Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Is Still Thinking About Adding An Edit Button

One of the most frustrating things about Twitter is that it doesn’t allow users to edit tweets to fix typos. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has revealed that they are indeed planning to bring an edit button to the platform, but he noted that they don’t want to rush it.

“We have been considering this for a while and we have to do in the right way. We can’t just rush it out. We can’t make something which is distracting or takes anything away from the public record,” Dorsey said during his visit at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, according to The Next Web.

He also said that Twitter has to pay attention on how this type of feature will be used. Dorsey suggested that an edit button would be helpful in fixing typos, but they have to figure out a way to prevent users from editing all of their tweets from the past which could be a problem.

“You have to pay attention to what are the use cases for the edit button. A lot of people want the edit button because they want to quickly fix a mistake they made. Like a misspelling or tweeting the wrong URL. That’s a lot more achievable than allowing people to edit any tweet all the way back in time,” Dorsey explained.

The CEO also said that Twitter could prevent unlimited editing if the company ever decides to add the edit button to the platform. This makes a lot of sense since the feature could be abused by users who may have made controversial statements on Twitter. Allowing unlimited editing could lead to a lot of users altering or changing entire tweets to mislead or make people believe that they have never said something controversial.

The edit button has been a long requested feature on Twitter for a very long time now and nothing has been done to make it a reality. The last time that Dorsey actually mentioned adding the feature was all the way back in 2016, as pointed out by 9To5Mac. It’s already been two years and Dorsey hasn’t made up his mind yet.

The CEO may be right in saying that adding an edit button could present some problems, but these can easily be avoided. In 2016, tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) recommended a 60-second time limit to edit a recent tweet. The original tweet with the typo will also be shown in an edit history.