Considering how many frauds have happened and how many ethers have been lost because of ICOs being hacked, I think the ability to reverse such a fraud is an incredible step. It is a need and solves a big problem.
However, editable is not a word to use with a technology that stands for immutability of data. I agree that the word could have been better.
my thoughts exactly
I just edited this post on the blockchain (4 times) :)
Seriously though, I had a little bit of BTC stolen the other day, my own fault - but it's moments like that you realize "immutable" and "decentralized" are just buzz words, they aren't automatically good. What I love about this technology is being able to send money all over the world instantly with no fees. The other stuff seems more routed in ideology than anything else.
If people start hosting kiddy porn on D-Tube is decentralization really that great? What about Patrice and co running around like headless chooks trying to keep Steem clean via various overly convoluted methods?
I wouldn't let your theft experience influence the 'goodness' of 'immutable' and 'decentralized'. I could seriously go on about both of these buzz words. As payment can now be done through computational trust, it is equally important to see the audit and legal power of 'immutable'. Every edit you have done on your comment is a separate entry in the blockchain, your original comment is not overwritten. Decentralization is another topic on itself. On your subject, i prefer a community decision on what is ok above a central authority's decision. New issues are inherent to new technologies, we have to trust we are ourselves able to deal with them without central authority. Anyway, what i like about the de-centralization part is that i prefer my data is spread out for security and catastrophe scenario's + it is morphable, look at how the China ban issue is dealt with, just moving the nodes, it's beautiful :-)
You're mixing governance (what's permitted and not) with implementation (how we do stuff). Immutability is an implementation thing. A mistake or a fraud is a governance thing. There are use cases for immutability (the case you mentioned, you want to know what happened with your stolen BTC, you want to trace the transactions and be sure they haven't been tampered with) and there are use cases for mutability (again, the case you mentioned, you want to be sure you can roll back your transaction).
That's the biggest challenge of humanity: how to mix governance and implementation right.
That's some great discussion and a lot to learn from different perspectives. Well, just like freedom of speech, decentralization can be used for bad purposes. There has to be some check and balance.
Even on Steemit, there's a way to flag content and downgrade an account to zero and even negative. When money is involved, having fraud protection measures cannot be bad.