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Twitter shuts down 30 sites dedicated to saving politicians' deleted tweets
- embiggen 11y agoAPI not working for OSF anymore due to political reasons? There is need .. stealthy and robust .. tweet scraper.
- empressplay 11y agoThese guys just need to build an http scraper, they'll be back
- eli 11y agoI doubt it, that could be costly if Twitter decides to pursue them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc.
- Nadya 11y agoThe heart of that case is the cease & desist letter being treated as denying authorization. On another note, I wonder how strongly this would hold up against an individual. e.g. suing someone that was permbanned from your site because they used a proxy to access the site Beyond being difficult to find/sue the individual - and it being well beyond worth the costs of the lawsuit itself - I wonder if it would hold up in court. I'll keep this bookmarked as a (rather empty) threat against trolls who are ban evading.
- eli 11y agoRevoking an API key seems like a pretty clear sign you are denying authorization.
- Nadya 11y agoDenying authorization of the API, not of the website. Important difference. Especially given someone who uses web scraping doesn't necessarily mean they attempted to use the API, had an API key, or ever had the possibility of said non-existent API key being revoked.
- slg 11y agoObserving user requests (including deletes) has been a requirement of the API for as long time. The only thing that I'm surprised by is that it took Twitter this long to crack down. This doesn't mean these Tweets from public officials shouldn't or can't be preserved, it just means that doing so in this manner was always a misuse of Twitter's API.
- eli 11y agoOut of curiosity, what manner of saving them would you suggest instead? I'm not sure it's possible in an automated way without technically violating their TOS.
- onedev 11y agoYou can automate taking screenshots of the rendered tweet the moment the API data comes in (e.g. before deletion)
- eli 11y agoSaving tweets that have been deleted violates the rules you agree to in order to get an API key. Also, they no longer have API keys. I think you could probably make an argument that it is fair use to save and display a tweet from a politician without violating anyone's copyright, but I'm not sure if it's possible to do it in an automated way without violating the TOS and possibly the law.
- slg 11y agoI think scraping is probably the simplest but the ethics are just as questionable. Any method you try is probably going to be met with roadblocks from Twitter because you are inherently trying to use the site in a way that is against their rules. Like you said, there may be a fair use argument to be made, but that won't stop Twitter from at least trying to make it as hard as possible for you.
- 11y ago
- nathanvanfleet 11y agoThat's pretty sad. I imagine there are plenty of API users that are doing actual nefarious things. This only comes of as being a back-bench political deal that Twitter made.
- ante_annum 11y agoback-bench political deal Or just enforcing a ToS they've had in place for a while.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoFor some wonky definition of "only".
- kazinator 11y ago> "Imagine how nerve-racking — terrifying, even — tweeting would be if it was immutable and irrevocable?" Yes, it would be like these ... um ... thingies that Twits never heard of like, oh, e-mail and Usenet. And older thingies like writing letters. And, for example, having a "letter to the editor" published in a newspaper, which is then archived in a library. Publishing should be nerve-wracking and terrifying. You know, you can still buy calendars filled with George W. Bush gaffes. Should those be cease-and-desisted?
- nailer 11y agoWhich are both a lot less interesting than Twitter.
- kazinator 11y agoIf your e-mail is less interesting than Twitter, that really only speaks to the quality of your contacts.
- nailer 11y agoMy comment comes from a simple observation that globally significant breaking news (that one isn't personally involved in) tends to happen on Twitter rather than people's inboxes. But thanks for the snide remark.
- bdcravens 11y agoI think there's a LOT of interest in Hillary Clinton's deleted email.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agohttp://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/cancel/ http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/faqs/cancel/
- kazinator 11y agoSee "D. Do all news sites accept cancels?" Here, for "site" we can also substitute "archive". Archives don't have to process cancels or supersedes, and can ignore X-No-Archive headers.
- gorena 11y agoWhat stops the sites from just creating another API key (and call it something obfuscated if they were using something obvious before). Or, just run strings on the Twitter iOS app bundle... or just look at traffic in Charles...
- nailer 11y agoNothing, but breaking the ToS means they'll always be shut down before they can become big.
- user_0001 11y agoI haven't read the story or followed it all. But I create API key for site: xyz.com where I use the stream API to get all tweets from users a-z Then I push those to site zyx.com There is no way for twitter to know what API generated those tweets. Especially if site xyz.com DOES obey the delete notifications (which also triggers site zyx.com to go into action in checking the deleted tweet) I don't see how this is a total non-story
- gorena 11y agoThey would be able to be shut down if they're using Twitter's own API keys - or iOS's built-in keys. These types of things can typically be easily found with strings or a proxy (Charles).
- x0054 11y agoA better question would be what would stop a site from creating hundreds of Twitter accounts and doing some good old scraping.
- gorena 11y agoThat would work, but just finding a key with strings is much less effort (no code changes required).
- Mithaldu 11y agoEarlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10106882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10106882 Nothing new in this link.
- 650REDHAIR 11y agoI reposted so that people who don't surf HN on Sunday still get a chance to see.
- Mithaldu 11y agoWorthwhile to make that the first comment on a repost then. ;)
- ohitsdom 11y agoWow, what a short-sighted and ill-conceived move on Twitter's part. I know the answer but I still have to ask- has Twitter used the internet before? Don't they know how it works? The first thing many people do when they see a controversial tweet (especially from someone well known) is to take a screenshot. This changes nothing.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoWhat is appalling to me is that this illustrates how completely out of touch the Twitter management is with their user base.
