Begone typos and grammar mistakes! Begone fat-fingered auto corrected slip-ups and textual despair! The edit button is coming to Twitter. On Thursday, after countless pleas from many of its over 237 million users, some people will start being able to click a button on the platform to edit a tweet after they have posted it. It has only been about 15 years, nine months and 22 days since they started asking for that ability. Since Twitter was unveiled in 2006, the basics of using it have been simple and constant: You wrote a tweet, you posted it – and then you dealt with the consequences. There were no take-backs.
That makes the edit button perhaps the biggest shift at the platform since 2017, when Twitter increased the character limit for posts to 280 characters from 140. Twitter’s commitment to first drafts made it a destination for online brawls. But people often regretted their choice of words, or noticed a misspelling after posting a tweet.
As Twitter grew from a niche service to a global platform, more users began demanding a way to edit their posts. Twitter didn’t budge. The firm argued there was something noble in leaving mistakes on display. A nefarious user could change a tweet after it had already been shared widely, swapping a benign message for a misleading one. Someone who had retweeted a statement might miss the update, inadvertently broadcasting a tweet they no longer agreed with.
But recently, Twitter began reconsidering an edit button. “We’re hoping that with availability of edit tweet, tweeting will feel more approachable and less stressful,” Twitter said. The edit button will be granted to Twitter employees first for internal testing, and then to users of its subscription service, Twitter Blue. The company eventually plans to give everyone the option to alter their tweets. But Twitter has added safeguards. Users will be allowed to make changes for only 30 minutes after their original tweet is posted. After an edit, the tweet will bear a label to show it has been modified. Clicking the label will let viewers see the history of the edits.
That makes the edit button perhaps the biggest shift at the platform since 2017, when Twitter increased the character limit for posts to 280 characters from 140. Twitter’s commitment to first drafts made it a destination for online brawls. But people often regretted their choice of words, or noticed a misspelling after posting a tweet.
As Twitter grew from a niche service to a global platform, more users began demanding a way to edit their posts. Twitter didn’t budge. The firm argued there was something noble in leaving mistakes on display. A nefarious user could change a tweet after it had already been shared widely, swapping a benign message for a misleading one. Someone who had retweeted a statement might miss the update, inadvertently broadcasting a tweet they no longer agreed with.
But recently, Twitter began reconsidering an edit button. “We’re hoping that with availability of edit tweet, tweeting will feel more approachable and less stressful,” Twitter said. The edit button will be granted to Twitter employees first for internal testing, and then to users of its subscription service, Twitter Blue. The company eventually plans to give everyone the option to alter their tweets. But Twitter has added safeguards. Users will be allowed to make changes for only 30 minutes after their original tweet is posted. After an edit, the tweet will bear a label to show it has been modified. Clicking the label will let viewers see the history of the edits.