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Twitter

Twitter Is Adding An Edit Button (theverge.com) 40

Twitter has announced that it's working on an edit button. "The idea is that you'll be able to fix any typos or errors in a tweet without sacrificing any replies, retweets, or likes it's already accrued," reports The Verge. From the report: Twitter plans to begin testing the feature with Twitter Blue subscribers in "the coming months," the company said Tuesday. Jay Sullivan, the company's VP of consumer product, said that editing has been "the most requested Twitter feature for many years" in a thread on Tuesday. The company has been looking into how to build the feature "in a safe manner" since last year. "Without things like time limits, controls, and transparency about what has been edited, Edit could be misused to alter the record of the public conversation," he said. "Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work."
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Twitter Is Adding An Edit Button

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  • by iamnotx0r ( 7683968 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @06:30PM (#62420794)
    Funny. :)
  • I mean, with Twitter, you already have the problem that anything you ever post can get screen-captured and saved permanently. So anyone deemed interesting/important enough to get followed closely has had NO chance to make a poorly worded or poorly thought-out comment go away. Even many years after something was said, people can re-share the screen-grabs (even completely out of context) and make a person look bad with them.

    So given that, I'm not sure why offering people the "edit" option is necessarily such

    • I'm missing the justification for preventing people from changing or hiding their past statements on social media in the first place. Twitter has had and continues to have the ability to indiscriminately alter anything said or inject outright fabricated comments all along and that likely includes hundreds if not thousands of employees. Dozens to hundreds more at your and their carriers can access this content in-flight.

      Anybody who thinks people should be accountable for digital communications is off their r
      • period. legally I mean. Laws vary by jurisdiction.
        Digital or not should make no difference.
        Except that it might be hard to figure out which jurisdiction should apply.
        • by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @07:45PM (#62420964) Journal
          Actually no. Freedom of speech means people do NOT generally face legal consequences for the things they say. Not period, very specific exceptions apply where the rights of others are considered to outweigh the personal right to free speech. However, even more to the point is regardless of legal responsibility nobody is legally responsible for keeping a reliable and credible record of what anyone else said in order to facilitate to them being held responsible. In fact, modern principles of freedom generally frown on that sort of 'informing on your neighbor.'
          • Freedom of speech means people do NOT generally face legal consequences for the things they say.

            Not everywhere. Apparently mostly in the US, where "freedom of speech" means I can make use "speech" to thrash whichever way I like, but if I use it to show a nipple, even in a nonsexual way, I'm sooo on the hook. If I show a decapitation, however, a real one... yep, that's freedom of speech.

            Whether that's good or bad is another discussion.

            But many countries make a more clear distinction between "freedom of speech" (i.e. not being impeded to express things, e.g. by censorship) and "freedom from consequences

            • "Apparently mostly in the US, where "freedom of speech" means I can make use "speech" to thrash whichever way I like, but if I use it to show a nipple, even in a nonsexual way, I'm sooo on the hook."

              That is one of those exceptions where the rights of others are considered to outweigh the right of the speaker. With the exception of children (who can't consent) there are no consequences for showing that nipple in a private forum such as a home or private club. But in the case of public broadcast mediums diff
              • nipple

                The idea being that [...]

                I know what the idea is, and I won't go into details as to its merits. I'm just pointing out that analogous arguments work many other things - extreme violence, for example - yet the legality of these "other things" is different.

                Most of the people who object seem to be fans of censorship though. Look at your own example... you aren't objecting to censorship merely to which content they've censored.

                [...]

                It sounds like you support those countries.

                Please don't descend into expressing my thoughts, you're doing a terribly distorted, superficial and biased job of it. As it stands, I made it a point of not making my personal opinion which or whether content is to be censored the topic of discussion.

                legally responsible for what you say" eradicates any true freedom of speech

                The reality is that there is no

                • "As it stands, I made it a point of not making my personal opinion which or whether content is to be censored the topic of discussion."

                  But you spend the rest of your comment doing exactly that. Your bias came through with reasoning positive language regarding what 'some countries' do and scathing ridicule of US policy with preposterous nipple vs decapitation examples. If you were trying to hide your opinion you did a very poor job.

                  The rest of what I said extrapolates from seeing where you reasoning leads an
                  • scathing ridicule of US policy with preposterous nipple vs decapitation examples.

                    Reading comprehension helps: I wasn't ridiculing US policy for the content they're censoring, but for the hypocrisy of censoring one and not the other when the justification is "protect the young from psychological harm".

                    As a matter of fact: I am against censoring either. But I can live with different opinions, as long as they're upfront and consistent about it. So if the US wants to censorship as they do, they should call it what it is - prudery, to my eyes. Maybe there's a better explanation, but I didn't

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            In this case there is one very important exception that Musk surely knows about: manipulating the stock market.

            Right now the SEC is complaining to the court that Musk hasn't abided by the terms of their settlement.

      • You're right, of course. There really isn't one, other than the platform trying to pretend the content posted there holds more significance than it really does.

        But you've got to think, they also have such things as specially badged accounts that claim they've certified a person is really who he/she claims to be. That wouldn't matter either, except as another attempt to convince users that what's typed there is genuine and attributable to the individual who typed it.

        None of it should hold much weight from a

        • "But it's more about the court of public opinion."

          Not exactly a beast which should be lent credibility.
          • Not exactly a beast which should be lent credibility.

            Cuts both ways. It's the base of mob justice, of course. But it's also a court of last resort when "regular" justice is too impartial (which it should be), or sleazy personae use technicalities or status to keep themselves frer of punishment they actually deserve.

