Slashdot Mirror
After Calls For an Edit Button, Twitter Says it is Considering a 'Clarification' Feature (mashable.com)
Despite years-long calls from power users for an "edit" button, Twitter is considering how it could enable 'clarifications' of tweets, CEO Jack Dorsey said Thursday at Goldman Sachs' tech conference in San Francisco. From a report: "One of the concepts we're thinking about is clarifications," Dorsey said, saying that it could function similarly to a quote tweet. "Kind of like retweet with comment.. to add some context and some color on what they might have tweeted, or what they might have meant."
People already often use the quote tweet option for this kind of thing, but the two tweets may not always have the same reach, Dorsey noted. But if the person had opted to "clarify" that tweet, then the original tweet could always appear with the subsequent clarification. Dorsey cautioned that the feature is still just something the company is thinking about, not necessarily something that would launch. But he said such a feature could help people feel more comfortable with Twitter.
People already often use the quote tweet option for this kind of thing, but the two tweets may not always have the same reach, Dorsey noted. But if the person had opted to "clarify" that tweet, then the original tweet could always appear with the subsequent clarification. Dorsey cautioned that the feature is still just something the company is thinking about, not necessarily something that would launch. But he said such a feature could help people feel more comfortable with Twitter.
I don't think anybody would want to be able to edit an old tweet.
Why even bring Jack Dorsey up? It is very clear that he is not in control and just a figurehead at this point.
Where will the 'smocking guns', 'covfefe' and the 'muderers' come from in the future?
Twitter has 'the best words' as we know.
My proposal from August 2018, developing on an idea from February 2016.
I don't suppose that they got the idea from me, but it surprises me that it has taken this long to consider doing it this way.
1. Post a tweet that will elicit certain reactions.
2. Wait for those certain reactions to pour in.
3. Edit original tweet to make reactions look evil/racist/ignorant/etc.
Something I have learned over time, it is generally a bad idea to try to bate people to get angry at you, or worse a false persona of you. A sarcastic comment, could lead to some guy actually taking you seriously.
Where do you think these flat earthers came from? Probably from some guy trying to use sarcasm to explain the flaw, in some Anti-Science policy that is popular at the time, so they made the most crazy statement they could think of "The earth is flat" and fill it with flawed logic. There will be someone who doesn't pick it up, and followed it. Just because someone is an idiot, it doesn't mean they are not influential.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I can see something like this happening:
Original Tweet: "Contrary to what's being reported by the lying MSM, I did not have relations or even spend time with that woman."
Clarification 1: "After reflection and prayer with my wife and my pastor, I realize that the interactions I had with that woman were inappropriate."
Clarification 2: "I have consulted with my attorney and I can confidently say that at no time during our time together did I have any reason to think that woman was a member of the Russian government."
Clarification 3: "I realize that the police report says otherwise, but because I met the woman in the hotel bar, I naturally assumed that she was over 18."
Clarification 4: "To be completely honest, the skimpy dress lead me to originally believe the person that I spent time with in my hotel room was a woman."
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
We never needed twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Let a user edit once, for five minutes.
Indicate the tweet was edited, with a link to see a diff.
Then you get the benefit of people being able to edit typos, with still the fiery aspect of the full hot take for all to see.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...why does anyone use this SHITTY platform?
It doesn't have any real modern functionality, it doesn't understand emotes, emojis, or even standard markup languages, it's like it was written in the fucking dark ages.
I mean seriously, really all it is is a mechanism for blurting ones' random thoughts to a bunch of people that either a) don't really give a shit, or b) give WAY TOO MUCH of a shit about what you're saying.
I mean, with slashdot comments, you at least have to go to a WEBSITE to do that.
-Styopa
To allow editing for a minute or two. Just when you posted an auto-correct typo, or wrong link (e.g. your own YT video, to /edit and not /watch) things like this. I agree long term editing is a bit unfair, but a minute or two like some websites already do, ..?!
Twitter Sucks!!!
* To clarify, I didn't mean everyone on twitter. Obviously.
** Update: I wasn't referring to any specific individuals or twitter workers. I meant that twitter as the service is currently provided has non-salient aspects but not due to any specific persons.
*** Note: I was talking about Twitter brand Vaccuum cleaners which are sold in Morocco.
**** OK I lied.
Imagin what wud happin if Slahsdot let us fix are typos.
Table-ized A.I.
I find that 90% of the errors in my tweets are auto-correct related. It does the most insane blunders, and also butchers their/there/they're to/too are/our etc. Pretty much any word that sounds the same it will make you look like an illiterate fool who triggers grammar nazis on the daily.
You don't always have time to proofread tweets two or three times just to make sure you don't miss some stupid auto-correct blunder.
And now-- if it's not bad enough desktop OS's have auto-correct built into them as well.
- Alex
Editing is not. It's far too easy to abuse.
Editing cannot be abused if you can easily see history of the edit including the original text.
The crystal clear goal of whatever Twitter does should be to make correcting simple typos as simple and easy as possible. That is the vast majority of why people really want editing. The Clarification feature fails this single simple test.
Editing should not be erasure, but it's also not simply clarification in the large majority of cases.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You know, to do the things that people do with edit buttons, like fix a typo. Does anyone really care about "clarifying" that "oops I spelled that wrong. I meant potato"?
*sigh*
Longer posts are what Pastebin, TwitLonger, GitHub Gist, and your own blog are made for. Post the whole thing elsewhere, and summarize to Twitter with a link.
I think the obvious problem that would happen with something like this is that the original post is something benign that goes viral and then the "clarification" is something vulgar that potentially shows up in the unsuspecting user's profile that happened to like the tweet. This seems to solve one problem, but could open a big can of worms too.
Maybe, but there's a big difference between trying to bate someone so you can get some laughs, and actually calling someone out for being an idiot and spreading lies or fake news. The latter should be done whenever possible to keep that stuff to a minimum.