Should Twitter's 'Edit' Button Preserve Your Tweet's History Online?

The Verge reports that "Editing a tweet using Twitter's upcoming edit button could leave a digital trace of your tweet's history, according to reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong."In a tweet, Manchun Wong explains that the edit function appears to have an "immutable" quality, which means Twitter may create an entirely new tweet when one is edited, all while preserving the previous versions of that tweet. "Looks like Twitter's approach to Edit Tweet is immutable, as in, instead of mutating the Tweet text within the same Tweet (same ID), it re-creates a new Tweet with the amended content, along with the list of the old Tweets prior of that edit," Manchun Wong says. As Manchun Wong notes, it's unclear how a tweet's edit history will appear to users, or if it will at all. But if Twitter does decide to make tweet history public, it could be a way to address concerns over potential abuse of the feature, as some critics believe it could be used to alter the public record and mislead users. But in the end, it's two entirely separate questions. Will Twitter's edit functionality preserve a tweet's history online? And should it?

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