18.5. Design a Retract Feature

Professor Kate Starbird regularly called for Twitter to introduce a retract button. This would help with misinformation, as a user who realized they posted false information could leave a tweet up, but put a retraction over it. It also would solve a dilemma where people who tweeted something they regretted felt caught between the choice of deleting a tweet (making it look like they were hiding their history), or leaving it up (looking like they stood by their bad tweet). Therefore a retraction feature could be used by someone who was being publicly shamed as a means of apologizing.

So now, it’s your turn to think about how you would want a retraction feature to work on a social media site like Twitter:

• How would a user do the retraction? What options would they have (e.g., can they choose to keep or delete the original tweet content)? What additional information would they be able to provide?

• How would that retracted tweet look when viewed?

• How would that retracted tweet look when it is part of a retweet or quote tweet?

• Would there be any notifications sent when a tweet is retracted?

• Outline 3 different examples of how and when a user might retract a tweet

  • E.g., misinformation, regret a bad idea, regret mean tone, etc.