Founded in 2006, Twitter has resisted requests for an edit button due to uncertainty about how to safely introduce this feature.
Now that it has relented and is considering the option, what would be the best way to implement it?
Twitter’s Plans for an Edit Button
In April 2022 it was revealed that Elon Musk purchased 9.2% of Twitter stock, making him the largest shareholder in the company. Soon after, he created a poll on his account, asking his followers whether they want an edit button. An overwhelming 73.6% of over 4.4 million voters said “Yes”.
Twitter then revealed that, unrelated to Musk’s tweet, the company has been working on an edit feature since 2021, and testing will begin shortly as the team seeks to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s Head of Consumer Product, shared further insight into the company’s work, saying that people often want to be able to fix mistakes or typos. The trouble, however, is figuring out how to protect the “integrity of the public conversation”.
The Pros and Cons of an Edit Button
The edit button is present on most social media platforms, including Facebook. Twitter, however, has resisted the trend until now, mainly because it is a platform used to express lots of political opinions and share news, including by world leaders. Former US President Donald Trump, after all, used it as its primary way to communicate.
Twitter’s reluctance to integrate such a feature makes sense when the platform has become the de facto news source for so many.
The ability to edit a tweet can come in handy for the times when you miss a typo, forget to include someone’s Twitter handle, or press the post button too early.
However, the main point against an edit button is the ability to edit a post to change your stance on important matters because of backlash, claim misunderstandings, and effectively change the discourse to suit your needs.
What Should Twitter’s Edit Feature Look Like?
There’s no denying that an edit button can come in handy on Twitter, as it does on any other messaging or social media platform. We’re all in a hurry, we’re all guilty of typos here and there, so being able to edit is necessary.
However, with Twitter, the risks of this feature are high, and the company is rightfully concerned. Imagine reading an article based on a post made on Twitter by an important political figure and that tweet suddenly changes to something completely different simply because the reactions to the message were negative.
If Twitter is going to implement an edit button, there is a clear need for a few safeguards. First of all, there needs to be a limited window of time that you can make changes—for example, five minutes. That is plenty of time to notice that you misspelled something, that the mention feature didn’t work, or that you tagged someone else by mistake.
Secondly, introducing a history of edits is absolutely necessary. There should be a way to view the original tweet, whether you’re fixing up a typo, adding extra clarifications, or anything other changes. That feature should also be a lot more visible than Facebook’s is, where you have to tap the three dots to access the post’s history. If an edit is made, a notification should be attached to it to make it easily visible.
Thirdly, people should be able to report an edit to Twitter if they feel that the message has changed entirely after the amendment. A team of employees, not AI, should be able to go through all the reports. Reverting the message to its original form is one way of dealing with this situation, while adding a visual warning (like Twitter’s misinformation labels) to the tweet is another.
Twitter’s Edit Button Won’t Solve Everything
Twitter has been trying to change a lot of things in 2022. Adding an edit button is something they’ve been pressed about, while a downvoting system is another. The platform has already announced it is working on both of these features, making many users wonder if Twitter is walking the same road as Facebook.
Thankfully, it does sound that the downvoting system works differently from Facebook’s post reactions.
