The giant social media platform Twitter announced on Tuesday that it will begin testing a new “edit” button in the coming months, surprising users on the same day it announced Tesla‘s CEO Elon Musk would join the company’s board of directors.
In a tweet, Twitter’s head of consumer products, Jay Sullivan, claimed the company had been working on an edit option since last year, calling it “the most requested Twitter feature for many years.”
The decision, which was initially hinted at by Twitter on April Fools Day last week, comes as the company is through a bigger transition, with Musk becoming the company’s largest shareholder and joining the board of directors after challenging the social media platform’s commitment to free speech.
After revealing his 9.2 percent investment in the company on Monday, Musk began polling Twitter followers regarding an edit button. The poll received more than 4.2 million votes as of 6:30 p.m. EST, with 73.5 percent in favor of the feature.
On Monday, Twitter’s Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal urged users to “vote carefully,” though the company later clarified that the poll did not inspire the edit button.
Sullivan tweeted the feature will take time to fine-tune as “without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation.”
He noted that the company will actively seek “input and adversarial thinking” before publishing Edit.
In the coming months, Twitter will begin testing the feature within its Twitter Blue Labs paid subscription service to “learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s possible,” according to the company. For a monthly fee, Twitter Blue members have exclusive access to premium features and app customizations.
