Why don't they just make it optional? Also, why do they refuse to give users the one thing they want, an edit button? Seems so simple to me. What am I missing?
back
4 comments
Because control of priority in the feed is key to making brands pay to reach followers that they normally could reach for free, after investing in building the audience on Twitter's platform. Case in point, FB.
because then someone could tweet 'I think racism is bad', 100 people would reply 'I agree' and then they could change it to 'I am pro-nazi'
Facebook has an edit history for statuses for exactly that reason.
I'm a web developer. I've integrated Facebook into a bunch of apps in non-trivial ways. I would describe myself as a power user Facebook.com and the app.
I had no idea you could see the history of statuses. I'd imagine it's not widely known. I've actually seen people use this exact scenario for trolling (going onto a politician's page, saying something the followers agree with, and then editing it to something awful).
So how have comment systems with edit functionality survived since the advent of the internet? This is a non-issue. It's an interesting prank, but that's about it.
Retweeting makes this a huge problem. The way the edit button could work, however, is to remove all RTs and favs and create a new tweet. This isn't what people who complain the most about the lack of an edit button (celebrities) actually want though, so it remains as it is.
I was a holdout on editing because I thought there was an integrity importance. But I've totally come around. Twitter needs to do this immediately.
Honestly, I don't think an edit option would be a great idea. I'd recommend you to read this article[1], it's food for thought about the topic.
That's crazy over-complicating something that Facebook & Slack had no trouble figuring out.
Where does it say it's not optional?
I've never needed to edit a tweet. It's supposed to be a "now" service, is it really now if you can go back and change everything you've written?