A few days ago, Twitter confirmed that it has begun public testing of editable tweets. The highly anticipated capability has been in the works for quite some time. Rumors about it first started to circulate in 2018. However, it wasn't until April 2022 that Twitter confirmed that the feature is under active development. Today, it has shared some more details about editable tweets.
In a statement to TechCrunch, Twitter noted that in its initial state, the platform will only allow you to edit your tweet a maximum of five times. Furthermore, all these edits should take place within 30 minutes of the original tweet. It's clear that these limits have been put in place to stop users from abusing the capability.
If the restrictions were not in place, some ways in which editable tweets could be abused is if a malicious actor edited a viral tweet to spread misinformation or cryptocurrency scams. Of course, there is still a possibility that editable tweets could be misused but Twitter is likely hoping that the benefits outweigh the risks.
Another caveat that we already know of is that editable tweets will initially be available to Twitter Blue subscribers only. However, a new piece of information revealed by the company today is that the feature will first make its way to New Zealand followed by Australia, Canada, and the U.S. The idea behind this staggered rollout is to identify usage patterns ahead of general availability. Indeed, Twitter has also mentioned that the five-edits-within-30-minutes restriction may change depending upon usage patterns.
Source: TechCrunch
