Twitter has announced that it really is working on a new edit feature so people can go back and rework their typo-laden tweets. According to the company, it has been working on the feature since last year and it hasn’t just been thought up on the back of Elon Musk"s recent poll. In the coming months, it will roll out to the subscription service, Twitter Blue, where it will refine the feature some more.
1/ We’ve been exploring how to build an Edit feature in a safe manner since last year and plan to begin testing it within @TwitterBlue Labs in the coming months. Sharing a few more insights on how we’re thinking about Edit 🧵 https://t.co/WbcfkUue8e
— Jay Sullivan (@jaysullivan) April 5, 2022
Head of Consumer Product at Twitter, Jay Sullivan, said that editing tweets had been the most requested feature over the years but the company is concerned editing could be abused without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what was edited. Using these criteria, editing could materialise with a limited time to edit your tweets, it’ll likely mark edited tweets, and there could be an option to view previous versions of the tweet.
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) April 5, 2022
The company has not given any time frame for when it will be available for the wider Twitter community but it shouldn’t be expected any time soon considering Twitter Blue testers will only receive the update in a couple of months. Jay Sullivan said that one of the tasks that need to be performed is adversarial thinking with regards to the feature so it doesn’t ship with aspects that can be abused by malicious actors.