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It’s been over 15 years since Twitter founder Jack Dorsey ushered in a new era of social media by posting the first tweet in the history of the platform that would eventually become one of the internet’s biggest sources of breaking news, misinformation, anonymous death threats, and the memes and jokes that make wading into the fairly toxic cesspool a bit more bearable.
The company has certainly come a long way since then. Unfortunately, its evolution has also left plenty to be desired courtesy of a development team that has seemingly harnessed the Madden mentality built on a foundation of claiming it’s keenly aware of the wants and needs of its most fans while seemingly going out of its way to refuse to address them for years on end.
There is perhaps no issue that’s frustrated Twitter users as much as the inability to edit tweets once they’ve been sent, which has been the root of frustration for countless people who’ve told themselves they totally, definitely would’ve gone viral if it wasn’t for a typo or grammatical mistake they failed to spot before posting.
In 2021, Twitter introduced a half-measure in the form of the “Undo” option it offered to people who pay for Twitter Blue (the premium subscription it rolled out in an attempt to address the glaring “lack of a major and consistent revenue stream” problem the company has grappled with for the majority of its existence).
Thankfully, it looks as if our prayers may have finally been answered thanks to an announcement that was posted on Thursday where Twitter revealed it has begun to test what it described as “our most requested feature to date.”
An “Edit” button is coming to Twitter—here’s what to expect
In the post, the team confirmed it has begun to test the “Edit” function internally and plans to roll out the experiment to Twitter Blue users at some point in September.
if you see an edited Tweet it’s because we’re testing the edit button
this is happening and you’ll be okay
— Twitter (@Twitter) September 1, 2022
As things currently stand, tweets can be “edited a few times” 30 minutes after they’re initially published. Any post that gets that treatment will “appear with an icon, timestamp, and label” that notes it’s been subjected to an edit along with the option to view the original message and any other modifications that were made.
Many Twitter users are thrilled about the change (but not everyone is onboard)
Many people viewed this news as an occasion for celebration on a day it seemed would never come.
I’m happy Twitter is coming with the edit button
— JAYE CANE (@Jayecane) September 1, 2022
I’ve been an edit-button skeptic, but 30-minute limit, “this tweet has been edited” flag, and click-through-to-see-the-original is a pretty good set of guardrails.
— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) September 1, 2022
Honestly I had no real expectations of Twitter to get an edit button right but it… it seems like they might have? If you’re gonna have one at all, this is the way to do it?
I don’t know what to do with this information pic.twitter.com/dLUgTOao3T
— Bram De Buyser (@chton) September 1, 2022
However, not everyone was thrilled. That includes some people who pointed out the inadvertent comedy we’ve been treated to thanks to the lack of an “Edit” feature.
Others are also skeptical of the current approach, which is arguably prone to abuse and could require some further tweaking.
The simplest way to prevent abuse of a Twitter edit button is to reset all retweets and likes to zero whenever a tweet is edited. That way, no one can tweet something, go viral, then change the message. Doesn’t sound like Twitter’s test version does this, which is baffling!
— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) September 1, 2022
Thankfully, we shouldn’t have to wait too long to see if the change was worth the wait.
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