Is Elon Musk bringing an edit button to Twitter?

It’s infamous at this point that Twitter does not have an edit button. Once you post a tweet it will stay the same until you delete it.

That looks like that’s about to change.

Twitter sent out a tweet on April 5th teasing an edit button.

The thought of an edit button seemed impossible for a long time. Given that former CEO Jack Dorsey stated “we’ll probably never do it.” when asked about it.

However, there’s new leadership at Twitter since Dorsey stepped down last year. Parag Agrawal became the new CEO and just recently Tesla CEO, Elon Musk joined the Twitter Board.

In addition to that, Musk currently owns a 9% stake in Twitter, making him the biggest stakeholder in the company.

On April 5, Musk’s poll, which had over 4 million participants, indicated that 74% were in support of an edit button.

An Edit button? What’s the worry?

Twitter is powerful, there’s no doubt about that.

From #BlackLivesMatter to Oswald’s ourday celebrations, Twitter has been used to champion many positive movements. A single tweet can go viral and be seen by millions in just a few minutes.

Information spreads so fast these days and so does misinformation.

Tweets have the power to influence people’s sentiments, especially in relation to political and social matters. With that influence comes the responsibility for users to tweet accurately and with the necessary insight.

One of such issues that may come up is that editing tweets could be used to alter public conversations if not implemented appropriately.

Some may argue that there is no cause to worry about the incidence of such misinformation, since they’ll still happen regardless.

There should be an edit button

The majority of users calling out of an edit button are doing so for innocent reasons such as correcting typing errors.

It’s still early days and we’ll have to wait to see how this unfolds.