Over a decade and a half in existence, Twitter has confirmed what was once unthinkable: an edit button is appearing. The company confirmed on Tuesday, saying it was “working on an editing feature since last year.”
The company hasn’t revealed the details, but it did share a mockup of the feature, which it said it will test first with Twitter Blue subscribers “in the coming months.”
Twitter added that “no, we don’t get ideas from a poll,” in an apparent reference to Elon Musk, who recently became a company. and immediately asked his followers if the company should make the long-requested feature.
In one , the company’s director of consumer products Jay Sullivan says the edit button “has been the most requested feature on Twitter in years.” He said the company will “actively seek input and competitor mindset” before rolling out the feature to prevent potential abuse.
“Without such things as time limits, controls, and transparency over what was edited, Editing could be abused to alter the record of public conversation,” wrote Sullivan. “Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when approaching this work. As a result, it will take time and we will actively seek input and competitor thinking before launching Edit. ”
The fact that Twitter will start experimenting with editable tweets is a big change for the company. Executives have long acknowledged the practicality of being able to correct typos and corrections, but have cited concerns that an edit button could render it incapable of functioning as a public record. of Twitter. As recently as 2020, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said they would never happened, although before seem open to the idea. “We wanted to maintain that vibe, that feeling, in the early days,” he said, referring to Twitter’s origins as an SMS-based service.
Before Twitter confirmed that it was indeed working on an edit button, Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth weight about the idea, claiming that Facebook had “resolved” the issues around potential abuse. “You just include an indicator that it was edited along with the changelog,” he writes. “If you’re really worried about embedding, they can point to a specific revision in that history but with a link to the latest edit. Not a real problem. ”
Giving the edit button to Twitter Blue subscribers first could also be a big boost to Twitter’s recently launched subscription service. The the service provides subscribers with additional features, such as the ability to “undo” tweets and access to . But that doesn’t mean editing functionality will always be limited to those who pay. The editing feature will be available first as a “Twitter Blue Labs” feature, but the company says it plans to make some of the “lab” features available to everyone after initial testing. It’s not clear at the moment if that’s the case with tweet editing.
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