Great news for people who only spot spelling mistakes in tweets after they’ve sent them: an edit button could soon be coming to Twitter. The platform confirmed the news after new board member – and kinda cringe social media user – Elon Musk polled users about the potential feature. More than 74 percent of respondents backed the editing function.
Twitter users have been petitioning for an edit button for years, but there have been concerns about how it would be executed. The firm said yesterday that it was working on creating a button that subscribers of Twitter Blue – a paid-for part of the site – would get early access to.
The function would allow people to change errors in their tweets without losing replies, retweets or likes. Jay Sullivan, the company's vice-president of consumer product, tweeted that the company was conscious it would need to be built ‘in a safe manner’.
‘Without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation,’ he said. ‘Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work.’ This was seen as a key issue for former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey, who said in 2018 that the company was unlikely to ever add the function.
But because rival social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram do have the option to edit posts, and considering the latest developments, it seems likely that the change will come to Twitter very soon. Watch this space.
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