After years of being begged by its users, Twitter will finally be introducing an “edit” button.
The feature has been the topic of longstanding Twitter debates, with some people demanding an edit button to fix their grammatical errors easily. Others feel that having an edit button will allow users to rewrite a tweet once it has gone viral and possibly spread harmful information. Nevertheless, the social media giant is ready to take that leap of faith.
This week, Twitter confirmed that it was still working on the button, which will allow all users to fix their tweets once they have been published. According to Jay Sullivan, the company’s VP of consumer product, an edit button has been the platform’s most requested change. However, even he has his fair share of concerns with fully rolling out the feature.
“Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work,” Sullivan stated. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has also been apprehensive about an edit button. In 2018, he expressed similar feelings about users being able to completely alter what they’ve said to people that made them retweet and like in the first place. In 2020, Dorsey again appeared apprehensive about the feature, saying he’d “probably never” implement it.
The reason for the pushback is valid. If a user tweets, “I love cows,” for instance, and gets one million retweets, then suddenly changes the tweet to something derogatory, that could pose an issue because users have already retweeted it. The new scathing tweet could be something that users do not agree with at all, which could be a significant issue.
For now, the button is still in its testing stage.
