A thread: Ways Twitter could introduce "the edit button" without abuse.

1. Mastodon-style "delete and re-draft"

Mastodon has this already. It works great. You make a tweet, you notice a typo, it de-tweets. Better than manual delete+copypaste, because links/images aren't mangled

2. Delete and notify.

Mastodon "delete and re-draft" style edit is great if the tweet is seconds old. What if it's *hours* old? What if it has 300 RTs?

One option would be: delete the tweet, create a new one, send a notification to any RT-ers. Maybe they *still* want to RT it!

3. Edit button with "sticky" RTs

If you were willing to risk confusing people a little, Twitter could do (2) without deleting. Just allow editing, *but any RTs from before the edit stay as they are*. Maybe badge the old RTs linking to the update. Maybe send notifications.

4. Opt-in disclaimers.

Twitter already *has* this disclaimer feature— with quote-RT limitations!— they added just to attach to President Liar's tweets. Why not let us voluntarily add them to our own tweets? Let the disclaimer link to a reply tweet with corrected information.

5. I dunno, maybe Twitter could just stop being jerks?

Twitter, as it is, is a context-devouring machine. Many methods of embedding tweets do *nothing* to indicate a tweet is part of a thread. If a followup tweet contains corrections or context, *most people will never see them*

Suggestions 1-4 are in order of increasing potential for abuse. But Twitter would create no new potential for abuse if they just dialed back *existing* features that increase the need for an edit button— like that new layout that emphasizes "more tweets" over threads and replies.

Alternately, imagine non-edit-button features that provide some of the same utility. Why can't we lock a tweet as "no more RTs"? That could stop a misleading tweet from spreading. For some reason Twitter lets you limit *replies* on a tweet, but RTs and QRTs are always unlimited.