Twitter is launching an edit button, after years of internal and external debate over whether this feature was a good idea for a product known for making posts go viral.
The editing feature will soon be available to users who pay $4.99 per month for a Twitter Blue subscription. Edit Tweet will allow users to make changes to their tweets up to 30 minutes after they were originally posted. Tweets that are edited will have a label, and others on Twitter will be able to click on it to see previous versions of the post.
The company is specifically testing the edit button with a small group of people in hopes of quickly resolving potential issues, the company wrote in a blog post. The edit button will be rolling out to Twitter Blue users in the coming weeks.
Twitter has debated the pros and cons of an edit button for years, and some worry that people will abuse the feature in hopes of going viral, only to change the content of a post after it’s been retweeted. Former CEO Jack Dorsey said in January 2020 that an edit button was highly unlikely to be added.
This debate intensified earlier this year when Tesla CEO Elon Musk took a large stake in the company, then polled his followers on whether they wanted an edit button. Most of those who voted said yes. Twitter quickly confirmed that it was already testing the feature internally and, in an apparent effort to distance the project from Musk’s influence, clarified that it had started work on an edit button before Musk’s survey.
According to Twitter’s website, Twitter Blue is a monthly subscription that gives the most engaged people on Twitter exclusive access to premium features. Twitter Blue on Twitter for iOS, Android, and the web is only available in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, at this time.
