Twitter is including an edit button

It’s a function that Twitter customers have been requesting for therefore lengthy that it’s turn out to be a meme, however now the legendary “edit button” is definitely changing into a actuality. Twitter has introduced that it’s working to permit customers to edit their tweets after posting them. The concept is that you simply’ll be capable of repair any typos or errors in a tweet with out sacrificing any replies, retweets, or likes it’s already accrued. The function will probably be obtainable for Twitter Blue subscribers in “the coming months,” the company said Tuesday.

People have been asking for an edit button for therefore lengthy that it’s turn out to be one thing of an ongoing joke. “Tweets, but editable,” has turn out to be the usual response to discovering a typo in a preferred tweet. But Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey was reluctant so as to add such a function previously. During a chat in 2018 Dorsey expressed concern that an edit button might let customers change a tweet’s which means after it will get broadly shared, and in 2020 he stated Twitter would “probably never” add the function.

Concerns like these have constantly cropped up round requests for an edit button. But as my colleague Casey Newton argued in 2017, quite a few different platforms together with Facebook, Medium, and Instagram already enable customers to edit their posts, and the options haven’t been accompanied by widespread abuse. But that doesn’t imply that abuse is exceptional. According to Meta’s former chief security officer Alex Stamos, Facebook’s modifying function has been abused previously, in a single case to assist a cryptocurrency rip-off.

Twitter’s opinion on an edit button seems to have shifted after Parag Agrawal grew to become CEO. On April 1st, the annual day of company lies, Twitter’s official account stated it was “working on an edit button.” Although it was taken as a joke on the time, Twitter product lead Michael Sayman later pointed to the tweet as the corporate’s “official statement” on the function.

Days later, after it emerged that Elon Musk had purchased a 9.2 p.c stake within the firm, the Tesla CEO’s first vital tweet was to ballot his followers on whether or not Twitter ought to add an edit button. 73.4 p.c have been in favor.