Twitter is considering ‘clarification’ feature

Twitter doesn’t have an edit button, but it could one day have something close. Sort of.

CEO Jack Dorsey said the company is thinking about a “clarification” feature that would allow users to include additional context for old tweets. Speaking Thursday at Goldman Sachs’ Internet and Technology Conference in San Francisco, Dorsey said the company is considering such a feature as a potential way to help people feel more comfortable about what they share on Twitter.

“One of the concepts we’re thinking about is clarifications,” Dorsey said, saying that it could function similarly to a quote tweet. “Kind of like retweet with comment.. to add some context and some color on what they might have tweeted, or what they might have meant.”

People already often use the quote tweet option for this kind of thing, but the two tweets may not always have the same reach, Dorsey noted. But if the person had opted to “clarify” that tweet, then the original tweet could always appear with the subsequent clarification.

Dorsey cautioned that the feature is still just something the company is thinking about, not necessarily something that would launch. But he said such a feature could help people feel more comfortable with Twitter.

“If we can figure that out then we take an excuse off the table of people saying, ‘I don’t want this massive history,’ ” he said. 

Dorsey’s comments come after a number of high profile Twitter users have landed in hot water for years-old comments they had made on the platform. Kevin Hart withdrew from hosting the Oscars soon after homophobic tweets from 2010 surfaced. Host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, has also faced backlash over his tweets, and James Gunn was pulled off Guardians of the Galaxy for his old tweets.

Of course, there’s only so much “clarifying” you can do when the tweet in question is a tasteless “joke.” And you might still be better off just deleting some of your cringey hot takes. But a clarification feature could help prevent inaccurate information from spreading, or add valuable context to something that’s being misinterpreted. 

It could also help address embarrassing typos and other, smaller, mistakes in the absence of that edit button we’ll probably never actually see.