As per reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, editing a tweet using Twitter’s impending edit button might leave a digital trail of your post’s history. According to a tweet by Manchun Wong, edits seem to have an “immutable” property, meaning that when a tweet is modified, Twitter may produce a totally new message, all the while maintaining the prior iterations of that tweet. If a tweet’s modification history is visible to the public, it’s not clear how or if it will show. This could be an answer to critics’ worries about the potential for misuse of the tool, which some say might be exploited to modify public records and mislead users.
Looks like Twitter’s approach to Edit Tweet is immutable, as in, instead of mutating the Tweet text within the same Tweet (same ID), it re-creates a new Tweet with the amended content, along with the list of the old Tweets prior of that edit
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 16, 2022
Additionally, Alessandro Paluzzi has shared what seems to be images of the new functionality, which we can see for ourselves. “Edit Tweet” may be found under the three-dot menu on the right side of your tweets, according to Paluzzi.
In order to send a tweet, you must click the “Update” button, which takes you to a screen that looks very much like a standard tweet composer, except that it is pre-filled with your tweet’s content and reads “Tweet” rather than “Update.” In Paluzzi’s screenshots, however, the modification history of a tweet is not shown.
— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) April 15, 2022
After joking about the functionality on April Fool’s Day, Twitter said earlier this month that it is really working on an edit button. As soon as Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that he had purchased a 9.2 percent interest in Twitter, which made him the company’s biggest individual stakeholder, he surveyed his followers to find out whether they wanted an edit button. With Musk deciding to join and then quitting Twitter’s board of directors, as well as making an attempt to acquire the whole business, it has been a roller coaster of events ever since. Twitter shareholders are actively fighting to thwart Musk’s proposed acquisition of the company.
