building a better bay area moving forward finding solutions. this is abc 7 news. hi there. i'm kristen z. you're watching getting answers live on abc 7 every day. we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and get answers for you in real time today, california lawmakers gave up on a bill that would have allowed older teenagers to get a vaccine without their parents approval. the bill's authors state senator. scott weiner will join us to explore what's next for this bill his efforts to extend last call at bars and his hopes for california becoming a refuge state for trans youth. also, san francisco voters are being asked to decide on a ballot measure to tax amazon to provide guaranteed income for the needy. the only problem is the tax would actually hit hundreds of

local businesses our partners at the san francisco standard will be here to share the not scrambled to get that measure off the ballot, but first twitter has long been hated on for the fact that it does not and has never offered an edit feature. but today without warning the san francisco bay social media company tweeted this if you see an edited tweet, it's because we're testing the edit button this is happening and you'll be okay joining us live now is cnets cultural reporter abrar ali abroad nice to have you here. thanks for having me. i appreciate it. all right, so this is pretty earth shaking isn't it and earth shattering? it's all those things twitter has held steadfast to the no editing principle. is that kind of core to their idea of what tweets should be? this is a really big deal people have been asking for this for a really long time and one of the things that twitter has said is that if we let you edit your tweets they think you know chaos will ensue people will you know modify the things that they say to twitter can be kind of a

contentious space sometimes and so people might say something and i think the fear is that if you have the ability to edit something then you know, people won't catch you on that initial thing that you've said words can get misconstrued, but they're making sure that so this is still something that's being tested internally and in the coming weeks. it'll roll out to twitter subscribers with twitter blue. that's at five dollar a month service and and so to address that issue one of the things that they're gonna make sure they do is that you know, it's labeled. there's a timestamp that shows when you first publish that tweet and then you'll see the history of that tweet too. so no one can say that they never said something there's evidence there. it's all documented. we'll all see what you initially said and what you've changed it to now right because a lot of people don't like the idea that oh, those are the receipts you can't be changing the receipts so there will be a way for people to realize this has been edited, but i just want to go ahead and show folks what we recorded today because you mentioned that this is being rolled out at first to employees and then to subscribers, so i tried it today because i was so eager for editing and obviously

for me. it's still just the delete tweet option. you talked a little bit about the benefits of not allowing the edit now talk about the benefits of being able to edit. tweeting can be incredibly intimidating if it's something that you don't do all the time. and so if you send out a tweet, and you can't change anything, then you're only options are deleting a tweet or you know, just not tweeting at all. and so i think the thing that twitter wants to do here is to encourage people to not be so scared of tweeting and you know, it can be minor things. it could even be typos. sometimes typos are embarrassing and as journalists. we don't want to be tweeting tweets with typos either and so having the ability to go back and change that can be a source of comfort for people and of course, you know sites like twitter want more users. they want more time spent on these platforms. and so that's kind of you know, the end goal here is to get more people to feel like okay i can tweet without feeling like this is incredibly intimidating. yeah, and there are times too where i go. no'on delete and read twe t wlehi. it's just too much trouble. i attached a picture and

everything because i had that silly typo. i'm just gonna delete it and let it be and never post it right so i can see that but this speaks to the business angle, right? they want more users. they want more tweets in the universe. does this mean their business has been suffering because i'm wondering why now after being in business what 13 years or so? yeah, it's happening at an interesting time. you know, i'm sure a lot of people are familiar with the fact that elon musk had put in a bid to buy twitter for 44 billion dollars and is now taking it back and so twitter's caught in this really big battle right now with a really big figure and so they've been rolling out other features to try to get more people to use the platform. there's a feature they just rolled out called twitter twitter circle and basically this is a way to tweet out to people who are just your close friends. you can choose up to 150 people. so if you don't want to tweet out to everyone you can kind of narrow it down and again the goal there is to make people feel less intimidated and hopefully feel more comfortable and then tweet some more so a lot of social media companies are feeling the weight of the economy the fact that digital ad

revenue is down the fact that competition is really really intense right now. so you'll see them roll out a lot of features that hopefully allow more people to feel comfortable using their platforms. was twitter alone in not allowing edits out of the social media platforms. you know, i can't think of another platform. well, there's one thing tiktok if you post a caption on tiktok, you can't edit the caption and that's something that i really hope changes because i feel like i've submitted typos on there too. so maybe that'll be the next frontier. some critics will say oh they're trying to be like the other platforms right having your circle. that's kind of like facebook or well i'm old so i say facebook. i'm sure the kids refer to something else where you get to choose your inner circle, but i do want to ask you what the reaction been like which you say it's mostly positive for mostly negative to having this edit feature. i think people are really really excited about edit. this is something that they've been asking for for years and when elon musk first, the news first came out that he was on twitter's board before he made the deal to try to buy the company he put out a tweet where he said should should twitter at

