POLL | Should Twitter make an edit button available?

Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk has teased the possibility of making an edit button on Twitter available. 

Musk this week launched a Twitter poll asking users whether they want an edit button. 

The poll garnered more than 4-million votes, with 73% saying yes while 26% said no. 

The request for an edit button is a long-standing one from users, including US media personality Kim Kardashian. 

On Tuesday, Twitter said it has been working on introducing the feature since last year.

It joked that the idea was not inspired by Musk, who was recently revealed as the company’s largest shareholder. 

Twitter said it will test the feature in its paid service, Twitter Blue, in the coming months. 

“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 Twitter Blue Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn’t and what’s possible.”

In 2020, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Twitter had considered an edit button, but in an interview on Wired maintained that “we'll probably never do it”. 

“The reason there’s no edit button and there hasn’t been an edit button traditionally is because we started as an SMS text messaging service. As you all know, when you send a text you can’t take it back. We wanted to preserve that vibe and feeling in the early days.”

Dorsey noted that while there are good reasons for editing tweets, such as fixing typos and broken links, people can also use it for malicious intent, such as editing content to mislead people. 

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