Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, attended a town hall meeting at IIT, Delhi, yesterday, where he talked about his plans to add an “edit tweet” feature to the social media platform. He revealed he has mixed feelings about the feature, and said that he wants to ensure that it gets implemented the right way.
“You have to pay attention to what are the use cases for the edit button. A lot of people want the edit button because they want to quickly fix a mistake they made. Like a misspelling or tweeting the wrong URL. That’s a lot more achievable than allowing people to edit any tweet all the way back in time,” said Dorsey.
He also talked about the risks that can come along with the “edit tweet” feature. They could, he pointed out, be used to change old tweets, leading to further misinformation and ‘fake news’. Dorsey conceded, however, that an edit button remains high on users’ wishlists.
I had a very good convo with @jack this weekend at Kanye’s bday and I think he really heard me out on the edit button.
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) June 13, 2018
Dorsey elaborated on the conversations happening within Twitter about the feature. He said, “There’s a bunch of things we could do to show a changelog and show how a tweet has been changed and we’re looking at all this stuff. We’ve been considering edit for quite some time but we have to do it in the right way. We can’t just rush it out. We can’t make something which is distracting or takes anything away from the public record”.
Dorsey says follower count is ‘meaningless’
Dorsey also talked about the follower count feature, calling it“meaningless”. According to the Twitter chief, people should stop focusing on the number of followers they have and instead focus on cultivating “meaningful conversations”. Only last month, the news of Twitter planning to disable the ‘like’ button emerged, with precisely this reasoning. There appears to be a perception that the gamified elements of the platform are harming conversation.
Dorsey admitted that “back then, we were not really thinking about all the dynamics that could ensue afterwards. ”Bemoaning the importance of followers, he argued that. “what is more important is the number of meaningful conversations you’re having on the platform. How many times do you receive a reply?”
What this means, in reality, will remain to be seen. There will be many who still see Twitter’s attitude to verification and abuse as the real issues to be tackled if the platform is to become a place for ‘meaningful conversation.’
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