- tptacek 11y agoI simply disagree. Many of these sites didn't originally spring up to serve the public interest. They're an offspring of something that started a couple years ago: Twitter bots that scrape for anyone's deleted messages and then highlight them. Those services are extremely toxic. They meant that as friends of mine joined the service I'd have to warn them: don't delete things on Twitter, because there are asshole bots that will use deleted messages to fuck with you. The public interest implications of some of these new political Twitter services are more straightforward, but that doesn't mean it's Twitter's obligation to sacrifice user experience for what is probably a marginal public interest benefit. Twitter is legitimately caught between the public interest and their own interests, and I'd have trouble blaming them either way. Why do I think the public interest implications here are marginal? A bunch of reasons: * Politicians are quickly going to learn how hostile Twitter is, and assign professional spindroids to their accounts (or to filter the messages that they themselves post). * It's not like Twitter can prevent deleted tweets from leaking. They'll get screenshot anyways. This just keeps the delete-shaming phenomenon from being shoved in everyone's face. On a previous thread about Twitter, someone pointed out that Twitter shouldn't do this because they should behave like infrastructure. But Twitter doesn't want to be infrastructure; the infrastructure market position is very bad for them.
- kefka 11y agoI simply disagree. Many of these sites didn't originally spring up to serve the public interest. They're an offspring of something that started a couple years ago: internet bots that scrape for anyone's deleted messages and then highlight them. Those services are extremely toxic. They meant that as friends of mine joined the service I'd have to warn them: don't delete things on internet, because there are asshole bots that will use deleted messages to fuck with you. The public interest implications of some of these new political internet services are more straightforward, but that doesn't mean it's internet's obligation to sacrifice user experience for what is probably a marginal public interest benefit. internet is legitimately caught between the public interest and their own interests, and I'd have trouble blaming them either way. Why do I think the public interest implications here are marginal? A bunch of reasons: * Politicians are quickly going to learn how hostile the internet is, and assign professional spindroids to their accounts (or to filter the messages that they themselves post). * It's not like the internet can prevent deleted content from leaking. They'll get screenshot anyways. This just keeps the delete-shaming phenomenon from being shoved in everyone's face. On a previous thread about the internet, someone pointed out that the internet shouldn't do this because they should behave like infrastructure. But the internet doesn't want to be infrastructure; the infrastructure market position is very bad for them.
- chjohasbrouck 11y agoIf they wanted to create a general "politician public statement archive" that included deleted tweets, I think that would be acceptable. Where they cross the line is in only doing deleted tweets, and marketing themselves that way. The entire purpose of their product is to undo a feature of someone else's product. This story is being framed a certain way: "Twitter is a big corporation attacking the little guy in defense of evil politicians," and kids on Reddit are outraged. I don't think that's what's happening here at all. They're just defending the integrity of their product.
- orbitingpluto 11y agoThink back thirty years. Imagine if ABC or CBS could demand that the New York Times not publish statements made by a politician on the nightly news or aggregate information about the political stances of a representative.
- chjohasbrouck 11y agoThat's not what Twitter is doing. If that was their goal they'd be suing Gawker and TMZ. The point isn't to stop deleted tweets from being disseminated at all - that's impossible and I'm sure they're smart enough to know that. The sole purpose of sites like Politwoops was to undo a feature of Twitter's product. Not only that, but they were using Twitter's own API to accomplish that. Twitter's goal is to set the precedent that that's not ok.
- orbitingpluto 11y agoAgain, think back thirty years to a scenario where a politician misspeaks on the news. No network would ever deny a request for a tape or transcript of a news program based solely whether the politician wants his statement to disappear. Everyone will agree that scraping and highlighting all deleted tweets is distasteful and slimy, but we're talking about politicians here. (Not that they're slimy, but that they exert an undue amount of power over the average bloke. Public interest, democracy, and all that.)
- chjohasbrouck 11y agoThe analogy doesn't really make sense to me. Twitter isn't a news service, it's a communications platform, and Twitter users aren't necessarily politicians.
- orbitingpluto 11y agoTwitter is a one to many communications platform, not a one to one platform. The analogy holds because Twitter is 1:N, not 1:1. They are publishing information to a large amount of people that people use to educate and inform themselves. And I already stated that doing this for every Twitter user is slimy. But retaining the record of how a politician has communicated with the public? That's in the public interest.
- sbecker 11y agoAnything you put on the internet is indeed immutable and irrevocable. This comment included. Hell, you don't even need to hit "submit" - the keystrokes and mouse movements - they are all captured and piped to many different analytics services in real time. It might not be surfaced on a publicly accessible site, but rest assured, it's in a database somewhere.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dhimes 11y agoFrom TFA: [The] decision was the result of "thoughtful internal deliberation and close consideration of a number of factors" ... They should address this truthfully on their blog. Letting something like this twist in the wind while their base users go apeshit is a surprising decision. They did this on a Friday- they've had all weekend to craft a statement.
- dudul 11y agoI'm still trying to get over the fact that politicians actually use twitter to discuss politics and convey their message.
- wutbrodo 11y agoThat's always been the mystery of Twitter to me. The fact that it became a place where interesting people have (ostensibly) serious conversations is _incredible_ to me, given how amazingly ill-suited to that task it is. If it was just as successful but (only) full of people exhibiting drive-by "wit", it would make a lot more sense to me.