an edit button and a lot of people were like, yes, absolutely and it's something that people have been asking for for a really long time. so i think this will be kind of one of the biggest things that comes out of twitter recent history, really elon musk, he didn't comment on this edit feature funnily enough today, but he did comment on something else. he retweeted an article that says eight out of 10 twitter accounts are bots. is there any truth to that? this is really been a point of contention between elon musk and twitter. he says that there are a lot more bots on twitter than they say they say it's less than five percent of accounts our bots. we don't know that's the thing and that's kind of the basis of this suit between elon musk and twitter is you know, he says that twitter is lying and you know, we had a whistleblower say that twitter is also underestimating how many bots are on the platform. we really don't know twitter hasn't you know, given us all the information but they continue to say that it's less than five percent and when that case goes to court in october,

we'll probably find out more details, october. everybody's got a circle down their calendar it promises to be very juicy. i'm sure has twitter may meaningful change though to crack down on bots or misinformation. you know, it's something that a lot of platforms struggle with and it's something that doesn't look good for companies and it's something that they you know, you don't want users to feel like bots are an issue. you don't want to feel like you're i'm under under threat of being, you know spoofed when you go on these platforms. it's it's an ongoing battle. i think it's there's still a long road ahead but a lot of companies try really hard to crack down on these things and try to encourage users to report whenever they do spot something that seems suspicious but it is a long road ahead. okay, i want to go back to that twitter if we still have it tweet this morning announcing. hey, don't worry. we're gonna put up the edit button if you see something edited. it's just we're testing it walk us through again because you said right now it's just employees that are kind kind of in this beta phase.

subscribers next who are the subscribers and how much are they paying? and when are they going to get it? yeah, so twitter blue is twitter subscription service people pay $5 a month and the perk here is that you have the option to do something called undo a tweet and what that means is you'll post a tweet and then you have a limited amount of time to just undo it before it gets sent out. and so that's like the closest thing twitter's ever the closest twitter's ever come to having an edit button and then the other perk they have is that they get to read articles without ads and the last perk is that they get to test features like this before they roll out to the masses. so twitter blue subscribers, and those are the people who pay the five dollars a month. we'll test it in the coming weeks and that will allow twitter to get feedback and then fix any issues. so if people do feel like hey this person is, you know, editing their tweets and messing everything up and and you know, things are getting lost in translation than twitter can address that before it rolls out to the masses and we're not exactly sure when it will roll out to the masses yet. we'll just have to see how well goes in this test phase right

with regard to the undo that's sort of similar to the gmail. unsend feature, right, but you only get like three seconds five seconds. it's not a lot of time for regret. it's not a lot of time but oh my gosh, i love it on gmail because you know, i use outlook for work and i miss having the unsend feature because i got so used to it on g melt. so even if it is just a certain amount of time it can be a huge help for people because sometimes you notice things right after you hit, you know, send or you know, publish or whatever so so even though the undo feature on twitter is is very short. it's still gives something a little bit of something to people but i think the edit feature the edit button will really be what people are hoping for. okay, we only have about 20 seconds left, but i want to ask you how is twitter's fiscal financial situation right now. are they making money? are they ever made money? yeah, it's it's tricky. you know, i think there it they took a hit with the elon musk drama, but i think they're hoping that you know, things will change and there's a lot of restructure and going on a lot of companies including twitter

to kind of hopefully turn that around and we'll see this at a button helps abrar al-hedy from cnet. thank you so much for joining us. thank you for having me. coming up next california teens won't get to choose whether they want to get vaccinated at least not right now state senator. scott weiner will join us to explain why he pulled the bill and

