Twitter eyeing ‘edit’ function
LOS ANGELES, Dec 30, (RTRS): Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey signaled on Twitter Thursday that his company is going to let users edit their tweets in the future. Dorsey said that Twitter is “thinking a lot about” bringing editing functionality to tweets, and then went on to say that “a form of edit” was needed.
Dorsey made these remarks as part of a kind of impromptu public town hall with Twitter users, asking them for feedback on how to improve the service. The request for an edit button for tweets came up multiple times, and Dorsey seemed to signal that the company is gearing towards a timelimited window to allow for the correction of typos right after a tweet was sent.
Allowing users to edit tweets they sent hours or days after the fact would lead to a more complicated solution, Dorsey argued, including the need for a change log to give users the ability to review different versions of the same tweet.
Users also repeatedly asked Dorsey to step up Twitter’s fight against hate and harassment, which has been a major point of contention in the past. Twitter has long sided with free speech advocates, and users frequently complained that violations of the company’s terms of service weren’t being dealt with. However, this year, Twitter did boot some high-profile right-wing extremists off its platform. Dorsey said Thursday that bringing more transparency to these efforts was a “big priority” for Twitter.
Dorsey also talked about some other upcoming product changes Thursday. Some of the features he endorsed as needed included easier digestible tweet storms and better threading of conversations. Dorsey also said that the company is working on customized breaking news alerts and better direct messaging. He added that Twitter’s team had been thinking about bookmarking functionality for tweets as well.
shunning fringe news sites the way they avoid placing ads on sites that feature porn or gambling. And major ad networks appear to be letting advertisers place ads on fringe sites.
Although Google says it will prohibit its ads from being placed on “misrepresentative content,” it doesn’t explicitly single out “fake news” as part of this. Google also licenses its ad technology to advertisers it might not normally accept, indirectly profiting from such sites. Facebook has said that it bans fake news articles it knows about from its advertising network, but it doesn’t do so for entire sites.
“This presents a really challenging problem to the industry and to advertisers,” Carroll said. “The report shows plenty of exposure from Facebook and Google and the rest of the industry to this stuff.”