Facebook is in the process of giving a gift to the clumsy, hurried, and drunk. Over the next few days, the company will roll out full comment editing to all users.
For a little while, Facebook has allowed users to edit comments within a few seconds of posting. So, if you spotted that typo quickly you could save yourself some embarrassment. Now, users will have unlimited time to make changes to comments, which means that Facebook will open up your entire comment history for editing.
Apparently, this new feature is slowly rolling out to users, so most people probably only see a “delete” option next to comments. I’m lucky enough to be one of the early recipients:
And you can press Esc to cancel at any time:
It should be noted that users are still unable to edit original posts – only add a location, redate, and delete them.
Comment editors shouldn’t think they can abuse this system, you know, if they happened to get a little tipsy and mouth off to someone. Sure, you will be able to edit your comments, but there will now exist an “Edit History” that allows users to look back at the journey a specific comment has made – correction by correction.
As of now, users cannot edit comments made in Facebook’s comment widget on sites and there’s no editing function showing up for me on mobile. I’ve contacted Facebook about comment editing coming to these two formats and will let you know when I hear back.
UPDATE: About that, Facebook told me that “comment editing is not available for the plugin but we’ll consider it for the future.”
But for now, enjoy the fact that your commenting missteps, however terrible, will no longer be permanent. Always on record, sure, but forever correctible.