Earlier this year, Twitter’s CEO pretty much shut down the idea of introducing an edit button to tweets. This is because Twitter doesn’t want to remove the spontaneity behind tweets, but it looks like the company is testing out something that will at the very least give users pause before they post their thoughts to the internet.
In a post by the company, they have announced a new experimental feature for the Twitter app on iOS. With this new feature, Twitter says that they will attempt to detect language that might be considered harmful, and before that tweet can be posted, it will prompt users and gives them a chance to maybe reconsider their words before hitting that send button.
Twitter is by no means attempting to censor users and users can still go ahead and post what they want (as long as it complies with the company’s ToS), but hopefully the pause will let users calm down and maybe rethink what they want to say. This is actually not the first time we’re seeing a social media platform attempt such a feature.
When things get heated, you may say things you don't mean. To let you rethink a reply, we’re running a limited experiment on iOS with a prompt that gives you the option to revise your reply before it’s published if it uses language that could be harmful.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) May 5, 2020
Last year, Instagram introduced a similar feature that attempts to detect offensive captions in their posts and will prompt users, giving them a chance to make an edit before posting. We’re not sure how effective this feature will be, but we suppose it’s better than doing nothing.