According to a report by researcher Jane Manchun Wong, Twitter’s edit button is set to take an unconventional approach wherein an edited tweet will be displayed as a new tweet altogether. With this approach, twitter hopes to untangle the stubborn thread that their edit feature has turned out to be.
According to Wong, twitter will be creating new tweets, with a unique tweet ID, separate from the original tweet, whenever the edit button is used. This would solve the problem for the end user, while also providing a solution to tampering with public record and user accountability.
Twitter will reportedly keep a record of the original tweets, which may or may not be made available for public viewing. While one could expect the record to be accessible to everyone, it also solves the problem surrounding embedded tweets on third party websites. Since the new tweet will have a new tweet ID, the old tweets would remain embedded and unchanged on these websites.
Twitter’s upcoming edit button seems to be the problem-of-the-year, with all the minds available working to solve it. And why wouldn’t it be? Since the platform launched in 2006, it has competed, and eventually become one, with multiple social media apps. And the competition has kept pace with their community’s demands of an edit feature, while twitter has maintained a healthy distance from it.
And some would justify Twitter’s hesitance. Afterall, it isn’t 2006 anymore. Twitter isn’t just a place where one goes to find out how an icecream store not having the mint choco-chip flavour became a minor inconvenience for their high school valedictorian. It’s a platform of public record, used by politicians and celebrities alike, to put out official word, or just a casual one pointing to their opinion on social issues. These tweets are used by news outlets all over the world to provide their reader’s with context. A half-baked edit feature would provide people a way to escape accountability. (Although let’s be honest, they’re probably just gonna remove that extra vowel they threw in.)
Deleted Tweets embedded on third party websites have recently caused similar headache’s to Twitter HQ. Although they did take a step back before it went out of hand.
