Well, it took 8 years, but Facebook has finally bit the bullet and allowed users to edit their comments.
It’s happened tons of times. A stray typo, a sleep-deprived moment of inappropriate humor – anything can instigate the inevitable mistaken comment. Until now, the best way to deal with this was to delete the entire comment and re-write the thing in hopes that nobody had noticed your gaffe. Now, users can simply hover over the top right-hand corner of the comment they wish to edit, click the pencil that appears after a second, and click “edit” from the menu.
Once you edit a comment, it’ll change to show an “Edited” text next to the “Like” option. You can click the “Edited” text to show your past edits.
And here’s the edit history box.
According to John Constine from TechCrunch:
Facebook tells me comment editing is rolling out now and will become available to everyone in the next few days on the web. There’s no comment editing yet in Facebook’s embeddable comment widget for websites or from mobile yet where that damn auto-correct lurks. Also, you still can’t edit original posts, all of which would be much more helpful than this. But I guess if you have to say or spell something wrong, do it from your desktop on someone else’s news feed post.
By “original posts,” Constine means that users still can’t edit things like uploaded links or status updates. The edit feature is restricted to comments. Maybe Facebook will extend the feature to original posts in another 8 years? Of course, by then, we’ll all be walking around with telepathic social networks, so the point might be moot.
In any case, what are your thoughts on the change? Let me know in the comments.