Redact message when message is edited and all text is deleted

[aaronraimist]

Fixes element-hq/element-web#11024

[t3chguy]

might still want to this._cancelPreviousPendingEdit();

[t3chguy]

other than the missing this._cancelPreviousPendingEdit();

[jryans]

To summarise for @matrix-org/product, this work allows you redact / remove a message by editing it to an empty string. Without this change, if you edit a message to nothing, you just see " (edited)" as the message:

[dbkr]

Have commented on the issue (element-hq/element-web#11024 (comment)). tl;dr: maybe we can change how these messages are presented in the UI instead?

[nadonomy]

Having read through this PR & the related issue I think the missing piece in the critical thinking so far is that redactions are destructive, so therefore would block further edits. Conflating the 2 automatically without explicit action from users would be unexpected.

The solution I'd be interested in to merge this into master would be to decorate blank messages better with an action, like this quick comp:

[t3chguy]

@nadonomy that looks quite exploitable, I can craft a message which will look identical but on click takes you to some phishing site.

The styling might not be perfect but can probably get it a little closer

(Blank) [![](mxc://matrix.org/jatEhazTABVphsTufKcCWnRz) Delete](https://rick.roll)

Also inconsistent terminology Delete vs Remove in the contextual menu

[nadonomy]

Also inconsistent terminology Delete vs Remove in the contextual menu

Yup, was just looking for quick wins on this open PR and favoured consistency in context in the timeline at least.

@nadonomy that looks quite exploitable, I can craft a message which will look identical but on click takes you to some phishing site.

The styling might not be perfect but can probably get it a little closer

If this is the case, then I'd block this on design, noting that it's probably around a p2-3 and we have lots of p1 work in flight at the moment so we'd realistically get to this in weeks-months unfortunately.