            • The problem being that public opinion is almost universally wrong.
              • The problem being that public opinion is almost universally wrong.

                Did you ever hear the phrase "I'm right, everybody else is wrong" in comedy?

                The problem with "universally" is that, except for clear-cut cases where it's about objectively verifyable, factual correctness, what everybody else thinks is essentially the definition of Right and Wrong.

                • "The problem with "universally" is that, except for clear-cut cases where it's about objectively verifyable, factual correctness, what everybody else thinks is essentially the definition of Right and Wrong."

                  Nope, the spoon is not a 'construct.' No hall full of people or hilarious mocking jester will make the 'fool' using it to eat soup wrong or the funny charming tall and soft spoken gentleman trying to use it to eat steak right. You can change the word, you can change the perception but reality is not a co
    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Most "EDIT" button needs refer to the first 10 minutes of the tweet, rather than the "oh snap, I'm being canceled because I wrote (is) instead of (isn't)"

      The correct response to saying a bad take, is to delete the tweet and apologize with "I'm sorry, I picked my words poorly", but you only get a mulligan once or twice before people realize you're just an awful person.

      So I'd say the edit button should be restricted to the first 10 minutes. After the the first 10 minutes, allow "correcting the record" which w

      • If that's the case:
        • Allow it to be shadowposted, so only you see it.
        • When you edit it, the timer restarts.
        • Once the timer expires with no edits, the post is made publically visible

        This would make it like Gmail's undo send [google.com] feature. I think it would drastically improve the covfefe of tweets containing typos.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I mean, with Twitter, you already have the problem that anything you ever post can get screen-captured and saved permanently.

      So given that, I'm not sure why offering people the "edit" option is necessarily such a big deal?

      Why would you trust a screen grab when people have Windows Paint?

  • Roll out the edit button with no restriction whatsoever... on all social media and forums. These things are not public records or reliable sources and nobody should be treating them as such. Putting restrictions around editing just further reinforces the notion of using twitter as a 'source' or applying consequences for things said on social media.
  • Adding an Edit button to Twitter does not have to be complex. Just let people edit for 10 minutes or so, which deals with 99% of the reasons why people want an edit button.

    For transparency, also let people see all previously edited versions. Most people will not sure if you can look back and edit history and see if there was a typo you corrected.

    You can make it fancier, but start there.

    • For transparency, also let people see all previously edited versions.

      ..and they could rename it Twiki.

      An edit button is of limited use on Twitter anyway. Anyone who has a decent number of followers will have already had their post re-tweeted far and wide in the time it takes to correct a typo or when you realize after the fact that you accidentally some words. Twitter already lets you delete and re-post without any cooldown period, so they've essentially always offered the ability to edit, albeit just in a less convenient manner. At the end of the day, this is really a no

  • would also help, and might eliminate 80% of the after-published edits.

    You press the (submit) button to post the tweet, but you just get a 60 second timer while it shows only you your message.
    If you start to edit it within that time, it is never posted and you have to submit it again.

    It's kind of like the 2am drunk email prevention feature add-on, but for all day long.
    • That's like Slashdot's preview before posting, which in practice still kind of sucks.

      "Okay, yeah, I was just looking at this the whole time while writing it. Looks fine, send it."
      (Spongebob narrator voice) A few moments later..
      "Fuck. I replied to the wrong person."

  • Use strike-through. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @08:35PM (#62421082) Homepage

    Not that hard to leave the old text with a line through it just before you put the new text. Lets people see what you originally said and what you corrected it to.

    Prevents people from going back and denying they ever said such a horrible, hateful comment.

    • Not that hard for any variant. Even Facebook has this. A post will show up as "edited" and click on that allows you to see all the edits.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      People usually just screenshot tweets that they want to preserve anyway, in case the author deletes them. It also prevents pile-ons, because there is no link back to the tweet that people can follow to add their own response.

  • by MrLogic17 ( 233498 ) on Tuesday April 05, 2022 @08:36PM (#62421088) Journal

    For those paying attention, Elon's already laid out roughly how it's going to work:

    https://twitter.com/Erdayastro... [twitter.com]

    Everyday Astronaut
    @Erdayastronaut
    Replying to
    @elonmusk
    Under two conditions. It’s only available for a few minutes, 5-10 mins. And when an edit is made, there’s a small link that shows the edit. This keeps a public record but allows the tweeter the ability to fix a simple mistake and not re-notify their followers with a new tweet

    Elon Musk
    @elonmusk
    Replying to
    @Erdayastronaut
    That sounds reasonable

  • When I was in university, I was a member of a student group that had a written charter. For various reasons, we all felt it needed to be amended, and I was on the committee that drafted the amendments, for which there was a formal process in the charter. At the end of the process, the amendment was accepted by the required vote of the members and adopted.

    Boring enough. Except what's interesting is how the actual amendments were promulgated. As far as I could tell, there was no physical copy of the charter.

    • Not forgetting those who call you a troll, bot or shill for offending their tender sensibilities.
    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "Some people grow as human beings and the tenor and quality of their comments improves over time."

      Theoretically, yes. What evidence on /. is there for this?

      "Others degenerate into little balls of fear and loathing ready to call you every name in the book for offending their tender sensibilities."

      Considering the quality of your posts and your frequent extreme points of view, I would say this observation serves your personal interests more than truth.

      Are them some degenerates and trolls? Sure, but I would p

  • by ayesnymous ( 3665205 ) on Wednesday April 06, 2022 @01:23AM (#62421506)
    that shows each revision and diffs. Not difficult.
  • Looking forward to ending the #COVFEFE debate once and for all.

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