Twitter exploring an ‘Edit button’, will begin testing soon: Here’s how it will work

Twitter has confirmed it has been exploring how to include an ‘Edit’ feature since last year. It plans to begin testing this in the coming months. Twitter’s communications team posted about the edit button, though they that the idea did not come from a poll, referring to Elon Musk’s recent poll about the same. Musk has become a majority shareholder in Twitter, and also joined the board as was reported recently. Incidentally, Twitter’s team had posted about an ‘edit’ button on April 1 as well, but everyone thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke.
According to Jay Sullivan, Head of Product at Twitter, the company has been exploring how to build the “Edit feature in a safe manner” and will begin to test this out within Twitter Blue Labs in the coming months.
Sullivan wrote in a Twitter thread that the ‘Edit’ button remains the most requested as users want to “fix (sometimes embarrassing) makes, typos and hot takes”. However, he added that “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 added that Twitter knows it will need to protect the integrity of that public conversation when including an Edit button. “Therefore, it will take time and we will be actively seeking input and adversarial thinking in advance of launching Edit. We will approach this feature with care and thoughtfulness and we will share updates as we go,” he wrote.

now that everyone is asking…
yes, we’ve been working on an edit feature since last year!
no, we didn’t get the idea from a poll 😉
we’re kicking off testing within @TwitterBlue Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible.
— Twitter Comms (@TwitterComms) April 5, 2022

1/ We’ve been exploring how to build an Edit feature in a safe manner since last year and plan to begin testing it within @TwitterBlue Labs in the coming months. Sharing a few more insights on how we’re thinking about Edit 🧵 https://t.co/WbcfkUue8e
— Jay Sullivan (@jaysullivan) April 5, 2022
Why no ‘Edit’ button till now ?
Twitter’s ‘Edit’ button remains a long drawn demand. But one reason it has not had this feature was former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, who quit last year. India-born Parag Agrawal is now Twitter’s CEO. Dorsey had told Wired back in 2020 that “we will probably never do it” when asked about adding an edit option. According to Dorsey, the idea goes back to Twitter’s original design. “We started as an SMS, text message service. And as you all know, when you send a text, you can’t really take it back,” Dorsey had said. “We wanted to preserve that vibe, that feeling, in the early days,” he adds.
However, Twitter’s Kayvon Beykpour had in the past said that it was a feature they would need to build at some point though it was not on the priority l. Well, it looks like never say never in the world of technology.