Twitter has announced that it has been working on an edit button since last year, and will now start testing the functionality. Twitter users have been requesting the functionality for years now, and Twitter’s lack of willingness to provide it has become a meme on the site.
The official Twitter Comms account tweeted that the company will be kicking off the testing for users of Twitter Blue, the company’s subscription service that unlocks special features.
The tweet also humorously mentions that the company didn’t get the idea from a poll, referring to a poll on the issue started by Tesla owner Elon Musk. Musk recently acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter, and now sits on the company’s Board of Directors.
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Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s VP of consumer product, acknowledged that the feature has been demanded for a long time, and that Twitter has been looking into how to build the feature in a safe manner. He also said that the company is concerned about protecting the integrity of public conversation, making sure that edited tweets aren’t misused to the alter public record.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had expressed concern that an edit button could be used to change the meaning of a tweet after it had been shared widely, and had said that the social network would properly never add the feature.