Did Twitter slyly test the much requested edit button feature? Recently, a rather suddenly introduced feature appeared on Twitter, using which users were seemingly able to edit responses made to tweets. While this got many quite excited, as it turns out, the said ‘feature’ was not really a beta test made by Twitter. Rather, it was a bug in the system that caused the feature appear as if it was an integrated edit button on the platform. The glitch has reportedly been confirmed by Twitter now, so it is safe to assume that the accidental appearance of the feature was not an alpha-stage testing feature that appeared by mistake on Twitter’s stable build.
As revealed in tweets last night, the feature seemingly appeared to be as close to an edit tweet feature as you may expect. In this case, if a user replies to a tweet and spots an error that needs to be edited, they could simply delete the tweet and hit reply to the original tweet again. While doing so right now simply leads to Twitter’s text field opening up where the user has to type their full response again, as spotted by users, Twitter was now showing the full text material of what a user had previously typed. They could then simply make the necessary changes and tweet the response again, without needing to rewrite the entire thing yet again.
OMG I think I just edited a tweet?? I wrote a tweet, noticed a benign single-letter typo, deleted the tweet and pressed “reply” again and found the full text of my previous tweet available to edit and send again. If this really is the feature test I think it is I am SO HAPPY.— Star Simpson (@starsandrobots) September 13, 2020
Unfortunately, Twitter’s communications department has since confirmed that this was not a feature that was being tested, and is instead a bug in the system that they are looking to resolve already. Funnily, the news of Twitter fixing this bug on their platform was not received warmly, and many expressed that a feature of this kind can actually improve the overall experience that users get on the platform.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has practically ruled out introducing an edit tweet button in the future. Among his reasons is the fact that allowing users to edit their tweets may lead to factual inaccuracy and debates around the sanctity of what was posted before, and given how important Twitter is in politics and other key areas, may lead to misuse of the feature on the platform.
Given that Twitter has now confirmed that this was not an edit feature in the making, it not seems that Twitterati can go back to complaining about the lack of the edit tweet button, yet again.
Comments
0 comment