12 ms·

Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

214 points by cloud_thrasher 7y ago

phoe-krk 7y ago
> 'fesses up Can we have proper English at least in the HN submission titles? I know that this is a direct quotation of the original, but "confesses" is much clearer and more readable than the original slang term.
- TheChaplain 7y ago
  Agreed. I am non-native English speaker and first I thought it something about Twitter had messed up..
  - simonswords82 7y ago
    It is something that Twitter has messed up (edit: Again). They shared data that they should not have.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  Can we just not post anything from TechCrunch? Their website is horribly anti-user.
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Heh on my HN client for Android (Material) I never could open TechCrunch articles with the built-in browser. I gave up on using the built-in browser as a result. I wouldnt outright ban TechCrunch but I agree it can be entirelt unusable. Sidenote: Wondering if anybody outside of Google offers an embedded browser component for Android like Mozilla and co. They might be able to provide a better experience.
    - t0astbread 7y ago
      Mozilla has GeckoView[1]. They also distribute a set of helper components for building browser-like applications on Android called Mozilla Android Components[2]. [1] https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview [2] https://mozac.org https://mozac.org Aside from that I'm also using this client on my phone, and I stopped using the built-in browser as well. I've configured the app to use my native browser which means I now get all the benefits from that when reading articles in Material (like having uMatrix on).
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Semaphor 7y ago
      RE: Sidenote I think the FF preview works as webview?
  - joosters 7y ago
    Techcrunch pages seem to have the highest number of adware/spyware scripts and links attached to them. I'd be amazed if the site hasn't also got a huge number of GDPR breaches in its workings.
    - wastedhours 7y ago
      Oath does have that truly awful preferences dialogue that pops up on first visit. It's frankly enough to make me navigate away most times.
    - userbinator 7y ago
      The linked page displays surprisingly well when visited with JS off, although it's ~10KB of article text embedded in 365KB of other (inline) crap. There's not even a nag to goad you into turning JS on.
- jasode 7y ago
  >Can we have proper English [...] , but "confesses" is much clearer and more readable than the original slang term. I can't speak for non-native English readers' difficulties but as an fyi... "confess" is not an exact replacement for "fess up" because both have different connotations. Therefore, if the (USA) writer is deliberately using connotations to shade the text, then the more informal "fesses up" is also proper English. E.g. respectable publications such as The New York Times have had writers and editors using the the phrase "fess up" for decades: https://www.google.com/search?q="fesses+up"+site%3Anytimes.com https://www.google.com/search?q="fesses+up"+site%3Anytimes.c...
  - dub 7y ago
    Both "confesses" and "fesses up" seem like improper English here. The article does not provide any evidence to suggest that Twitter was reluctant about sharing this information or lied about it previously. "Disclosed" seems like a more sensible and less sensationalist word to describe an entity sharing new information. The writer knows this: "Twitter has disclosed" are the first words of the article. Twitter also apologized, said they're taking steps to avoid making this mistake again, and provided a way to contact their Office of Data Protection for questions. That part didn't make it into the headline, though.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Agreed, but "proper" English could still be used; "admits" works as an alternative to "''fesses up"
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  Monolingual Brit here with very good English. I'm happy for others to alter, amend, extend and evolve this language. I am less interested in the finer points of grammar or vocabulary than people use it properly; to put across a statement that is relevant, precise, concise and in all other ways, well-expressed. IOW I'm OK with this.
ignoramous 7y ago
Reminds me of an ex-Amazon ad exec, Kivin Varghese, 'fessing up about the wrongs in the business dealings there and eventually getting the boot [0]. The only difference is that perhaps Twitter, as a company, is 'fessing up and not any individual working against the interests of a company. Seems like all sides of the ad-industry is a giant cess pool, and no one's playing it fair. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716
DarwinMailApp 7y ago
So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locally running Alexa only to see ads relating to our specific conversation 10 minutes later on the web. Can anybody think of a technological approach to flagging this behavior?
