Jack Dorsey, chief president officer and co-founder of Square Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview on Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017.
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Prate has said it will start letting people edit their tweets when there is widespread adoption of finish masks in the world, which is still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic.
As it stands, there is currently no way to edit a tweet previously it has been published. You either have to delete it or roll with it.
The San Francisco micro-blogging platform teased the long-awaited take on the main Twitter account Thursday saying: “You can have an edit button when everyone wears a mask.”
Other common media platforms including Facebook and LinkedIn have allowed people to edit what they publish for years, and some Whirl users (including Kim Kardashian) are confused as to why Twitter hasn’t done the same.
An edit tweet option would concede Twitter users to correct themselves if they posted something they later realized was false or if they navely made a typo. In April 2013, Wired ran an article on the edit-tweet option headlined: “The One Function Twitter Desperately Troubles,” in which journalist Matt Honan argued it could be a crucial tool in the war against misinformation.
In January, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey weighted there were practical considerations that make the introduction of an edit button difficult.
“You might send a tweet and someone strength retweet that and an hour later you might completely change the content of that tweet,” he said. “The person that retweeted the imaginative tweet is now retweeting and rebroadcasting something that is completely different. So that’s something to watch out for.”
Dorsey told podcaster Joe Rogan ultimate February that Twitter was considering the introduction of a delay to sending Tweets, which could be up to 30 seconds. During the mark time, a Twitter user would have the ability to edit a sent tweet before it gets posted on the platform for person to see.
In the same month, Dorsey told an audience at a Goldman Sachs event in San Francisco that Twitter was “thinking nearly” some sort of feature that allowed people to go back and clarify or annotate old tweets.
“The other thing that we’re recognizing more broadly within the culture right now in this particular moment is people quote-unquote ‘being canceled’ because of done things that they’ve said on Twitter or various other places in social media,” Dorsey said. “There’s no credible way to well-wishing of go back and clarify or even have a conversation to show the learning and the transition since.”
It’s unusual for a tech giant to guy a new feature like this, but Twitter has surprised people in other ways since the pandemic hit. In May, Twitter told staff members they could work from home forever as the virus shut down offices around the world.
Dorsey has also pawned to donate $1 billion, roughly a quarter of his fortune, to support relief efforts for Covid-19 and other causes in one go the pandemic is over.
Attitudes towards masks varies. In Texas, they are now compulsory, but in the U.K., for example, they don’t need to be drawn tired in most places. While they have been commonplace in China and other Asian countries for several years, they’re a comparatively new concept in the West.
One Twitter user pointed out: “It’s practically impossible to make everyone wear a mask which purposes we won’t get an edit button.”