Starting today, Twitter’s new paid subscription service, Twitter Blue, is available in the U.S. Among the features available for the $2.99 monthly fee is an “undo” button, allowing you to pay for the privilege of what is essentially pre-deleting tweets.
With Undo Tweet, you have up to 60 seconds to preview and make changes to your Tweet before it’s public pic.twitter.com/vv3erIPrkH
— Twitter Blue (@TwitterBlue) November 9, 2021
Basically, it looks like Twitter Blue allows you to set a timer for up to 60 seconds so that if you realize a tweet has a typo or some other mistake (or maybe you realize something you said was assholish or unnecessary to the discourse), you can recall it before it posts.
This service has already been available in Canada and Australia for a few months and I’m genuinely curious to know if people find it useful because I simply do not understand.
you can get this for free if you just sit there on the draft screen for 60 seconds and think real hard about if you wanna tweet the thing. https://t.co/NJGv5oqdrz
— Rebekah Valentine (@duckvalentine) November 9, 2021
It’s not that this is a terrible idea. (Gmail has a similar undo function that lasts just a few seconds.) I’m just wondering who’s going to actually use the timer, waiting up to a minute for their tweet to post, without just impatiently clicking through.
This website’s idea of an undo button is making you wait 15 seconds to post something. I wasted $3 so you don’t have to. pic.twitter.com/qYvIChqHDm
— herbibored to death (@pickydeer) November 9, 2021
I’m not paying to “undo” my tweets. Y’all can get these typos for free ninety nine. https://t.co/DPk8seoOza
— Dylan Park (@dyllyp) November 9, 2021
It’s not clear why or if an undo button is really more useful than the already-existing (and free) delete button, although deleting and reposting tweets comes with its own set of issues, as people have been pointing out.
that “undo tweet” upsell is such a dick move. for those unaware, if you manually “undo” a tweet by tweeting it, deleting it, and reposting it, the reposted version gets absolutely sandbagged by the twitter algorithm. twitter is essentially selling algorithm preference here.
— 〽️ax krieger’s big moves (@MaxKriegerVG) November 9, 2021
There are other features in Twitter Blue that are potentially more interesting than the undo button. “Reader mode” turns long threads into easier-to-read paragraphs, similar, it sounds, to the (again, already free) Thread Reader App.
The service also offers bookmarks folders. Personally, this is actually tempting. I bookmark a ton of tweets, and for various reasons, from ideas for articles to just funny things I want to send to someone later. Folders could be useful. Throw in a mass-edit function to clean out those folders and that might be worth $3 a month.
There’s also a feature that partners with news outlets, offering ad-free article access. As someone who gets a lot of their news from their Twitter timeline, this sounded super interesting … until I read the details.
Twitter Blue is partnering with more than 300 U.S.-based outlets to offer ad-free articles, and will share revenue with those outlets. The example used in a promo video is an article from The Atlantic, which is a paywalled site. It seemed like maybe this would be a way to read trending articles that you can’t otherwise access.
Turns out you CAN scroll forever. Support journalism while getting an ad-free reading experience on some US-based publishers’ websites. Look for the “Ad-free with Twitter Blue” label in your timeline. Paywall access not included pic.twitter.com/AmWh7WShXA
— Twitter Blue (@TwitterBlue) November 9, 2021
Except as that tweet says, this feature doesn’t let you pass paywalls, so even as a subscriber, you might not be able to read the articles. Also, Twitter Blue users will still see ads on Twitter itself. So for anyone looking to see fewer ads, this sounds like a wash and therefore why would you pay money for nothing?
Am I missing something? Are you planning on signing up for Twitter Blue and if so, please explain it to me!
(image: Twitter)
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