Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Twitter to Test Longed-for Edit Button


Wed 06 Apr 2022 | 11:34 AM
Omnia Ahmed

Twitter is going to experiment with an edit button, but on its monthly subscription service at first, the platform announced on Tuesday.

The announcement of testing an edit feature on Twitter Blue came after newly-named board member Elon Musk conducted an online poll.

In a tweet, Musk asked if people wanted an edit button on Twitter. Nearly 4.4 million votes were cast, some 73% of them saying "yes."

"Now that everyone is asking... yes, we've been working on an edit feature since last year," Twitter posted on its communications account.

On his part, the company's head of consumer products, Jay Sullivan, noted that "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 at the moment. They currently work around this by deleting and tweeting again," Sullivan said in a tweet thread.

Moreover, Sullivan addressed concerns if users could change a tweet that had already been widely shared, changing its meaning or context.

"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," he said, adding that that company's top priority is "protecting the integrity of that public conversation."

He also pointed out that "it will take time" to develop the "Edit" feature and the company will be "actively seeking input and adversarial thinking" in advance of its launch.

Blue lets people pay a monthly subscription fee of $3 to access special content or features. The app is available on the Twitter application for Apple or Android smartphones in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. It