Yes, you read it right. edit button. For the first time in years, Twitter seems to have listened to its users and is testing a new feature that will allow editing our tweets once they have been published. This function has been requested for years by active and passive. However, Twitter has always ended up discarding the idea due to the “dangerousness” involved in being able to edit a publication.
The end of typos on Twitter?
We always say that the best features of Twitter were created by users. The retweets, the trending topics, the hashtags…none came from the ingenuity of Jack Dorsey and his team. On the other hand, almost all the genius that Twitter has implemented by itself has been a failure. The ‘Discover’ button or the Fleets are some examples of this. With that history, it would be logical listen to social network users, who have been asking for a button to be able to edit tweets for years. Surely it has happened to you once that you publish a tweet and after five minutes you see that you had a typo. You have to delete it to republish it or write another tweet in the thread with the already famous phrase “no tweet without its typo” in case the tweet has already gone viral or has passed more time than necessary.
Well, Twitter has never been very keen on implementing that feature until now. On April 1, Twitter took advantage of April Fools’ to add fuel to the fire by saying that they were working on an edit button. A tweet that would surely make them very funny, of course. A few days later, Elon Musk bought a large percentage of Twitter, becoming the company’s largest shareholder and becoming CEO. The tycoon took advantage of his announcement to publish a survey of what could be his first star measure: “Do you want Twitter to have an edit button?”
However, everything indicates that this turn of events has little to do with Elon Musk. Apparently, Twitter has been testing this new implementation since last yearwhich will arrive exclusively and with a dropper to paying users of Twitter Blue as part of the testing program for this new functionality.
So dangerous dangerous is that we can edit a tweet?
With an announcement of these characteristics, it would be strange for Twitter to back down now. However, it is interesting to review the reasons why this social network has taken so long to ask for something so logical. After all, other networks like Instagram or Facebook have allowed you to edit posts for years and without putting much mystery into it.
now that everyone is asking…
yes, we’ve been working on an edit feature since last year!
no, we didn’t get the idea from a poll 😉
we’re kicking off testing within @TwitterBlue Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible.
—Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) April 5, 2022
For Twitter, making your tweets editable is to make yourself even more vulnerable against hackers. hoaxes and disinformation. The network has not been able to provide a convincing solution to this problem to date, so being able to edit the tweets would be pouring gasoline on a fire that is still uncontrolled. Jay Sullivan, the person in charge of the Twiiter product area, has accompanied this news with a thread explaining the process they have followed to avoid all these inconveniences.
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
Still, it won’t be for ideas. Twitter users have always been open to comment on how it could be implement the button safely. From putting a time limit to be able to edit the tweet to indicate with an icon that a tweet has been modified. Another more drastic option would be to apply the modification, but allow to see the before and after precisely to prevent some profiles from using this feature to spread lies. In any case, the edit button is very close to becoming a reality and we will see how it works as soon as the beta version reaches Twitter Blue users.
