It’s five years too late for Donald Trump’s “covfefe” tweet, but an edit button is finally coming to Twitter.
The social media giant has announced that it will launch an editing feature for subscribers of its premium Twitter Blue service later this month.
The company says it has been testing the feature internally, saying it is one of the most requested features to date.
So can any tweet be edited?
Yes, but only for a certain time.
The editing function will give users 30 minutes to make changes to your 280-character messages, like correcting typos or adding hashtags after you first tweet.
Users won’t get just one chance to correct their mistakes, as the social media company says tweets will soon be editable. “a few times” within the limited time frame.
For years, Twitter users have demanded the ability to edit their tweets after posting, in line with nearly every other social media platform, including Meta Platform’s Facebook and Instagram, Reddit, and Pinterest.
How will I know that a tweet has been edited?
To make it clear that a tweet has been modified, they will be labeled and appear with a icon and timestamp.
Users can then search previous versions of the tweet by tapping the tag.
Twitter said it is testing the editing feature with a small group of users so it can identify and resolve potential issues.
“This includes how people can misuse the feature,” the company said in a blog post.
“You can never be too careful.”
The time limit and version history play a role, Twitter said.
“They help protect the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said.”
But experts say there’s no guarantee that some users won’t use the feature to contribute to misinformation.
Daniel Angus, Professor of Digital Communications at Queensland University of Technology, says Twitter appears to have responded “productively” to initial concerns about bad faith use of the feature.
“The time limit on tweet edits and these transparency tools are good measures that sensibly address some of the potential for the edit feature to be used by actors in bad faith to deliberately mislead,” Professor Angus told ABC.
“However, nothing can completely rule out such a feature being used in a deliberately misleading way,” it adds.
“As with all platform possibilities, there will be ways in which any feature will play out.”
Twitter has already experimented with versions of an edit button.
Twitter Blue subscribers currently have access to a feature that retains tweets for up to one minute, allowing users to review the tweet and “undo” it before the post is published.
Does any of this have to do with Elon Musk?
The company said in April that it has been working on the feature since last year, a day after Tesla CEO Elon Musk polled his followers about whether they wanted an edit button.
About three-quarters of the 4.4 million respondents said yes.
Later that month, Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion ($64 billion) with the promise that his ownership would bring big changes to the service.
It has since tried to back out of the deal citing concerns about fake accounts and whistleblower claims of poor cybersecurity, setting the stage for a tough legal battle over whether to go through with the purchase.
ABC/wires
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