According to reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, editing a tweet with Twitter’s future edit button may leave a digital trail of your tweet’s history. Manchun Wong says in a tweet that the edit function appears to have a “immutable” quality, which means that when a tweet is modified, Twitter may create a whole new tweet while keeping prior versions of that tweet.
“It appears that Twitter’s method to Update Tweet is immutable,” Manchun Wong explains. “Instead of mutating the Tweet text within the same Tweet (same ID), it re-creates a new Tweet with the corrected content, along with a list of the old Tweets prior to that edit.”
As Manchun Wong points out, it’s unclear how or if a tweet’s edit history would be visible to users. However, if Twitter decides to make tweet history public, it may be to address concerns about potential abuse of the tool, as some opponents feel it may be exploited to modify the public record and mislead users.
Source – Twitter
Alessandro Paluzzi, an app researcher, also tweeted what appear to be screenshots of the new feature, giving us a taste of how the edit button would look when it becomes live on Twitter. Paluzzi illustrates how the “Edit Tweet” option may appear in the three-dot menu on the right side of your tweets in one screenshot.
When you click the button, you’ll be sent to a screen that looks similar to the usual tweet composer, but it’s pre-filled with your tweet’s text and says “Update” instead of “Tweet” in the bottom right corner. However, Paluzzi’s screenshots do not show an opportunity to check a tweet’s edit history.
Twitter has not confirmed the existence of a tweet history tracker.
