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If you've ever worked with Twitter's API, you should know that not honoring deletes on your app is against the TOS. It doesn't matter what accounts are being mo

by krisdol 11y ago

If you've ever worked with Twitter's API, you should know that not honoring deletes on your app is against the TOS. It doesn't matter what accounts are being monitored, when a tweet is deleted by the account, you have to delete it from your server.

wslh 11y ago
Detecting another liar politician supersedes any API policy. You can also say that Snowden leaks are against the law but the importance of his relevations makes arguing about a ToS or law very naive.
- solistice 11y ago
  I think there might be some mixing up of the morality of the situation and the legality of the situation. Were the Snowden leaks against the law? Yes. Were the Snowden leaks immoral? I'd say no, they were an incredibly brave thing to do. Now a situation like that where the moral thing is against the law would require us reexamining and changing the law. Whether it's whistleblower laws, minimum sentences or sentences for minor drug offences, these things all require a good hard look, and most likely, a degree of retroactive pardoning. But believing one's cause to supercede the law is a dangerous road to be on. Now ToS are completely different. ToS are set by private entities, and as a single user you have little power over their content, only whether you accept them or not. They're an offer, not a democracy. I personally think that if you choose to knowingly violate the ToS of a service, then you should face the consequences of that regardless of the moral standing you may have. If you were using the Twitter API to defeat african warlords and Twitter decides that you're violating their ToS doing that and bans your account for it, well...you're SoL.
  - wslh 11y ago
    > If you were using the Twitter API to defeat african warlords and Twitter decides that you're violating their ToS doing that and bans your account for it, well...you're SoL. Not so fast, you can always use web scraping techniques as a defensive measure.
ceejayoz 11y ago
TOSes can't be illegal, and I'd argue that requiring deletion of tweets by public officials constitutes some sort of violation of open records / freedom of information laws.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  You seem really confused about how this works. If your argument is "twitter can't delete these due to it violating US law" that is an argument about twitter, and not it's TOS. If your argument is "people don't have to follow the TOS because the TOS requires them to not comply with the law", that is simply wrong. If the TOS asks you to do something illegal in your country, it does not make the TOS illegal per-se. It means you can't use the service, because you can't comply with the TOS. There generally is no "well, i can do whatever i want and it's twitter's problem because i can't comply with the TOS". The fact that you can't comply for legal reasons is your problem, not the TOS's or Twitters.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - nmcfarl 11y ago
    The "you can't use the service" because the TOS conflicts with the laws in you locality bit isn't necessarily true - it varies a lot by country. Plenty of places just invalidate the parts of your TOS (or any other contract) that conflict with the law. Which leaves it up to the company to decide whether they wish to pursue business in that locality. INAL
    - DannyBee 11y ago
      IAAL :) So, "conflict with the law" is a not-well-defined term. There are 196 countries, so yes, you could say it varies. But i'm not sure which are the "plenty" you are thinking about, and i'd love to see specific examples of what you are thinking about. Generally, most countries have pretty consistent law here. If the contract is a contract for you to perform something illegal (like murder), that will not be enforced. A contract that says "you must do X if you wish to use our service", in basically any reasonable country you can think of, is not going to be invalidated if you can't do X because it's illegal when done in very certain ways in very specific circumstances. This is because, again, in general, you can't claim the benefit of the contract (using the service) but not have to have the burden.
jackmaney 11y ago
Well, then, it shouldn't be a problem to write a service that automates the capture of screenshots of tweets posted by a particular account or on a particular hashtag. That doesn't even require access to the Twitter API, or, for that matter, having a Twitter account.
- danso 11y ago
  Yes, but a couple of problems: 1) It is also against TOS to store tweets beyond a reasonable length of time. 2) Without the use of the streaming API, you do not have an efficient, automated way to track which tweets have been deleted.
  - jackmaney 11y ago
    1. Tweets wouldn't be stored. Screenshots of tweets would be stored. 2. Admittedly, that would be the most inconvenient part of the process. This would require regular scraping to validate what's been deleted and what hasn't.
  - ConfuciusSay 11y ago
    It's a violation of TOS for an individual to take a photograph of Twitter on their screen?
ncr100 11y ago
What is wrong with having another server operated by a different entity duplicate the snarfed data, then?

