Twitter’s ‘edit button’ in the making but not related to Elon Musk’s poll

Elon Musk’s Twitter poll about an “edit button” seemed to send shockwaves through the social media platform’s management team this week. The micro-blogging website announced that it is “working on an edit button” 

However, barring the early announcement, the new feature was not connected to Musk’s poke on Monday. “Now that everyone is asking, yes we have been working on an edit feature since last year”, the social media post from Twitter read.

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Elon Musk, who was recently announced as Twitter’s biggest shareholder with a 9.2% stake, launched a poll on the website for his 80 million followers and asked if they wanted an edit button. The 50-year-old also cheekily misspelled “yes” as “yse” and “no” as “on.” More than 4 million people had voted as of Tuesday evening.

The “edit button” may take time as Twitter is still working on the new feature. “We are kicking off testing within @TwitterBlue Labs in the coming months to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible”, the tweet on Tuesday read.

Jay Sullivan, Twitter‘s head of consumer products, elaborated on why the rollout of the “edit button” is taking long. He explained that while it is not difficult to fix any mistakes in your micro-blog, the feature may also be misused to alter the record of a public conversation.

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“It will take time and we will be actively seeking input and adversarial thinking in advance of launching edit”, Sullivan told NBC News. He added, “We will approach this feature with care and thoughtfulness and we will share updates as we go.”

The social media website has previously flirted with the idea of introducing the edit button, but only an April fool joke. In contrast, former CEO Jack Dorsey, in a January 2020 Q&A maintained that Twitter will “probably never do it.”