it has practically become a meme. However, the mythical “edit button” is manifesting into a reality. Twitter has announced that it has been working to allow users to edit their tweets after they’ve posted them. The basic premise is that you will have the ability to fix any typos or errors in a tweet without having to sacrifice any replies, retweets, or likes the tweet has already accrued.
Twitter plans to begin testing the edit button feature with Twitter Blue subscribers in “the coming months,” according to the company’s statements on Tuesday.
Twitter VP about Edit Button:
The company’s VP of consumer product, Jay Sullivan, noted that this has been “the most requested Twitter feature for many years” in a thread on Tuesday. Twitter has been looking at ways to build the feature “in a safe manner” since last year.
“Without conditions like time limits, controls, as well as transparency regarding what has been edited, the edit button could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation,” Jay said. “Protecting the integrity of public conversation is the top priority while approaching this work.”
People have been asking for an edit button for so long that it has turned into an ongoing joke. “Tweets, but editable” has become the standard response to discovering a typo in a popular tweet, however, Twitter’s former CEO, Jack Dorsey, was reluctant to add such a feature. In 2018, Dorsey expressed concern that an edit button would let the users change a tweet’s meaning after it is widely shared, in 2020 he said that the company would “probably never” add the edit feature.
Concerns like these have consistently cropped up in response to the requests for an edit button. Though other platforms, like Facebook, Medium, as well as Instagram, allow users to edit posts, the features have not been accompanied by widespread abuse. However, that doesn’t mean that abuse is unheard of, as per Meta’s former chief security officer Alex Stamos, Facebook’s editing feature was abused in the past, in a case to help a cryptocurrency scam.
Twitter’s opinion on an edit button seems to have shifted after Parag Agrawal became the CEO. On April 1st, the annual day of corporate lies, Twitter’s official account said it was “working on an edit button.” Though it was perceived as a joke, Twitter product lead Michael Sayman later pointed to the tweet as the company’s “official statement.”
Days later, after it emerged that Elon Musk had bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, the Tesla CEO’s first significant tweet was to poll his followers on whether Twitter should add an edit button. To which 73.4 percent were in favor.
The company said it would begin testing the edit feature with users who are Twitter Blue subscribers. This offers users access to extra features on the platform.
Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to test the edit feature in the coming months, while the company learns about what works and what does not work, along with what else may be possible, as per Twitter.
The company already has an undo feature that lets you recall a tweet before you send it, however, that is only available for Twitter Blue subscribers.
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