The twitter editing button— we’ve all been wanting it, but is it actually a good thing?
Don’t get too excited because it doesn’t exist (yet); however, when beauty guru Jeffree Star tweeted asking for the feature, Twitter might have given us a hint that it’s coming.
This sparked a new, important debate regarding the use of an editing feature. While most of us will just edit typos, there might be people out there who will use it to cover up an ignorant past.
Whether you love him or hate him, Star has spurred multiple controversies throughout his career (which he discussed in-depth with Shane Dawson in a series of videos) and is known for calling people out and saying what comes to mind through social media. However, Star has also been accused of being racist, based on comments he made early in his career and old tweets. This is why many influencers such as Jackie Aina and Arnell Armon refuse to support him or his products.
Many other beauty influencers have undergone similar criticism last summer, leaving them to deactivate their twitter accounts, delete many old tweets and sparking a conversation in the beauty community.
What does this have to do with Twitter? Well, people are concerned that through an editing feature, Twitter users would be able to change and reword old tweets that use ignorant language. Of course, everyone can change, grow and learn (which Star, James Charles and many other influencers have claimed) better than their old ways, however should they just be able to erase and edit the past and not be held accountable for things they said?
Another aspect is that you can retweet someone’s tweet that you agree with but they could go back and edit it hours later to something that you might not necessarily agree with or want on your account.
Twitter should take instances like this into consideration before adding an editing button. In the comments of Star’s tweets, users suggested many fixes to this issue such as a time limit on how long after the tweet is sent that it can be edited and having a “versions” button that shows each version prior to editing.
Both of these ideas would be a useful technique to prohibit Twitter users changing old, ignorant tweets. This does not change the fact that the user can just delete it, however at least they will not be able to just cover up and hide those offensive posts.
What do you think? Tweet us @HerCampusWVU to let us know!