Twitter confirmed today that it is working on an edit button, days after jokingly mentioning it in a tweet. In fact, the firm stated that it has been testing the function since last year and will start piloting it with Twitter Blue members “in the coming months.”
👀 pic.twitter.com/I13wE3eLdn
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) April 5, 2022
The undo option is now the closest thing to an edit button, but it’s only available to Twitter Blue subscribers who pay for additional Twitter features. Twitter is now testing an edit button soon for Twitter Blue subscribers, but it’s unclear whether a widely available editing tool would be offered solely to those users or to all of us. Because the company hasn’t even shown what happens when you press the “Edit Tweet” button, it looks like the implementation is still up in the air.
Speaking of the feature, Jay Sullivan, Head of Consumer Product, Twitter, said:
We’ve been exploring how to build an Edit feature in a safe manner since last year and plan to begin testing it within Labs in the coming months. Sharing a few more insights on how we’re thinking about Edit button. Edit has been the most requested Twitter feature for many years. People want to be able to fix (sometimes embarrassing) mistakes, typos and hot takes in the moment.
They currently work around this by deleting and tweeting again. 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. Therefore, it will take time and we will be actively seeking input and adversarial thinking in advance of launching Edit. We will approach this feature with care and thoughtfulness and we will share updates as we go.
This is just one feature we are exploring as we work to give people more choice and control over their Twitter experience, foster a healthy conversation, and help people be more comfortable on Twitter. These are the things that motivate us every day.