Twitter is rolling out an edit button for paid subscribers
It's finally happening.
The most requested Twitter feature of all time, an edit button, is on the way. On Thursday, Twitter said it's internally testing an edit feature and will expand it initially to Twitter Blue subscribers "in the coming weeks."
Here's how it will work: According to Twitter, in the test, users will be able to edit their tweets "a few times in the 30 minutes following their publication." There will then be a timestamp added to the tweet showing when it was "last edited," and users can press that to see the tweet's entire edit history and what it originally looked like.
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Twitter users have for years requested an edit button so they can fix typos in tweets without having to delete and repost them, thereby losing all of the likes and retweets. Before making an offer to buy Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk polled his followers on whether they wanted such a feature, and 73 percent said they did.
But critics have raised concerns about the feature, fearing some could misuse it by changing a tweet to say something radically different than it originally said after many people have already retweeted it.
Twitter says the "time limit and version history play an important role" in the feature, as they will "help protect the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said." The company also says it hopes the feature can ultimately make tweeting "feel more approachable and less stressful."
It isn't clear when the edit feature might be available for users who don't subscribe to Twitter Blue. But Twitter says it will test the feature with a small group to identify potential issues. "This includes how people might misuse the feature," the company says. "You can never be too careful."
