Twitter takes one more step toward giving us an edit button

Twitter is apparently working on a new tweet embed feature that indicates whether or not an embedded tweet has been edited, taking us one step closer to actually getting a proper edit button.

On Monday, Jane Manchun Wong tweeted a screenshot of the in-progress tweet embed feature. The screenshot features two versions of the same embedded tweet.

Embedded Tweets will show whether it’s been edited, or whether there’s a new version of the Tweet

When a site embeds a Tweet and it gets edited, the embed doesn’t just show the new version (replacing the old one). Instead, it shows an indicator there’s a new version pic.twitter.com/mAz5tOiyOl

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 1, 2022

The tweet at the top of Wong’s screenshot appears to be a corrected, edited version of the tweet below it. The tweet embed at the top of the screenshot (the edited tweet) features a message that says “Last edited 6:30 PM · Aug 1, 2022” right under the text of the edited tweet. The tweet at the bottom of the screenshot appears to be the original tweet and contains a typo that is later seen to be corrected in the tweet at the top of the screenshot. The tweet embed at the bottom of the screenshot (the original tweet) also features a message, but this message is different. This message says: “There’s a new version of this Tweet.”

Essentially, as Wong notes in the above tweet and in a later reply tweet (see below), the tweet embed feature Twitter is working on is a way for edited tweets to remain transparent about the changes made to them. That way, if a website does embed someone’s tweet in an article and that tweet gets edited later by the tweet author, the tweet embed won’t just automatically morph into the newly edited version of the tweet without context.

Readers could still see the original tweet with an “indicator” as Wong puts it, that informs the reader that a newer version of the tweet exists. Or they could see an edited tweet with an indicator that notes when it was last edited.

It’s for the best — so that the Tweet author won’t be able to “rug pull” the site embedding the Tweet with something completely different

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 1, 2022

This tweet embed feature (if Twitter ends up rolling it out for everyone) looks like a decisive answer to some of the concerns about the bird app finally getting an edit button: What happens if changes are made to a tweet that alters its meaning? How can we have the freedom to correct our tweets but also remain transparent about the changes that have been made? This tweet embed feature seems to answer those questions and so far it looks like a good answer.

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