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now. Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign, or it was a coincidence, there are a lot of people seeing a lot of ads every 10 minutes.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - DarwinMailApp 7y ago
    I like your point as I can relate to that opinion. However my outlook has changed in the last year or so. There has been several occasions where my conversation somehow turned into relevant web ads. I don't think I'm making a mistake here. A friend of mine told me of his good friend who left Amazon recently as his job was to listen to what users say to Alexa and ensure Alexa responded correctly. FYI that's both when users say Alexa first and also when they do not. More on that here [1]. I would love some more clarity into what's going on here. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/05/tech/alexa-amazon-human-voice-review/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/05/tech/alexa-amazon-human-v...
    - b_tterc_p 7y ago
      1) I would assume your entire social network is well documented. A lot of conversations include one person looking something up before or after the conversation. Most conversations don’t come up randomly. That can probably signal that you might be interested in such a topic too. For 2) it’s worth noting that when you say you didn’t say Alexa, it means Alexa at least thought you did. It’s not trying to constantly record, but may still be a problem to you.
userbinator 7y ago
"We are committed to providing you meaningful privacy choices" -> "We are committed to selling your data if you let us" I hate this sort of pseudo-friendly weasel-wording that's getting increasingly popular these days.
- 1qaz2wsx 7y ago
  unfortunately "selling your data" is why your 401k has been growing for last few years. it is not going to stop unless regulated by governments and tweaked over time as loopholes in those regulations are found (or added via lobbying). my take is, it is not going to stop, just kept in a pseudo check due to public awareness.
  - treypitt 7y ago
    regulatory capture by oil & gas companies, big ag, big pharma are also responsible for 401k growth
- tfha 7y ago
  My favorite is from Amazon, when selling Prime. "We are sorry to hear that you do not want FREE two day shipping." It really agitates me. I wish it didn't bother me so much but it cuts pretty deep sometimes.
  - _jal 7y ago
    I think there's a linguistic study in there somewhere, tracking how US commercial culture ended up settling on stilted, awkward, passive-aggressive delivery mixed with robotic Gee-Golly Isn't Everything So GREAT phrasing for all communication with the cattle. I mostly find it ridiculous. Reminds me of stock phrases used by grubby bureaucrats asking for a bribe. But then just about everything about Amazon (and related automate-everything customer service shops) reminds me of the worst sorts of governmental dysfunction. If what you want is what they want or they have some reason to care about you, things are great. Otherwise, you don't even get indifference; you're literally arguing with a machine.
  - 7y ago
olivierduval 7y ago
For me, it looks like the European GDPR - that received a lot of harsh words here, on HN - is a little bit improving the situation for everybody on the net, at least regarding the Big Players. Maybe some regulations is not bad after all (at least for de facto monopolistic business like Google, Amazon & co)...? ;-)
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  It's super effective and is making all companies pretty damn privacy conscious all of a sudden - except they also still violate it. The problem is that they will find ways to skirt around the edges of the GDPR as much as possible - or straight violate it in the hopes that nobody will find out.
  - bad_user 7y ago
    > "The problem is that they will find ways to skirt around the edges of the GDPR as much as possible" Many companies like to believe that, however the GDPR is pretty strict in certain regards. And such companies continue to operate only because no data protection authority has targeted them yet. There's also the matter that many US companies have ignored GDPR due to not having a legal entity in the EU, but unfortunately for them there are trade agreements in place between the US and the EU, which makes the GDPR enforceable for companies having EU users / customers, even without a legal entity in the EU. Give it time. And send complaints to your local DPA about violations that you see, because it does help.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Maybe it has, but I still believe in the long run it will do us more harm than good. We were starting to see a massive push to shift away from FAANG, but GDPR has just made those incumbents far stronger. They roadblocked the free market.
