Twitter is finally working on an ‘edit button’ years after users first requested for it. Twitter has announced that it’s working to allow users to edit their tweets after posting them to help fix any typos or errors in a tweet without sacrificing any replies, retweets, or likes it’s already accrued.
Twitter plans to begin testing the feature with Twitter Blue subscribers in “the coming months,” the company said Tuesday.
The company’s VP of consumer product, Jay Sullivan in a thread on Tuesday added that the editing feature has been “the most requested Twitter feature for many years”.
“Without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation,” he said. “Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work.”
3/ Without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation. Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work.
— Jay Sullivan (@jaysullivan) April 5, 2022
Twitter’s former CEO, Jack Dorsey, was reluctant to add such a feature in the past after he expressed concern that an edit button could let users change a tweet’s meaning after it gets widely shared, and in 2020 he said Twitter would “probably never” add the feature.
Howevver, Twitter’s opinion on an edit button appears to have shifted after Parag Agrawal became CEO. On April 1st, the annual day of corporate lies, Twitter’s official account said it was “working on an edit button.” Although it was taken as a joke at the time, Twitter product lead Michael Sayman later pointed to the tweet as the company’s “official statement” on the feature.
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) April 5, 2022
Days later, after it emerged that Elon Musk had bought a 9.2 percent stake in the company, the Tesla CEO’s first significant tweet was to poll his followers on whether Twitter should add an edit button. 73.4 percent were in favor.
The company already has an undo feature that lets you recall a tweet before you send it, though it’s only available for Twitter Blue subscribers.