![]() ![]() This means that beyond the fundamental technological challenges, Twitter must think about the possible unintended consequences of seemingly simple changes – even to the level of a humble edit button. There is a rich body of research into the ways discourse is shaped by the design of social media platforms, which establishes that every “affordance” a user is given affects the conversation that ends up taking place. Similarly, websites use algorithms and design to “ nudge” users in particular directions – such as to buy a product. ![]() This, in turn, shapes the nature of conversation that occurs on the platform. The presence of the “like” and “retweet” buttons on Twitter encourage users to create content that will entice others to click these buttons, and make their content spread further. More generally, the design of media platforms shapes the type of discussion that occurs on them.Įlon Musk's bid spotlights Twitter's unique role in public discourse – and what changes might be in store Will an edit button change Twitter’s unique brand? There may be ways to ameliorate this, such as only allowing edits within a short time of posting, but it is surely a consideration for the company. However, for many people the “warts and all” nature of Twitter postings is starting to look like a bug, rather than a feature. Twitter has built its reputation on being the most “real-time” of the social media platforms – the place where earthquakes are reported quicker than by scientific instruments. ![]() Will Twitter users be happy to trade this possibility for the convenience of fixing typos in their tweets? ‘Warts and all’: a bug or a feature? Yes, this is contrived, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see how the edit button might be used in this fashion, particularly by things such as bot armies. Now, what happens if I edit my original tweet to declare “I love dogs”? You are now misrepresented as a dog-lover, and when your cat-loving friends see this (which they will when I reply to your tweet, mentioning them all), they disown you.Ī Twitter edit button could be used to change statements after others have retweeted or endorsed them. Then you, being also a cat lover (because why wouldn’t you be), decide to quote my tweet, agreeing “I do too!” (Remember when Twitter used to be this innocent?) I, a cat lover, decide to tweet “I love cats!” More importantly, an edit button might have unintended consequences, and could be weaponised.Ĭonsider this. ![]() (This is currently what happens when tweets are “deleted”.) Cats and dogs If a user were to edit a tweet, the most Twitter could do is send out a message saying “please edit this tweet” – but the third party could choose whether or not to actually do it. It’s a bit like an email – once I’ve sent it and you’ve downloaded it, there’s no way for me to delete it from your machine. Once third parties have downloaded tweets, there’s no way for Twitter to get them back or edit them. That’s what powers Twitter clients such as TweetDeck, TweetBot, Twitteriffic and Echofon, which together account for some 6 million users. The reason is that Twitter has what’s called an Application Programming Interface (or API) which allows third parties such as other apps or researchers to download tweets in real time. The first thing to know about tweets is that, unlike posts on many other platforms, there is fundamentally no way for Twitter to pull them back after they are sent. Why has Twitter been so opposed to an edit button? The answer might be that it isn’t as simple as it appears. ![]()
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