Twitter is Trying the ‘Edit Button’. Will it Aggregate for Good?

Twitter’s edit button will only help troll accounts that exist only for sake of manipulating meaningful discourse.

Twitter, last Tuesday tweeted that it is working on an edit button that will enable users to edit 280 character long tweets. Twitter is taking this step after it received so many requests from users. The Kim Kardashian tweet about cornering Jack Dorsey at her husband’s birthday party asking for a Twitter edit button is well known. It is evident that people vary in spinoffs, a typo or a hot take can set off on Twitter where information travels faster than the speed of light. However, it will have more negative consequences for users than positive ones, both intended and unintended.

Twitter was being flooded by requests for many years, but it refrained to give in to those requests citing concerns that it could be abused. It was all because, the then Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey was stubborn about the change and stated very much categorically, that Twitter would never have such a feature. With new CEO Parag Aggarwal and Elon Musk on board, the company stated it has plans to bring "significant improvements" in the days to come, starting with the edit button.

After a tweet goes viral, the edited tweet can throw the entire thread out of context and not speak of the troll accounts and their tweets which exist only for sake of manipulating meaningful discourse. Providing them an edit button would be like giving a stone to a mad person. Even the well-minded people, who circulate the original tweet, would rebroadcast information unaware that the content has been changed.

Twitter users are already having a field day using the delete feature. They tweet something like an overt lie and quietly delete it after facing brickbats as if nothing happened, making it difficult to hold them responsible for malicious content. With the edit button, it will be worse. Instead of deleting the tweet, they would simply edit their tweet to make it all look hale and healthy. Taking screenshots might work but this would create a flood of tweets with screenshots only adding to the existing noise.

Twitter was created as a messaging platform but on the internet for people who want to share their opinion with a large audience. An edit option is something neither desirable nor compatible with the very spirit of Twitter. Now that it wants to introduce the feature to select Twitter blue users, we need to wait to make a definitive judgment on its requirement and if Twitter users are worth it.