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♪ then let's go struttin' right now ♪ the rollout of the new omicron targeting covid booster, california lawmakers. pull the plug on a bill that would have allowed more teens to get vaccinated without parental consent san francisco state senator scott weiner who authored sb-866 chose not to put the measure up for a vote in the assembly before the legislative session ended stay senator wiener is here now to talk about this in a couple of other

important bills. thanks for joining us. thank you for having me senator. we know who was the population of teens that would have been allowed to decide on their own if they wanted a vaccine if this had become law. well first so i'll say that we're really disappointed that that this wasn't able to move forward. we didn't have enough boats in the assembly so it would have failed had we put it up for votes, but and this is not just about the covid vaccine. there are about a million teenagers in california who are not vaccinated for covid and a lot of them one. oh, i think we're having some issues with your wi-fi with your signal. i should say. i think you're frozen up. are we? rescuing this every account you're back. okay, i'm sorry. we're having a power outage so i have to lie. oh, no, please is is this just

your building is this related to to the flex alerts that's going up or all right my apologies, but i think you are back with no. okay, great. my apologies. oh my no. no, please don't apologize. i want to ask you this was not just about the cova vaccine right if if it had passed 15 to 17 year olds is what i understand. this would be this version would have been able to i want the vaccine my parents didn't let me but now i can get it. is that for any vaccine? yeah. this was not just about the covid vaccine. it is the case that about a million teams in california are not vaccinated for covid but there are homeschool kids who are not vaccinated for polio, which can cause paralysis for for monks which causes sterility for measles for any number. of very serious diseases and of course, we won't be involved in their kids healthcare even neglected or abusive situations or their parents have been

brainwashed. don't believe in vaccines and these kids should be able to protect their own health. we really wanted to pass this and a lot past the senate i'd have failed haven't gone up for oh, well, let's talk about why you think it didn't get enough support in the assembly and that's not just republicans who didn't support many of your fellow democrats did not sign on. why do you think that is where is the discomfort for them that you think they couldn't overcome? well, there are some members of the legislature who have philosophical objections to having kids or teenagers have the ability to make medical decisions for themselves. i could not disagree more. everyone should be able to protect their own health, even if they have parents who are either brainwashed against vaccines or or abusive or neglectful, but they're also the political dynamic was very very

toxic. the anti-vaxers have gotten so organized. they're so loud. they are a small minority, but they're loud and organized and they harassing members they were constantly present at the capitol at people's district offices and it's and it's it has an impact over time. i know that factor was there and i also know there are also parents who very much care for their kids, but think 15 maybe a little too young to leave healthcare decisions to themselves. it's a tough issue. no doubt. so what does it go next? are you bringing back next year? yeah, and just to be clear we want kids to be talking to their parents about healthcare. this is not about cutting. but not every kid has the kind of family on tragically where they can talk to their parents or their parents are involved and so for the parents who are really great parents for their kids this pie isn't gonna what it affect you at all.

we're looking at reintroducing. it's really for and these kids are sitting ducks polio is not going is being homeschooled whose parents won't get them vaccinated tough luck. you have to wait till you're 18 and you might get paralyzed but tough luck that's not acceptable. all right, senator winner. i signal is still not the greatest, but real quickly if you can tell us what you plan to do with your bill to extend last call the hour when bars have to serve their last drinks because that also failed this year. yeah, so we this is our was our fourth try on this my predecessor senator mark leno tried several times, you know, unfortunately i got vetoed in 2018. it's just a it's really sad. i mean cities should have the ability if they want to to go later locally. that should be a local decision. not a one size fits all state rule. so we just want to give cities flexibility. i don't know what will happen. it's not too well this year. so we'll evaluate.

oh because the signal sounding so crystal clear and good right now. i'm gonna risk this some people do say this is maybe boosting businesses at the expense of lives that you'll get more drunk drivers and potentially more crime by expanding overnight drinking hours. how do you answer that? is that something you worry about? that is completely and utterly false. the data is clear that there's so many cities and states around the country that have later service hours and they don't have increased drunk driving. some of them have even have less drunk driving. so that is all made up. this is not just about supporting businesses. yes. these are small businesses. we should support this senator winner, i knew i shouldn't have attempted that last question. i think our signals getting warbled again, but thank you so much. i appreciate you. making the time to join us later. alright some issues their technically speaking. we do apologize for that, but

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back. usually when backers of voter initiatives work hard and spend money to get a measure on the ballot. they don't try to get a pulled in a panic before the election, but that's just what's happening now with measure k designed to tax amazon, but may end up hurting local businesses instead our media partners at the san francisco standard were the first to publish an article about this stunning discovery joining us live now to talk about it is senior reporter for the standard josh kane. hey, josh, hey kristen, how are you? i'm good. but what is going on here? what was measure k supposed to help achieve? yes, so measure k was created to tax amazon specifically according to the person who put this whole ballot measure

