Design a Retract Feature
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.