Twitter has confirmed that it is working on an edit button, a feature that users have been seeking for quite some time in order to correct not only mistakes but also incorrect context in their tweets. Users now have to delete tweets that include typos and retype them with corrections, but an edit button would eliminate this hassle. Twitter, on the other hand, is concerned that the edit button could be used to “change the public conversation’s record.”
The news comes nearly a day after Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who just passively acquired a 9.2% interest in Twitter, polled his followers on whether they wanted an edit button. Musk, who is known for shitposting, appears to have taken his poll lightly, but when Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal stepped in, many were sure that an edit button was on the way.
An edit button for tweets is designed to allow you to correct typos and other issues in a tweet without having to delete it and retype it. In “the coming months,” Twitter said it will begin testing the edit button function for Twitter Blue subscribers, who pay for access to special capabilities on the microblogging platform. Twitter Comms also shared a GIF depicting the edit button, but keep in mind that it will be tested before being made available to everyone.
Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s VP of consumer product, explained that while an edit button has been “the most requested Twitter feature for many years,” it could be “misused to alter the record of the public conversation” without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited. “Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work,” said Sullivan in one of his tweets.
Twitter’s decision to begin testing the edit button is a shift from the company’s previous stance when Jack Dorsey was leading it. The former CEO of Twitter was reluctant to add such a feature as he believed that an edit button could change the meaning of a tweet after it went viral. In fact, in 2020, Dorsey said that Twitter would “probably never” introduce an edit button. But Twitter’s current CEO Parag Agrawal seems to have a different take on the edit button. Twitter recently joked about working on an edit button on April Fools’ Day, but apparently, it was not a joke.
