Why does an edit button not make sense for a service like Twitter? How would it be abused?
Deleting and reposting hurts and would eliminate engagement statistics.
From a product experience, edited tweets, similar to Slack, could show an "(edited)" that when clicked on let's a user see the version history. That way, it can't be abused, but does allow for minor typos (e.g. https://twitter.com/sir/status/1353737949729468416)
I mean it's not an insurmountable problem though. As long as likes and RTs are tied to a specific version of a Tweet and you can see the edits and associated likes it's fine.
Even setting aside the UX issues in this, I think this is underestimating the complexity. I don't know anything about Twitters infrastructure but obviously we are not talking about a single postgres instance here. Effectively turning every tweet into a linked list with connected retweets, likes etc. is a significant data model change for a system of this scale.
That just makes it even more confusing. So you edit your tweet, but all the people who retweeted are still showing the wrong version and you can't do anything about it.
It kind of makes the situation worse than it is now.
It's not the "wrong" version. It's the original version, as per when they quoted it. There's really no other way it could work.
When you quote someone, you repeat what they said, not what they might repeat some time in the future. When you quote a book, you write down what's written in the book. Not what the author writes in the next edition.
You may in time edit/remove/amend your tweet to comment on further changes.
This is a particularly low-tier way to troll on Reddit. It doesn’t seem like the problem is drastic there, or even here on HN. I think the problem does stem from a retweet having a vibe of “I endorse this message.”, regardless of what the retweeter has written in their bio.
Since Twitter has effectively moved the default away from chronological order, what is really the purpose of a retweet? An upvote is naturally a positive interaction for “suggested tweets my followers should see”
I think the lack of an edit button is helpful on a couple fronts:
- it makes authors think more before posting; if there are typos, or it isn’t exactly what they want to say, and it gains traction, they can’t fix it, so they work to make it right the first time
- Most people ignore edit histories [citation needed; based on my own experience and knowledge of others’]. As a result, if the post is edited, the conversation can get fragmented and confusing for later readers
That said, I’d love it if there were a way to see deleted tweets, at least of politicians
The deleted tweet view is obviously not a part of Twitter yet, but here’s a service from ProPublica for this specific use case: https://www.politwoops.com/countries
Editing tweets to me is not just a feature, it's a fundamental shift to the nature of the platform. Even bigger than doubling tweet size did.
Twitter is defined by tweets not being polished Facebook or LinkedIn posts. Except for people who don't use it that way, but they feel artificial to me. I'd rather all of Twitter not drift that direction.
And personally, I love that I can't worry about fixing typos. If they're bad enough I delete. If not, move on, stay humble and pay more attention next time.
> Deleting and reposting hurts and would eliminate engagement statistics.
Maybe there should be a maximum number of characters edited. If I have liked/retweeted a tweet, and its author then completely rewrites it,I would want my "engagement" eliminated.
While I agree with the general replies to the parent comment, it seems like the magnitude of this problem is relatively small given the staffing Twitter has who could solve it. Even the general problem of "Can we tell if an edit changes the connotation of a sentence?" seems like it is solveable at Twitter's scale.
A time or engagement based restriction would prevent this, i.e. having 3-5 minutes to edit the tweet, at which point the edit button is locked. Revision history would still show. "Undo Send" a la Gmail, but for tweets.
Except in a distributed system like Twitter (including client and server) there is no single timeline, and amateur digital forensics will erroneously say "aha, but you retweeted it before it was edited"
Perhaps, but you are talking about creating rather complex machinery in order to support a tiny feature. If the only argument in favor is engagement statistics (would those take edits into consideration as well?), I certainly see why Twitter doesn't care too much.
Deleting and reposting hurts and would eliminate engagement statistics.
From a product experience, edited tweets, similar to Slack, could show an "(edited)" that when clicked on let's a user see the version history. That way, it can't be abused, but does allow for minor typos (e.g. https://twitter.com/sir/status/1353737949729468416)