Twitter may introduce “clarify tweet” option, still no edit feature

February 16, 2019

Nope, we still don’t have an “edit tweet” feature. However, Twitter has started tossing around the idea of a “clarify tweet” option for old tweets. According to Vibe, the latest idea comes following concern of growing “cancel culture.”

“Cancel culture” refers to the mass social media frenzy in which people attempt to “eradicate” celebrities for their problematic pasts. However, many people believe the movement has gone too far.

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That said, Twitter may roll out a new option that will give people a chance to add background information to their previously sent tweets.

Additionally, the new feature would make it impossible for people to retweet the original once it had been clarified. Instead, users could only retweet the new one with context, therefore preventing certain statements from being misconstrued.

“One of the concepts we’re thinking about is clarifications,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says in a story with TechShout. “Kind of like retweet with comment to add some context and some color on what they might have tweeted, or what they might have meant. By doing so, you might imagine that the original tweet then would not have the sort of engagement around it. Like you wouldn’t be able to retweet the original tweet, for instance.”

“The other thing that we’re seeing more broadly within the culture right now in this particular moment is people quote-unquote ‘being canceled’ because of past things that they’ve said on Twitter or various other places in social media,” Dorsey continues.

Earlier this month, Twitter gave fans a little bit of hope in regards to incorporating an “edit tweet” feature. In a podcast with Joe Rogan, Dorsey toyed with the idea of giving users a five to 30 second window to edit a tweet.

“You could build it as such so maybe we introduce a 5-second to 30-second delay in the sending,” Dorsey says. “And within that window, you can edit. This issue with going longer than that is it takes the real-time nature of the conversational flow out of it.”

What do you think of Twitter’s latest idea? Sound off in the comments below.