Twitter Will ‘Probably’ Never Add an Edit Button, Jack Dorsey Says

There won’t be an edit button in 2020, Twitter CEO says

Twitter boss Jack Dorsey has heard your calls for an edit button — and he isn’t budging.

Responding to questions in a video posted by Wired on Tuesday, Dorsey was asked if Twitter will introduce an edit button in 2020. Dorsey didn’t leave room for interpretation.

“The answer is no,” he said.

Dorsey expanded on the company’s decision to avoid an edit button, saying it goes back to Twitter’s early days as a text message service. “As you all know, when you send a text, you can’t really take it back,” Dorsey said. “We wanted to preserve that vibe, that feeling, in the early days.”

Now, introducing an edit button could lead to more confusion than it solves, he said. Dorsey pointed to retweets, saying you wouldn’t want someone to change the context of their tweet an hour after you shared it. Editing tweets could also become an issue if someone changes what they said after users reply to their messages. While fixing typos and bad links would be useful, it’s not worth the drawbacks that could come with an edit button, Dorsey said.

“These are all the considerations,” Dorsey added, “but we’ll probably never do it.”

You can watch Dorsey’s full questions-and-answers video below:

 

Comments