Twitter is finally testing an edit button, but experts say there's a risk it can be used in 'deliberately misleading ways'

By Jessica Riga

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Twitter says an edit button is one of the most requested features to date.(Reuters: Kacper Pempel/File photo)
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It's five years too late for Donald Trump's "covfefe" tweet, but an edit button is finally coming to Twitter.

The social media giant has announced it will roll out an editing feature to subscribers of its premium Twitter Blue service later this month.

The company says it's been testing the feature internally, which it said is one of the most requested features to date.

So can any tweet be edited?

Yes, but only for a certain period of time.

The edit function will give users 30 minutes to make changes to their 280-character messages such as fixing typos or adding hashtags after first publishing a tweet.

Users won't get just one chance to fix their mistakes, with the social media company saying tweets will soon be able to be edited "a few times" within the limited time frame.

For years, Twitter users have demanded the ability to edit their tweets after publishing, in line with nearly every other social media platform, including Meta Platform's Facebook and Instagram, Reddit and Pinterest.

How will I know a tweet has been edited?

To make it clear that a tweet has been modified, they'll be labelled and appear with an icon and timestamp.

Users can then look up past versions of the tweet by tapping the label.

A tweet with a label that says last edited 8:55am.
An example of what an edited tweet on Twitter will soon look like. (Twitter)
Twitter said it's testing the edit feature with a small group of users so it can identify and resolve potential issues.

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"This includes how people might misuse the feature," the company said in a blog post.

"You can never be too careful."

The time limit and version history play an important role, Twitter said.

"They help protect the integrity of the conversation and create a publicly accessible record of what was said."

But experts say there's no guarantee the feature won't be utilised by some users to contribute to misinformation.

Daniel Angus, a Professor of Digital Communication at the Queensland University of Technology, says it seems Twitter have responded "productively" to initial concerns over the feature to be used in bad faith.

"The time limit on tweet edits and these transparency tools are good measures that sensibly address some of the potential for the edit feature to be used by bad faith actors to deliberately deceive," Professor Angus told the ABC.

###"Nothing can completely remove such a feature from being used in deliberately misleading ways though," he adds.

###"As with all platform affordances there will be ways in which any feature will be gamed."

Twitter has already experimented with versions of an edit button.

Subscribers of Twitter Blue currently have access to a feature that holds tweets for up to one minute, allowing users to review the tweet and "undo" it before the post is published.

Does any of this have to do with Elon Musk?

The company said in April that it has been working on the feature since last year, a day after Tesla CEO Elon Musk polled his followers on whether they wanted an edit button.

About three-quarters of the 4.4 million respondents said yes.

Later that month, Mr Musk offered to buy Twitter for $US44 billion ($64 billion) with the promise that his ownership would bring big changes to the service.

He has since attempted to back out of the deal citing concerns about fake accounts and whistleblower allegations of poor cybersecurity, setting the stage for a bruising legal battle over whether he has to go through with the purchase.