WhatsApp allows users to edit messages

reuters.com

21 points·mfiguiere··11 comments

Isn't it great how week keep reinventing text messages over and over so that things like this make international news?

How did one edit text messages that were already sent?

I think you know, but the classic way to do this was just to send a new message with the correct content, or maybe just the amended piece (often preceded by an asterisk). There is an aesthetic difference, but it's small. The overall effect is the same, especially if the edit history is visible (as it should be, since my contacts shouldn't be able to delete information from my phone).

In other words, you couldn't.

About time. XEP-0308 Last Message Correction for XMPP/Jabber (which is what WhatsApp uses as its protocol IIRC) was moved from experimental to draft… 10 years ago, 2013-04-08. Many modern XMPP clients have supported it for a while.

https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0308.html

Didn't WhatsApp switch to Signal's protocol, or is that just the encryption layer?

Do you have a source for this?

https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

One suspects that the delay was not caused by the complexity of the implementation, but rather uncertainty around the necessity or desirability of it.

Do they ever worry about how some users may be able to pursue fraud and abuse with this and other such features. Do they worry about any legal implications of this for the users?

Welcome to 2015, WhatsApp.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com