Twitter has finally confirmed that it is working on a long-awaited and highly requested edit button. The company first announced the news on its official Twitter account on April 1, but the public took it as a joke at the time. However, Twitter confirmed the new feature later on April 6, so this is surely not a joke.
Elon Musk has recently bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter, becoming the largest shareholder in the company. Shortly after that, he asked his followers if they wanted an edit button on the platform – over 70% voted yes. However, the company had been working on this feature long before the poll was taken.
The social media platform noted that the developers have been working on an edit button for tweets since last year. According to Twitter's VP product Jay Sullivan, editing tweets has been "the most requested feature for many years." The company is now exploring how to implement the functionality without compromising the integrity of the public conversation.
It would be interesting to see how Twitter actually makes this available to everyone. Previously, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey repeatedly stated that the edit button would probably never be introduced, as it could become a way to spread misinformation. For example, in case a tweet that has already gone viral is changed.
Therefore, it's very likely that Twitter will let everyone know that the tweet has been edited. It is unknown whether we will be able to see previous versions of the tweet.
There is no information on when the feature will be rolled out to everyone. Twitter says the edit button will first be tested with Twitter Blue users in the coming months.