Twitter will probably never launch edit button, says boss Jack Dorsey
The chief executive has explained the reasons against the idea.
Tweeters hoping for an edit button might want to give up now, as the social network’s boss has said “we’ll probably never do it”.
An edit feature has been long requested by Twitter users looking for an easier way to amend errors in their tweets, but chief executive Jack Dorsey has cast fresh doubts about it ever arriving.
During a Q&A for Wired, the entrepreneur was asked whether an edit button would land in 2020, to which he responded: “The answer is no.”
Explaining the reasons against the idea, he said: “We started as an SMS, text message service.
“And as you all know, when you send a text, you can’t really take it back. We wanted to preserve that vibe, that feeling, in the early days.”
The 43-year-old reiterated previous concerns about how an edit button would work if content is retweeted, completely changing the meaning of what was originally shared.
Mr Dorsey said the company had “considered” a one-minute or 30-second window to allow people to amend any spelling mistakes or broken links, but this would mean delaying tweets from being sent, which it is reluctant to do.
“These are all the considerations, it’s just work, but we’ll probably never do it,” he explained.
This comes after Twitter executive Kayvon Beykpour said last year that an edit feature was not “near the top of our priorities”.
Earlier this month, the tech giant announced plans to test a feature allowing users greater control over who can reply to their tweets, even blocking responses completely.
