Well, that was fast.
Twitter has announced, via Twitter, that it is indeed for tweets.
Newly chosen board member and now Twitter's largest shareholder Elon Musk had run a Twitter poll that started Monday asking users if they wanted an edit button. It's something users have long requested.
Twitter's post says, 鈥渨e鈥檝e been working on an edit feature since last year! no, we didn鈥檛 get the idea from a poll."
The company said it would test the feature in its paid service, Twitter Blue, in the coming months. It said the test would help it "learn what works, what doesn鈥檛, and what鈥檚 possible."
So it'll be a while before most Twitter users get to use it, if they do.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP鈥檚 earlier story follows below.
Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO and power Twitter user who is now Twitter's largest shareholder and newly appointed board member, may have thoughts on a long-standing request from users: Should there be an edit button?
On Monday evening, Musk about whether they want an edit button, cheekily misspelling 鈥測es鈥� as 鈥測se鈥� and 鈥渘o鈥� as 鈥渙n.鈥� More than 3 million people had voted as of Tuesday morning. The poll closes Tuesday evening Eastern time.
Twitter's CEO, Parag Agrawal, retweeted the poll with a seeming reference to an earlier tweet by Musk, 鈥淭he consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.鈥� Musk had used the same language in a describing another one of his polls that asked whether Twitter adheres to free speech principles.
Twitter spokesperson Catherine Hill declined to comment on whether Agrawal was joking, and did not answer whether Twitter would follow the results of Musk's poll. Musk tweeted Tuesday that he was looking forward to making 鈥渟ignificant improvements to Twitter in coming months!鈥�
Many Twitter users 鈥� among them, Kim Kardashian, Ice T, Katy Perry and McDonald's corporate account 鈥� have long begged for an edit button. The company itself recently teased users with an saying 鈥渨e are working on an edit button.鈥�
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had said that Twitter had considered an edit button, but in a maintained that 鈥渨e鈥檒l probably never do it.鈥� He cited wanting to keep the spirit of Twitter's text-message origins 鈥� texts can't be edited 鈥� and the confusion that could result from users making changes to a tweet that has already been highly circulated by others. Dorsey in November 2021.
For what it's worth, the chief technology officer of Facebook owner Meta, Andrew Bosworth, tweeted Monday . (Facebook lets you edit posts.) 鈥淵ou just include an indicator that it has been edited along with a change log,鈥� he wrote.
: 鈥淔acebook gives me the willies.鈥�
But other people say adding an edit button would change the nature of Twitter, making it less valuable as a historical warehouse that stores official statements by politicians and other high-profile people. Twitter, for better or worse, 鈥渉as become the de facto news wire,鈥� said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University communications professor and an expert on social media who researches propaganda.
Tweets are often embedded in news stories, which could cause problems if the users edit important or controversial tweets without leaving evidence of the original statement. Grygiel suggested instead giving Twitter users a window of time to edit their tweets before they publish them.
Letting powerful Twitter users edit their tweets means they would not be historical statements anymore, Grygiel said. 鈥淲e need to think about what the implications are, what these tweets are, who has power.鈥�
Musk said that a related proposal for a post-publication edit window of a few minutes 鈥� .鈥�
Musk is someone who could seemingly use an edit button. His tweet about taking Tesla private at $420 per share, when funding was not secured, led to a $40 million SEC settlement and a requirement that Musk's tweets be approved by a corporate lawyer. Musk is over that settlement.
Tali Arbel, The Associated Press
