Advertisement

News

We finally get to see the Twitter Edit button in action

We finally get to see the Twitter Edit button in action
Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

  • Updated:

Just like pretty much everybody else on the internet, we here at Softonic have been tracking rumors of a Twitter edit button for years and years. The Twitter edit button news finally broke last month that the social media giant was finally working on the long-requested feature, with the Twitter Comms account posting that they’d actually been working on the feature for over a year. Well, now things have kicked up a notch further as leaked footage of the new edit button in action has come to light.

Twitter Download Now

A Twitter edit button has for too long seemed like an obvious update for the social network to implement. You’ll know this if, like us, you’ve ever had to delete a tweet because of a typo or some other silly mistake. It’s not that simple, however. With people’s tweets often being cited in everything from articles to governmental reports, an edited tweet might actually attribute a citation to something that has a different meaning from its original intent. At least this is the main reason, Twitter has been giving for dragging its feet on this update. Well, it seems that Twitter has found a way to fix this potential problem and this leak proves it.

The ever-vigilant social media watcher Jane Manchum Wong has tweeted a screengrab of the Twitter edit feature in action. Interestingly, it clearly seems that Twitter still has a lot of work to do before the feature will go live.

Reuploading all media with every edit, as is currently the case, will put a lot of strain on the network and is a kink that will need ironing out before launch. It is becoming clear though how Twitter will deal with the potential misrepresentation of viral tweets issue. Wong has previously reported that all edits will in essence become their own tweets. This means that should you like or comment on a tweet that is subsequently edited, the edited version will actually become another version of the tweet and the original version you liked will still be available on the network.

Once a tweet has been edited it will show a little “Edited” tag, which you will be able to click to access the Edit History of the tweet. The history will list all the edited versions of the tweet with users able to see them all. If you click on an older version of the tweet, it’ll have a “There’s a new version of this Tweet” tag.

Although it’s clear there is still work to be done on this feature, it is good to see that Twitter has come with an elegant solution to a historic problem. To learn about another solution Twitter is testing, read our article on Twitter’s new ‘Unmention’ feature.

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney

Patrick Devaney is a news reporter for Softonic, keeping readers up to date on everything affecting their favorite apps and programs. His beat includes social media apps and sites like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat. Patrick also covers antivirus and security issues, web browsers, the full Google suite of apps and programs, and operating systems like Windows, iOS, and Android.

Latest from Patrick Devaney

Editorial Guidelines