by krisdol 11y ago

wslh 11y ago

Detecting another liar politician supersedes any API policy. You can also say that Snowden leaks are against the law but the importance of his relevations makes arguing about a ToS or law very naive.

solistice 11y ago
I think there might be some mixing up of the morality of the situation and the legality of the situation. Were the Snowden leaks against the law? Yes. Were the Snowden leaks immoral? I'd say no, they were an incredibly brave thing to do. Now a situation like that where the moral thing is against the law would require us reexamining and changing the law. Whether it's whistleblower laws, minimum sentences or sentences for minor drug offences, these things all require a good hard look, and most likely, a degree of retroactive pardoning. But believing one's cause to supercede the law is a dangerous road to be on. Now ToS are completely different. ToS are set by private entities, and as a single user you have little power over their content, only whether you accept them or not. They're an offer, not a democracy. I personally think that if you choose to knowingly violate the ToS of a service, then you should face the consequences of that regardless of the moral standing you may have. If you were using the Twitter API to defeat african warlords and Twitter decides that you're violating their ToS doing that and bans your account for it, well...you're SoL.
- wslh 11y ago
  > If you were using the Twitter API to defeat african warlords and Twitter decides that you're violating their ToS doing that and bans your account for it, well...you're SoL. Not so fast, you can always use web scraping techniques as a defensive measure.

ceejayoz 11y ago

TOSes can't be illegal, and I'd argue that requiring deletion of tweets by public officials constitutes some sort of violation of open records / freedom of information laws.

DannyBee 11y ago
You seem really confused about how this works. If your argument is "twitter can't delete these due to it violating US law" that is an argument about twitter, and not it's TOS. If your argument is "people don't have to follow the TOS because the TOS requires them to not comply with the law", that is simply wrong. If the TOS asks you to do something illegal in your country, it does not make the TOS illegal per-se. It means you can't use the service, because you can't comply with the TOS. There generally is no "well, i can do whatever i want and it's twitter's problem because i can't comply with the TOS". The fact that you can't comply for legal reasons is your problem, not the TOS's or Twitters.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- nmcfarl 11y ago
  The "you can't use the service" because the TOS conflicts with the laws in you locality bit isn't necessarily true - it varies a lot by country. Plenty of places just invalidate the parts of your TOS (or any other contract) that conflict with the law. Which leaves it up to the company to decide whether they wish to pursue business in that locality. INAL
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    IAAL :) So, "conflict with the law" is a not-well-defined term. There are 196 countries, so yes, you could say it varies. But i'm not sure which are the "plenty" you are thinking about, and i'd love to see specific examples of what you are thinking about. Generally, most countries have pretty consistent law here. If the contract is a contract for you to perform something illegal (like murder), that will not be enforced. A contract that says "you must do X if you wish to use our service", in basically any reasonable country you can think of, is not going to be invalidated if you can't do X because it's illegal when done in very certain ways in very specific circumstances. This is because, again, in general, you can't claim the benefit of the contract (using the service) but not have to have the burden.

jackmaney 11y ago

Well, then, it shouldn't be a problem to write a service that automates the capture of screenshots of tweets posted by a particular account or on a particular hashtag. That doesn't even require access to the Twitter API, or, for that matter, having a Twitter account.

danso 11y ago
Yes, but a couple of problems: 1) It is also against TOS to store tweets beyond a reasonable length of time. 2) Without the use of the streaming API, you do not have an efficient, automated way to track which tweets have been deleted.
- jackmaney 11y ago
  1. Tweets wouldn't be stored. Screenshots of tweets would be stored. 2. Admittedly, that would be the most inconvenient part of the process. This would require regular scraping to validate what's been deleted and what hasn't.
- ConfuciusSay 11y ago
  It's a violation of TOS for an individual to take a photograph of Twitter on their screen?

ncr100 11y ago

What is wrong with having another server operated by a different entity duplicate the snarfed data, then?