Soon users will be able to edit tweets after they've been posted.
Twitter announced that they are giving the people what they want — 15 years too late, but happening nonetheless: an edit button. The company announced on September 1 that users will soon be able to make any changes to their tweets up to 30 minutes after posting. The feature will become widely available after further testing internally. It will be offered first to Twitter Blue subscribers — the platform’s premium subscription offering, available in the U.S.— later this month.
Once a change is made within the 30-minute edit timeframe, it will be marked with a label that says, “Last Edited” along with a timestamp, to let people know it was modified. In a blog post, the company says it hopes the feature will make tweeting “more approachable and less stressful.”
But there are already concerns within the user community. Users are concerned that someone with malicious intent could publish an innocuous tweet and garner engagement through likes and retweets. Within the edit timeframe, the author could change the sentiment of the tweet to something more harmful. However, the visibility of each tweet’s revision history may counter that.
Although it’s a feature that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had claimed would “probably never” happen, this is one of the most notable and most-requested changes within the app. It follows another notable change driven by user demand: the character limit was increased from 140 to 280 in 2017.
As the rollout of the edit button continues, users will be watching to see if it’s everything they’ve ever wanted—or a change they instantly regret.