Twitter is a global social media platform with an active user base of 300 million. After getting Parag Agarwal as its new CEO and Elon Musk buying its 9.2% of share, Twitter has finally confirmed about an awaited feature of the edit button.
Twitter is a platform that people use to share their ideas and opinions and grasp worldwide news. Sometimes, it turns out to be a virtual war zone with open space for everyone to participate and debate. It is more like a town having a number of alleys where people are divided based on which alley they belong to. Divided by opinions, its trending results are somewhat virtual rallies where the most numbers will be on the top. But one thing that unites them is the desire for an edit button.
If you are a Twitter user you may have seen there is no edit button for posts. It means, that if you post something either it’s text or graphics, you cannot edit or change it once it’s posted. You have options for either to delete or repost it. Twitter claims that it’s just for security purposes and agenda-free, if you post something and it got bigger spread around the globe and then you change its content, could be a mess.
Twitter’s world-building
Twitter came of an age when hardware from physical enterprise vendors ruled the data center. Since then, they have continuously designed and updated their fleet to take advantage of it. The latest open standards in hardware technology and efficiency to deliver the best possible experience. They started to migrate from third-party hosting in early 2010, which meant they had to learn how to build and manage the infrastructure internally and with limited visibility into core infrastructure needs.
Also, Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. Violence, harassment, and other similar types of behavior discourage people from expressing themselves and ultimately diminish the value of global public conversation. The rules are to ensure all people can participate in public conversation freely and safely. Twitter is always conscious of its privacy policies such as ‘you may not publish or post other people’s private information such as home phone numbers and addresses without their express authorization and permission.’ They also prohibit threatening to expose private information or incentivizing others to do so. And also ‘You may not post or share intimate photos or videos of someone that were produced or distributed without their consent.’
How could the edit button exist without violating its policies?
Twitter always arguably admitted that they could not give an edit button since there are so many issues regarding security and policies. Though they have been working on it for more than a year to facilitate the edit feature, they never officially announced the date of its unveiling.
Recently, after Elon Musk bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter with a tease on the edit button, the news however pressed the button for open debate. Parag Agarwal retweets with a quote saying “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.” After that incident, Twitter itself shares a post saying they are working on it.
Pros and Cons of having an edit button
Elon’s poll received 77% of users want to have an edit feature on Twitter. By adding, this may relieve many people but also take up a quarry to exploit its feature and privacy.
Pros: Like most other social platforms, Twitter has hadn’t an edit button since its start. But now the news has confirmed that Twitter is working on it. It could help people to recorrect their mistakes like typos, errors, and misinformation. Influencers may post something that could go viral but any misinformation with that can bring embarrassment. Getting the edit button could help them to correct their mistakes.
Cons: With many pros, there are cons too. If anybody wants to violate any security rules they could easily do so. Like if anyone posts something that got viral and after some time he/she wants to edit its content to misleading content, he/she could easily manipulate others.
We can expect to see a limited time or limited edit option, or may only the paid subscribers will get that feature.
Read More: Elon Musk Acquires 9.2% Stake in Twitter, Asks for an Edit Button
