"Twitter has sold billions of archived tweets believed to have vanished forever. A privacy row has erupted as hundreds of companies queue up to purchase users’ personal information from the new database."
Is there actually any information in this? What do they mean by believed to be vanished forever? According to the BBC new article [1] "private accounts and tweets that have been deleted will not be indexed by the site."
Historically Twitter have been pretty good about ensuring, in their licences at least, things like deleted tweets are deleted even from external archives. It's what makes compiling a database of tweets - even for research purposes - quite difficult.
Normal people believe that information that is nearly impossibly difficult to find is as good as gone forever. (This is mostly as these same "normal people" also often don't understand that website scraping can be automated; a sad misapplication of almost-reasonable cost heuristics to a system they don't understand.)
However, on Twitter there is an extra wrinkle: neither the site nor the API allow you to go back more than 800 tweets for any view, whether it be "search results matching X" or "tweets that mention me" or "tweets posted by user Y" (the one exception being "your own tweets", where you can go back 3200).
This means that if you tweet a lot, it is impossible for another user to go back very far into your history. Even you may not be able to go back that far in your own history. As an example: if you send 20 tweets a day, your history will be inaccessible to you within 6 months, and inaccessible to other users within 6 weeks.
Given that this information is seemingly just gone--inaccessible, unable to be found from the user interface of any client, or Twitter's website, or searches on Twitter--while you and I know that they didn't delete it (in fact, Twitter even implies as much in their documentation somewhere: that the 800/3200 are only "temporary" limits), normal people are going to consider that data "vanished forever".
I imagine the "believed to have vanished forever" is based on the common misconception that because Twitter's search only goes back about a week, they don't save older tweets anywhere.
Wait, so this "article" makes a bunch of claims against Twitter based on zero authoritative links and a bunch of unsourced quotes from ... the Daily Mail?
And we're supposed to take this seriously? Come on, doesn't it take more than a bunch of unsubstantiated claims for the HN community to jump on something and just take it at face value?
The one possible privacy problem that I can see is that they are selling tweets that users can no longer control - if I said something a year ago that I wish I could take back ("Hi everyone, just to let you know I'm gay" or whatever), I'm now unable to delete it, or even review what it was I said, but it can still be sold and tied to me.
Still, not something I personally have an issue with, and I suspect not something most people would have an issue with.
Agreed. I use twitter as my public micro-blogging/rating/raving platform, and for them to sell data that I assumed was already being pulled by anyone via the API is a non issue to me.
The people who are shocked and offended don't understand that they aren't the user of these "free" social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc). They / we are in fact the product and once it's realized that your data is being sold to others than you will change the way you interact with the networks.
so true. public is public. Anyone could have data mined all these twitts...
But the difficult question that may rise is the "right to delete".
IMO it's a hard dilemma: history VS privacy.
Can someone decide to delete all its trace and destroy everything he built? On the other hand, we need to keep trace of what's happened in the past, don't you think?
As long as they don't sell DM's or private account tweets, I don't really see the big issue.. By saying that, I mean I'm comfortable with companies having what was already public in the first place.
If you were publicly tweeting and then went private just before this database was closed off, would those tweets get out?
What if you switched back and forth between private and public a bunch of times? Were those private tweets lost or did they reappear when you went public?
My gut says everything stays in the database and it's all being sold.
Twitter is a business, just like any other business, trying to turn a profit. Protect your account if you don't want your public data being pulled. Anyone can make a timeline API request...
Once upon a time it was the consumer who was confused about what they owned. We all bought vinyl records because it meant we could hear the music we wanted to. We thought this meant we could do what we liked with the music and even though we couldn't the limitations of the technology meant the artist and record company profits never really suffered. One day digital music came along and suddenly our assumptions about what we could do with the music we owned became a serious problem for record company profits and the whole planet shook.
Now we have all become artists; our words, our emails, our tweets and posts the new music. The Twitters and the Googles are the new record companies and once more the confusion between music and vinyl has arisen.
> By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
> You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.
> Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.
You can put a CC license on your tweets, and it'll grant those additional copyright rights to anyone, but it doesn't limit what Twitter can do with the content you posted one bit.
[+] [-] ajanuary|14 years ago|reply
Is there actually any information in this? What do they mean by believed to be vanished forever? According to the BBC new article [1] "private accounts and tweets that have been deleted will not be indexed by the site."
Historically Twitter have been pretty good about ensuring, in their licences at least, things like deleted tweets are deleted even from external archives. It's what makes compiling a database of tweets - even for research purposes - quite difficult.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17178022
[+] [-] saurik|14 years ago|reply
However, on Twitter there is an extra wrinkle: neither the site nor the API allow you to go back more than 800 tweets for any view, whether it be "search results matching X" or "tweets that mention me" or "tweets posted by user Y" (the one exception being "your own tweets", where you can go back 3200).
This means that if you tweet a lot, it is impossible for another user to go back very far into your history. Even you may not be able to go back that far in your own history. As an example: if you send 20 tweets a day, your history will be inaccessible to you within 6 months, and inaccessible to other users within 6 weeks.
Given that this information is seemingly just gone--inaccessible, unable to be found from the user interface of any client, or Twitter's website, or searches on Twitter--while you and I know that they didn't delete it (in fact, Twitter even implies as much in their documentation somewhere: that the 800/3200 are only "temporary" limits), normal people are going to consider that data "vanished forever".
[+] [-] simonw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] primigenus|14 years ago|reply
And we're supposed to take this seriously? Come on, doesn't it take more than a bunch of unsubstantiated claims for the HN community to jump on something and just take it at face value?
[+] [-] hopeless|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachinglis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corin_|14 years ago|reply
Still, not something I personally have an issue with, and I suspect not something most people would have an issue with.
[+] [-] mullethunter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcdillon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gren|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dutchbrit|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|14 years ago|reply
What if you switched back and forth between private and public a bunch of times? Were those private tweets lost or did they reappear when you went public?
My gut says everything stays in the database and it's all being sold.
[+] [-] narad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methoddk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jond3k|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zedr|14 years ago|reply
I agree, however: if you want to keep your thoughts private, don't post them on the Internet. When do you do that, they don't belong to you anymore.
[+] [-] viana007|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Toenex|14 years ago|reply
Now we have all become artists; our words, our emails, our tweets and posts the new music. The Twitters and the Googles are the new record companies and once more the confusion between music and vinyl has arisen.
[+] [-] revorad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamjam|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lignuist|14 years ago|reply
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_recent_changes_to_t...
[+] [-] hippich|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] islon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] af3|14 years ago|reply
[1] http://tweetcc.com/
[+] [-] ceejayoz|14 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/tos
> By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).
> You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and services, subject to our terms and conditions for such Content use.
> Such additional uses by Twitter, or other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter, may be made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the Content that you submit, post, transmit or otherwise make available through the Services.
You can put a CC license on your tweets, and it'll grant those additional copyright rights to anyone, but it doesn't limit what Twitter can do with the content you posted one bit.
[+] [-] suking|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtani|14 years ago|reply
http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-f=1_3785314&N-fa=3689915&#...
[+] [-] fernandose|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] suking|14 years ago|reply