It comes down to what brackets mean, and the reader understanding what is quoted.
In your second example, the quote is clear, verbatim as quotes are intended to be.
In the first example, what has been clear, precise syntax is not a matter of ambiguity.
In your example, it's somewhat clear, but inference is required to understand what was said.
The example given in the article actually does bring genuine ambiguity to what would otherwise be a precise, easily understood expression:
They may groan when Corky, denied the massive funding he’s asked for, tells the town council he’s going to “go home and bite [his] pillow,” the way I do now.
Did Corky say, "go home and bite pillow" broken English style?
Or, did Corky say something else?
Until this construct, we would know because "[his]" would be added into quote context. It would not be a modifier, essentially hiding or changing the quote.
Notably, what Corky did say isn't actually present in the expression, meaning we have to now trust the author interpreting things for us.
Breaking the line with how brackets are used is going to lead to significantly increased ambiguity, and that's going to happen because it will be employed to spin or otherwise manage far less trivial examples, and sorting it out will all take considerably more effort than it all would otherwise be, given brackets are never normally used to modify a quote itself.
And all for a bit of flow? I don't buy it. The whole affair diminishes how robust brackets are and introduced ambiguity into expression that does not add any real value.
Whenever I see “go home and bite [his] pillow”, I’ve always assumed the person spoke quickly and/or skipped a word, which the editor thought should be added. It never occurred to me before now that the editor actually replaced a word!
Right? Prior to this discussion, my thought was similar, typo, or something benign.
Replacing a word breaks the syntax and brings ambiguity to some use cases involving brackets and quotes that did not have it before.
As I mentioned elsewhere, a similar thing happened with the one space vs. two spaces to end a sentence.
In that last sentence, there is now ambiguity after "vs. " where there was not before. Right now I am on desktop, but if I were to input that sentence on my Android, "two" would be auto-capitalized, even though I am mid sentence.
I see this headed a similar direction.
Cases where the actual verbatim expression may be made more clear with something added in brackets will now overlap with cases where someone wants to replace a word in a quote...
In your second example, the quote is clear, verbatim as quotes are intended to be.
In the first example, what has been clear, precise syntax is not a matter of ambiguity.
In your example, it's somewhat clear, but inference is required to understand what was said.
The example given in the article actually does bring genuine ambiguity to what would otherwise be a precise, easily understood expression:
They may groan when Corky, denied the massive funding he’s asked for, tells the town council he’s going to “go home and bite [his] pillow,” the way I do now.
Did Corky say, "go home and bite pillow" broken English style?
Or, did Corky say something else?
Until this construct, we would know because "[his]" would be added into quote context. It would not be a modifier, essentially hiding or changing the quote.
Notably, what Corky did say isn't actually present in the expression, meaning we have to now trust the author interpreting things for us.
Breaking the line with how brackets are used is going to lead to significantly increased ambiguity, and that's going to happen because it will be employed to spin or otherwise manage far less trivial examples, and sorting it out will all take considerably more effort than it all would otherwise be, given brackets are never normally used to modify a quote itself.
And all for a bit of flow? I don't buy it. The whole affair diminishes how robust brackets are and introduced ambiguity into expression that does not add any real value.