together. it's a man named john elberlyn. who's the head of togco an affordable housing group here in the city and the goal was to create revenue that could then go towards a guaranteed income program for some of the city's most vulnerable restaurants. got it. how much money were they hoping this would raise? well, they they learned after putting the whole thing together that they were supposedly going to be raising around 60 million dollars a year to fund this guaranteed income program for single mothers a u o rthereeaug ok so the intent instead of getting something meaningful from what a lot of people think of as big bad amazon or a huge e-tailers. it would actually hit many local businesses. how come like where do they go wrong? yeah, well, this is kind of a truly san francisco news story in the sense that starts out with the best of intentions ends up blowing up in the people's face and actually creating more

problems than the one they're trying to actually solve because of the way it was written. they the organizers of prop k ended up not really understanding how amazon makes its money and so it actually wouldn't even affect amazon from what most people are saying it would actually affect hundreds of small businesses right here in san francisco. and so it would not actually text the, you know, big corporate giant they were going after it would hurt hundreds of small businesses and it would actually cut around 10 million dollars a year from the city's general fund. so in all respects, this is a colossal screw up. all right, because you were trying to explain to me because this is pretty complicated that they thought hey amazon made its money in sales. so we'll tax the sales. but really that wasn't the key driver right for amazon anyway. yeah, the the key driver is that they thought that amazon makes almost all of its money from the goods that many of us buy and we go to amazon.com, but amazon actually does a lot of web

services cloud computing and really helping a lot of the doheir wor so it's not le lyep secret. cfidentlformation t havehink te know, their eyes got athpoofeynt do due diligence got it. whereas the way it was written it would have taxed a lot of the local businesses that actually do get their money revenue from sales. so how did this all get discovered? well, so what's interesting about the situation is the city controller puts together an analysis on the proposition to figure out what kind of revenue would come in and some costs that would be associated and so they actually let the organizers of prop k know that it was going to actually have some very negative consequences. however prop k backers didn't

actually tell the local democratic party about this before the democratic party endorsed prop k and right now the democratic party here in san francisco is still endorsing prop kay while they go to court tomorrow to figure out if a judge will strip it from the ballot because so many people we're talking about thousands of people who signed a petition to put it on the ballot. we're mislead. oh, okay. so will a decision be made tomorrow on whether to strike it from the ballot. we're expecting to judge will make a decision tomorrow because actually next week the bell gets finalized. so the judge could say, you know, what we're gonna leave it as is this is your screw-up or they could actually say, you know what this was not really done in good faith, or at least people were misled and that's not really the way that we want to conduct our elections. so there's a lot that's gonna happen tomorrow and we'll find out that okay best case scenario the judge throws it out right? no more measure k, but how much money did the the organizers put into this? yeah, so best case scenario would probably be that it

doesn't go on the ballot. however, the people who organize this togco this affordable housing group. they spend almost a half million dollars putting this together and one thing that i spoke to affordable housing groups across the city about how they felt about tago's role in this ballot measure and people called it gross unethical. they said basically todd code could have used this half million dollars to help low-income residents who live in their buildings and instead they're using it on on political games that actually backfire wow. all right, how much time do we have left you guys? 30 seconds josh quick you're on a timer. what's the moral of the story? the moral of the story is do your due diligence do your homework if you're going to actually create a tax measure that raises millions of dollars, make sure you know what you're doing and not harming businesses, you know bars restaurants nail salons service industry people who are hit hardest by the pandemic their workers who have been really hit hard and losing wages. these are the people that get

affected most by this tax semester so really you know if you're gonna be in the game of politics you got to do your homework, and i think you know, what's astounding about this situation is the man who is in charge of this john elberling when i asked him we interviewed him for about two hours last week. he had no remorse. he's like, you know, what if it stays on the ballot, i'll just do this again next year. no big deal. all right, josh, that was 45, but i thank you. anyway great information. you can check out more of the san francisco standards other original reporting on their website as of standard.com and abc 7 will continue to bring you more segments featuring the

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show getting answers will be here every weekday at 3:00 on air and on live stream answering your questions. i'll see you back here at 4. tonight, a former new york city police officer sentenced to ten years in prison for the january 6th attack on the u.s. capitol. the longest sentence yet. the retired officer convicted of attacking a d.c. police officer with a flag pole, tackling him to the ground, and trying to rip off his gas mask. the defense claiming he was trying to help the officer he assaulted. the judge saying he's still shocked every time he sees the video. martha raddatz standing by. the department of justice and former president trump's lawyers squaring off in a federal court over those classified documents seized by the fbi. trump'ing legal team saying the top secret materials found inside mar-a-lago were like an overdue library book, insisting a special master be called in to review the documents. prosecutors with a blunt response, saying trump is no longer president and has no