Twitter, the only major social media platform to withhold an edit feature from its users, is finally allowing (some) users to correct themselves after their thoughts are published.
Since the inception of the platform 16 years ago, users have been asking for this feature, but according to The New York Times, “The company argued that there was something noble in leaving mistakes on display.”
In order to “protect the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said,” a Tweet will only be able to be edited a number of times in the 30 minutes following publication, per Twitter.
This prevents the more sinister among us from publishing a tweet and changing it after others have spread it around the platform.
Average users will not have access to the tool immediately; it is being tested internally for now. It will then be expanded to Twitter Blue subscribers, a paid monthly premium subscription.
Will it stick around?
Twitter has copied other platforms, in an attempt to retain users, to mixed success.
In March 2020, the company jumped on the trend of posts that disappear after a day, a format first started by Snapchat in 2013. Fleet was “a lower-pressure, ephemeral way for people to share their fleeting thoughts,” but it was axed because of low engagement, per Twitter.
Still in testing, the edit feature is the most requested change on the platform, and will likely enjoy much more use than Fleet. It is one of the biggest changes since Twitter doubled the length of its tweet to 280 characters in 2017.