Why Twitter does not have an edit button
The world is forgetful. As a civilisation, we continue to believe & propagate that history repeats itself. The reality, however, is that time and history are linear, while human stupidity follows a cyclical pattern.
In 2020, Twitter is ubiquitous, like a toxic relationship taken for granted. However, Twitter started as a thought experiment. Like Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter puts it, “When you send a text, you can’t really take it back,” the Twitter CEO says. “We wanted to preserve that vibe and that feeling in the early days.” Twitter stood out for its immediacy — what are you doing — was the question we were answering to an unknown community. Technology products are thought experiments were taking life. The community has matured into filter bubbles or a modern rendition of ‘the tribe’ as postulated by Marshall McLuhan, a Christian Anarchist written off by his peers. Nicholas Carr was close by terming Twitter, “the telegraph system of Web 2.0.”
Twitter — the brainchild of Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Noah Glass, and Biz Stone has been a controversy’s child. Many commentators wondered if Twitter could survive the Facebook onslaught, can it make money, will it be a profitable business? These questions remain unanswered, but a lot changed in the last decade, including an IPO. Without going into details, after trying various permutation-combinations, stakeholders continue to believe in Jack Dorsey’s leadership. In his unemphatic manner, Mr. Dorsey has stated that “Twitter won’t get an edit button.” I feel Jack is an incredibly thoughtful person who comes across a zealot due to suboptimum communication. He is right though, an edit button for Twitter would be product harakiri.
Let’s substantiate this with an example. Sudhir Chaudhary — leads a tribe of the offended on Zee News and Twitter. Zee News is an infotainment channel owned by Subhash Chandra, a heavily-indebted promoter with Rs. 8400 crores worth of non-performing assets (NPAs).
It is difficult to substantiate bigoted behavior. However, it is easier to confirm bias. Below we see Sudhir sharing a selfie with two world-leaders, and it is a pinned tweet. So we now know which way Sudhir swings.
On the evening of 18 May 2020, Sudhir tweeted out the following, screenshot below:
As argumentative as he is, Sudhir is no Socrates. We can hold him to his words because he wasn’t able to edit it. And this is why Twitter won’t be getting an edit button. Twitter is about raw emotion (outrage), and giving an edit button defeats its core product principle — the ability to call bullshit on people’s statements. One can misconstrue spoken word but the written word — no. You can delete a tweet, but we live in a screenshot-city.
What has followed are lies and cover-ups. Sudhir’s offended tribe even got #ZeeWarriors to trend on Twitter. But, the truth is out there now. The one who called out another tribe for being mass-spreader is today accused of being one.
Taking a cue from the current Government of India, Zee News has issued the following statement without any signage to identify the origin.
