Entertainment

Kim Kardashian Wants To Fix Social Media

by Loretta Donelan

As though proposing a previously unheard of revelation, Kim Kardashian has called for an edit feature for Twitter. On Friday night, she tweeted, "I just emailed Twitter to see if they can add an edit feature so that when u misspell something u don't have to delete & repost Let's see... [SIC]." Unsurprisingly, because she's Kim Kardashian and that does hold more relevance than many of us will ever know first-hand, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, responded almost immediately with tweet reading, "@KimKardashian great idea! We're always looking at ways to make things faster and easier."

Though the idea for an edit feature on Twitter is by no means new — it's been rumored since at least 2013 — Kardashian's request does raise a compelling point. An edit feature on Twitter could be interesting. Anyone who has used Twitter has experienced the regret of posting a tweet before realizing that a word was misspelled, or the phrasing of their sentence was weird. However, there have also been times when I've realized my tweet could be seen as offensive or cause someone who read it discomfort — I'm sure many Twitter users have experienced that problem as well. In those instances, I have usually deleted the tweet quickly after posting it — but what if, however, people have already seen it, or it's already accrued lots of favorites and/or retweets?

Kardashian, who has over 34 million Twitter followers has occasionally deleted a tweet or photo and then reposted another one, but that is an annoying solution for someone who's in the public eye as much as she is — so I understand why she'd like an edit feature to make the process smoother.

But, what kind of an edit feature would it be?

Twitter is more of a public platform than Facebook, which is a service that does offer editing. (Facebook's edits allow you to edit a comment or post, and while your followers can see that it was edited, you can't see the original.) On Twitter, where you can't edit after you've posted something, careers have been destroyed over ill-thought out tweets. While you can delete them, it is often seen as bad form for a public figure to delete a tweet that caused controversy — and anyway, savvy users know to screenshot controversial tweets in case they are deleted.

In December of 2013, a Twitter editing feature was seriously rumored, and according to reports, it was one that would allow for users to only change a few words. (This limit would prevent people from posting something real that got retweeted and then replacing the text with an ad, and probably to prevent trolls from going crazy.) This seems like a solid solution to many Twitter users' edit woes, and a compelling one at that.

Could it be that Kim Kardashian is going to be the one to fix the Internet? I wouldn't be surprised.