Twitter’s ‘Edit’ button is coming soon, but I’m not so thrilled

Twitter is testing an ‘Edit’ button, and while some might be excited at the prospect, I am approaching this one with some caution. Even Twitter says it will require careful deliberation, and admits there is potential for misuse with an ‘Edit’ option. On the face of it, the ‘Edit’ button sounds simple: an easy tool for fixing all those typos we tend to make in our tweets. But given how Twitter operates as a public platform, where everyone—from government officials to newsrooms to celebrities—posts their opinions and announcements, the introduction of an ‘Edit’ button is a lot more complicated.
My biggest worry as a woman journal is that the Twitter ‘Edit’ button could be used to erase and fix ‘abusive’ tweets. While Twitter says it will have time limits and controls for the ‘Edit’ button, the details are sketchy at the moment. This time limit will be crucial in ensuring one cannot just quickly ‘reword’ their tweets after issuing a death threat to someone.
As many women journals will testify, Twitter is a place that often attracts the worst abuses through replies or DMs. The more famous you are on Twitter, the bigger the crowd that is trolling you. This also makes it difficult to keep up with replies and report all of the abuse at times. Just tweet a contrarian opinion as a woman on any topic, and you will be flooded with abusive replies, ranging from mansplainers to one-word abuses to rape and death threats.

Now imagine, if there is an option to edit. For many of these troll accounts, it could be a quick way to just post an abusive tweet, let it be there for their five minutes of fame, and then edit it out before the proposed time limit goes up. For women, it is already harder to keep track and report these tweets. Edited tweets will just complicate the issue further.
Yes, screenshots are a solution when one wants to catch culprits, but one is not always able to take them. Unless Twitter ensures that there is some way of preserving the original tweet, perhaps as an archival link, the potential for misuse remains. It will be crucial how Twitter tackles this particular problem with the ‘Edit’ button, more so given its content moderation policies to date have hardly been foolproof.
The ‘Edit’ button also raises concerns given the nature of Twitter. It is a public platform where most of us are sharing our public opinions, likes and dislikes, with millions of strangers. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, both of which can function as private spaces, Twitter has always been viewed as having more public importance. Never mind that the number of users on Twitter is nowhere close to Facebook or Instagram, it is definitely perceived as an important platform to mark your public presence. And how the ‘Edit’ button impacts these public conversations needs to be carefully considered.
For one, disinformation on Twitter could get worse. Editing might make it harder to track someone and call them out for the same. One could just tweet out blatant misinformation, then quickly edit it out to avoid being reported for the same. Right now, the modus operandi is to tweet a blatant lie or abuse and then delete it, often acting as though nothing was posted, hoping no one took screenshots. An ‘Edit’ button will make it easier to just fix those lies.
Or worse, one might tweet a popular take or opinion, get thousands of retweets, and then edit it out to write something entirely different. So you might find you retweeted something that agreed with your values, and later it got changed to something completely different. And I’m sure that once the button rolls out, there will be several ‘screenshots’ of ‘edited’ tweets flooding the platform, all with the intent of targeting certain individuals, including journals. And yes, many of these screenshots will be entirely fake.
These are all questions that I’m sure Twitter is also considering as it tests out the ‘Edit’ button. While it might sound like a much-needed solution—especially for those of us prone to typos—the option poses some complex problems for Twitter and how it could impact discourse on the platform. My simple wish: Twitter will need to make sure it doesn’t end up being a powerful tool in the hands of the trolls, which is easier said than done. Hopefully, we will have a clearer picture going forward in the coming months as the feature gets tested.