cohost support

After being on Twitter for so long, having the ability to edit posts is such a huge relief. However, the way Cohost handles edited posts right now is honestly quite concerning.

Right now (as far as I'm aware), we are allowed to edit posts pretty much whenever we want, no matter how old a given post is. This is great, but there are some issues:

1. Edited posts are not AT ALL clearly marked as such.

This is a huge, glaring issue with editing posts right now. This very easily grants the ability for a user to set up some kind of bait post, wait for someone to respond to it, and then edit the contents to form a completely different context.

2. Edited posts do not show *when* they were edited.

Being able to tell a post was edited at all is important, but I think being able to tell when is also crucial. This further helps protect against the "bait and switch" scenario I described above, since users can tell when a post was edited and compare it to the post timestamp of the given responses.

3. Edited posts do not show exactly what was changed.
Admittedly, this last point might be a huge ask, since this would definitely increase how much data is being stored about a single post. But I think being able to view a post's full edit history would be very helpful for viewing the full context of a given conversation, and leaves almost nothing to assumption or interpretation. Perhaps response posts could even be updated to only show OP posts in the state they were at the time of responding?

I'm personally quite a fan of how GitHub handles this. It clearly shows you if a comment was edited, and you can open a little drop-down menu to view every individual change that was made, plus the exact differences in the content. For privacy's sake, they also allow you to delete edit history (although it'll still show that it was edited at a particular time).

You make some really valid points here about the potential risks of post editing on Cohost. The lack of clear indicators for edited posts is definitely a concern, especially with how easily someone could manipulate a conversation by editing after the fact. I agree that showing when a post was edited and having an edit history would add a lot of transparency. It’s something many AI tools already do well in terms of tracking changes, and social platforms could really benefit from similar features to maintain integrity in discussions.

just came across a pretty solid example of the lack of edit indicators being a problem.

post link here: https://cohost.org/vogon/post/617099-in-one-sense-no-no

TL;DR OP posted something about AI, second person responded, and then OP later edited their post. There is no obvious indicator for this, and the second person had to go out of their way to explain what the original context was. needless to say, i was absolutely baffled as to what this was all about until i reached that part of the second post all the way at the bottom.

I'm sorry, but this system is just broken. And it's only going to get worse, especially with cohost growing as fast as it is. This really needs to be addressed.

I greatly approve of this.

I was on Tumblr in the early years. Used to be, you could edit any part of a post you were reblogging including OP's content, and OP could edit their original post too. This became a MASSIVE ISSUE. Obviously a replier being able to edit OP's content is ridiculous and should never have been allowed.

Tumblr decided to take away the ability to edit previous additions to a post, and made it so even if OP edited their post afterwards, those edits never showed up in the reblogs.

So now Tumblr has the opposite problem: if you reblog a post, and then the OP makes an edit, that edit doesn't show up everywhere the post has been reblogged.

What would've solved both problems was just an "Edited" tagline on the original post.

"anything that can be abused, will be abused eventually." very well said @hikari-no-yume

simply trusting people to add their own edit markers where they feel it's appropriate simply does not work for a platform like this. as much as we like to think most people are good and honest, it's not at all safe or healthy to assume everyone will be. history has shown time and time again that there are people out there who wish to do harm, in one way or another.

i can sort of understand the anxiety of having an edit marker on a post, but I honestly don't believe that's enough to justify not having any basic protections against malicious usage of posting features. plus, many other platforms with similar features have edit markers. reddit, twitter, discord, github... why is it an issue in this case?

i will admit having complete edit history might be excessive (and possibly confusing for new users, actually). but i am still strongly in favor of having simple edit markers at the very least. to me, it's a bare essential feature, and I'm honestly amazed this wasn't included with the ability to edit posts in the first place.

also @cygaj to be completely honest, i don't think that idea would help much. hiding edit markers like that just means many people would most likely ignore it, either out of laziness, or just not knowing it even exists at all.

These are all good points. What if edit indicators where put in an unobstructive place, like if when you hover on a timastamp, and it brings the exact time of posting, it could also have info about post being edited? Like "exact post date ; last edit on this exact date"?

I want to add that there's much more insidious ways to abuse editing than via simple bait posts. On Twitter (until recently at least), the worst thing you can do to the historical record is to delete it. On cohost, you could go back and edit your hostile interactions with someone so that they're positive instead. Since people don't commit to memory that which they expect computers/websites/etc to remember for them, that might be an effective way to gaslight someone.

Not that I want to imagine people doing that, but anything that can be abused, will be abused eventually. I can't think of a single social media service I've used that doesn't mark edits in some way, or alternatively only allows edits for a short period of time after posting.

I also feel that edit indicators could turn out to be pointless, for the exact reasons that Jake Eakle brought up. It's not like twitter where it was only considered to let ppl edit tweets for half an hour, where posts themselves are micro sized, where algorithm puts them in front of strangers and it's easy to start a drama etc

The great thing about this platform after coming from twitter is the freedom of mind where I don't need to sweat whether a post is perfect before I send it because I can always tweak it. I would just feel embarrassed that everyone could see that I edited a simple image post like 10 times because I couldn't decide on a tag or punctuation in the caption or whatever and it would feel constraining '////'

I think there are big pros and big cons to edit histories, and am undecided on whether we should have them. But I do think that edit indicators would be slightly worse than useless. Almost every post will have them, and the only real impact they'll have is discouraging people from editing. 

I think edit markers would be a great addition and I don't think people assume it to be a bad thing, but I don't see much use in an edit history, only abuse potential & wasted storage space.

do people really automatically assume the worst when they see an edit marker...? the only time i've given stuff like that a second thought is when there's a reply that sounds like it's responding to something wildly different to the OP post.

as someone who regularly strings posts together and edits in links, I think that all my posts would likely have the edit marker, which would be fine except for the potential suspicion factor it could introduce, which is unideal. I do like @caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat's point of a culture/behaviour thing as well, though, as thinking about potential for something like an ETA field (either in-line or a separate sort of line under the post like the moods/listening to back on LJ) may be complicated