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This browser extension wants to stop you from tweeting something you'll regret

This browser extension wants to stop you from tweeting something you'll regret

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Saving you from yourself

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Twitter can be an innocuous journal of mundane thoughts, a breeding ground for unrestrained hate, or a place where people say really dumb things they will soon regret. A new browser extension wants to help you prevent that feeling of regret by making sure you never tweet the dumb thing in the first place.

The extension, created by Carnegie Mellon professor Paolo Pedercini, changes Twitter’s text field prompt from "What’s happening?" to "Remember: you are always one tweet away from being fired."

It's a dark, but true reminder. As tweets continue to garner more clout in the news world, the time it takes for a tweet to go from an unnoticed missive sent out to 100 followers to a reason for large-scale public condemnation is getting smaller. Take Justine Sacco, who became the face of regrettable tweeting when in 2013 she tweeted a tone-deaf, racist comment before boarding an 11-hour flight from London to Cape Town. Sacco later said the tweet was satire, but she was fired from her PR job at the media giant IAC anyway.

You can download the extension for Chrome here, and really, why wouldn't you?