Twitter’s erdit edit button has finally arrived — sort of!
The social media platform officially started testing the long-awaited feature on Thursday, although not everyone will have access to it from Day 1.
“If you see an edited Tweet it’s because we’re testing the edit button,” Twitter’s official account tweeted Thursday morning.
“This is happening and you’ll be okay.”
Twitter is testing the feature internally and will soon roll it out to a "select group of people," Twitter Canada spokesperson Cam Gordon said in a news release.
That select group will include Twitter Blue subscribers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. It's unclear how many people will be included, but the trial is expected to begin in late September.
Reaction on the platform was immediate and not entirely positive.
Some people said it'll be "awesome" to be able to fix their mistakes, while others complained that tweets will no longer be a permanent snapshot of someone's thoughts.
"It was fun while it lasted," wrote one critic. "Twitter was special because it was immutable."
"Most dangerous thing you could do. Think what politicians and fascists could do with it," wrote sports journalist Keith Olbermann. "And sports commentators."
Another popular tweet declared that the edit button will "literally ruin" Twitter's legacy. "People can easily manipulate their old and problematic tweets and wash their sins," the user wrote.
"Not if the tweet will say it's been edited," another user replied.
Although some people are clearly hesitant about the change, it sounds like Twitter has thought about these issues already.
Twitter explained on its website that there will be limits to the edit button, so you can't go back and change something stupid you wrote five years ago.
Trial users will only be able to edit their tweets "a few times in the 30 minutes following their publication."
Tweets that have been altered will be flagged as "edited" on the platform, and there'll be a timestamp and an icon so you can see exactly when the change was made.
Courtesy of Twitter
You'll also be able to tap this label and look at the tweet's edit history, so those typos and old takes will still be visible online.
Twitter says these limits are "important" for protecting the "integrity of the conversation" and maintaining a public record of what's been said.
Twitter Blue is a monthly subscription service, which means you'll likely have to pay up if you want to edit your tweets later this year.
It's unclear if regular users will get access to the edit button at some point, but here's hoping!