Report: Twitter is considering a clarification feature to help you explain errant tweets

By Melissa Locker

While you may never be able to fix that typo in your now-viral tweet, Twitter might eventually let you clarify what you meant.

At the Goldman Sachs Internet and Technology Conference, CEO Jack Dorsey said the company is considering adding a “clarification” feature that would let users include new or additional context for old tweets (which will come in handy when you need to explain that you meant “the” instead of “teh”).

“One of the concepts we’re thinking about is clarifications,” Dorsey said, according to Mashable, noting that the feature could work similarly to a quote tweet (which already exists on the site). “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.”

Dorsey said that he hopes such a feature would “help people feel more comfortable about what they share on Twitter.” Not that it seems like people are timid about what they share—whether that’s shower ideas, dad jokes, favorite smoothie ingredients, or their most burning racist thoughts. Dorsey seems to think people are hesitant to tweet over fear that their past tweets may come back to haunt them. “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.

Or, you know, just don’t tweet gross racist, sexist, homophobic things that you will come to regret.

Since clarification won’t help someone explain away their racist, homophobic, transphobic, fat-shaming, misogynistic “jokes,” perhaps instead of considering a feature that is basically a tweak of something that already exists on the site, Dorsey could focus on making Twitter a less hate-filled place. Sadly, we probably shouldn’t expect either of those anytime soon.

 
 

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