Twitter is apparently testing a ‘Cancel Tweet’ button

You whimpered and complained and moaned. And no, you don’t get your “Edit Tweet” button, but Twitter is testing something as well. Will he do you are happy?

Users have long been clamoring for, and Twitter has repeatedly refused to implement, a tool that would allow them to edit the content of already sent tweets. Yet soon, users may be able to stop embarrassing themselves in the best (or maybe just superior) way. tweets before they are uploaded.

By 9to5Mac, reverse engineering expert and prolific data miner Jane Manchun Wong discovered that Twitter is working on a “cancel sending” timer for tweets, which seems to give users about five seconds after the tweet to rethink whether that was actually a good idea. This is not the same as an edit button, but it helps solve the problem of hitting send and immediately realizing that a message contains a grammatical error, was in response to the wrong user, was just misguided, Where was downright ignorant.

It’s unclear when the tweet cancellation feature might roll out or if it’s just a test that might never reach users at all, but Twitter has been on an engineering frenzy recently. Most of the features announced or rolled out in recent months are clones of other popular sites and apps, including its own clones of clubhouse hangout audio chat, disappear from Instagram stories, Substack monetizable newsletters, and Patreon subscriptions.

G / O Media can get a commission

The edit button has been one of the most requested features on Twitter, but CEO Jack Dorsey said last year it almost certainly would be. never be implemented because it’s not like you can pick up an SMS either. (The difference here is that the stakes in tweets can be a bit higher than texts, depending on how many people read them. And the Wayback Machine is ruthless.) There is Other obvious downsides to an editing feature, such as the certainty that one of its biggest uses would be to troll other Twitter users into tricking them into replying or quoting posts that suddenly say something. completely different.

“We started out as an SMS, text messaging service. And as you all know, when you text, you can’t really take it back, ”Dorsey said. in a YouTube video when discussing outlook an edit button. “We wanted to keep that vibe, that feeling, in the early days… We probably never will.

For now, you’ll just have to pretend you’ve never hit send at all, which is probably for the best.