Twitter Is Adding an Edit Button and Not Everyone Is Happy About It

Let me take you down memory lane. It’s 2011 and American fashion house, Kenneth Cole, just pressed send on one of the biggest Twitter flops of all time. Amidst revolution and war in Egypt, the brand shared “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.”

Did you cringe? Yeah, us too. As Twitter and the nation turned their proverbial pitchforks on the fashion powerhouse, Kenneth Cole’s marketing team wanted nothing more than a Twitter edit button (and maybe a new resume?)

Twitter has infamously been “anti-edit” since its launch in 2006. Basically, every other text-based social media platform on the internet lets you fix a mistake (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, even Reddit), but Twitter has held fast to the belief that editing could be abused.

That was until May 2022, when the company’s new primary investor Elon Musk announced that the platform would be releasing an edit functionality. Cheering in the streets, right? Well, not exactly. While many are excited about the long-awaited change, many more are worried about the effects this could have on news sharing and accountability.

For journalists, politicians, and celebrities, Twitter functions as a real-time newswire where tweets are public records. Engineer Leslie Miley, who has worked at Twitter, Apple, Google, and Slack, said in a recent NPR article that this could lead to gaslighting, false news, and increased difficulty for cyber-crime victims to flag evidence to the platforms or law enforcement.

Of course, this all comes down to how Twitter designs the edit function for its platform. Will it appear similar to Facebook and Instagram, which show users what was changed and when? Will it offer limited timeframes for editing? All of this is still up in the air.

What do you think? Is the edit button a step-forward or step-back for Twitter? Tell us in the comments!