Twitter launches an edit button for paid subscribers

Twitter is launching an edit button for the first time after years of debate, both internal and external, about whether such a feature was a good idea for a product known for making posts go viral.

The editing feature will soon be available to users who pay $4.99 per month for a Twitter Blue subscription. The feature, which will be called Edit Tweet, will allow users to make changes to their tweet up to 30 minutes after it was originally posted. Edited tweets will have a special label, and other Twitter users will be able to click on it to see previous versions of the post.

The company is specifically testing the edit button with a small group of users in hopes of quickly resolving potential issues, the company wrote in a blog post. The edit button will roll out to Twitter Blue users in the coming weeks.

Twitter has debated the pros and cons of an edit button for years, with concerns that it could be abused by people hoping to go viral, only to change the content of a post after it's been retweeted. Former CEO Jack Dorsey said in January 2020 that the appearance of an edit button was highly unlikely, but it was so widely requested by the public that the company never made a final decision on the matter.

The debate snowballed earlier this year when Tesla CEO Elon Musk took a large stake in the company, then polled his followers on whether they wanted an edit button. Most of those who voted said yes. Twitter quickly confirmed that it was already testing the feature internally and, in an apparent effort to distance the project from Musk's influence, clarified that it had started work on an edit button before Musk's survey.