  - passivepinetree 7y ago
    Can you offer any sources for your assertions? In my observation, we were seeing the exact opposite of > We were starting to see a massive push to shift away from FAANG In my experience we were/still are seeing ever-greater consolidation towards Google/Facebook services. As an example, authentication/login with Google and Facebook is becoming the default on many web services, excluding users who may have deleted or never acquired such an account.
tictoc 7y ago
Here's an idea. Stop using twitter.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  You don't need to use Twitter (or Facebook, google, etc) for them to collect your data. Any site with a Twitter embed, a FB Like button, and/or Google Analytics will gather and process your data.
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    You can block that, though I’m sure some gets through. Pihole and an add blocker work pretty well for me, and it’s really surprising to me that people tolerate browsing without some form of protection.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      I use the DDG extension for Firefox and it does a decent job as well. It regularly catches Google's and FB's trackers for me.
- maximente 7y ago
  yeah, and what about the other millions of web properties inundating your web browser with JS that tracks, beacons, analyzes, and whatever the hell else? unless you want to replace your comment with "stop using the web" you'd be way better off getting on the spectrum of defending yourself to an obviously hostile world, with things like uBlock Origin, pihole, $increasing_complexity, and so forth
  - tictoc 7y ago
    Ooh. What's pihole and $increasing_complexity?
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Pihole is DNS level network wide blocking on a Raspberry Pi. It's brilliant. https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/
move-on-by 7y ago
There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them. Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments, and other small public interests that use their Facebook page as a sole means of announcements. They shouldn't be - but it doesn't change the fact that they are. The Ad industry needs strong and enforceable regulation, and quickly.
- jpollock 7y ago
  Blocking ads won't stop your info from being shared during the auction. That's a back end data transfer.
  - _Understated_ 7y ago
    That's true but it will really limit what information they can gather from you in the first place. For example, the article mentions they knew about browsing habits but that wouldn't be the case if they couldn't see you. I suppose it comes down to "we have the data, so let's use it"... we need to stop the mass-gathering in the first place then these "bugs" are meaningless.
  - move-on-by 7y ago
    You are correct, that is why I point out that regulation is the solution. Blocking what ads we can in the mean time is just a small way we - as unwilling users - can show that we are are unhappy with the way things currently are.
  - dylan604 7y ago
    Depends on the block really. If you are using a blocker that just removes it from the UI, then yes the auction is still occurring. If you are blocking the JS code from even executing, then no data is transmitted. Unless I'm totally misunderstanding things, if the code doesn't run, then nothing happens.
driverdan 7y ago
There's a way to nearly eliminate all Twitter ads from your feeds. Whenever you see one tap / click the drop down arrow on the top right of it and select "I don't like this ad." After you do it enough Twitter will drastically reduce the volume of ads it shows you. I see one every day or two and it's usually Twitter's "you've been selected to fill out a survey" ad.
bernardlunn 7y ago
Regulation is not the answer. GDPR has not done much good. A way to pay for content without relying on ads is the only way
oneepic 7y ago
"Confesses"? I'm not a fan of everything Twitter does, but this headline is so biased. I'm actually angry now. Twitter is "disclosing" these on their own, afaik, and I take that as a morally good thing. Also, it's a bug, not intended behavior in the first place. So if I understand this whole thing correctly, they never had to tell anyone they fixed these bugs, but they did anyway and people are still writing articles trying to drum up anger at Twitter for it. Please.
- pron 7y ago
  The article says: > It suggests this leak of data has been happening since May 2018 — which is also the day when Europe’s updated privacy framework, GDPR, came into force. The regulation mandates disclosure of data breaches (which explains why you’re hearing about all these issues from Twitter) So, at least according to the article, they did have an obligation to disclose this.
  - oneepic 7y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. Maybe this is moving the goalposts, but I'm still happy they're at least disclosing the issues and following the mandated procedure, instead of trying to hide it and save face.
dabei 7y ago
GDPR is a huge win for user privacy. All these have been going on and getting worse for years and finally getting surfaced.
pbecotte 7y ago
With the way the internet works and the tech they have built, it's harder not to collect stuff. All of these companies have all sorts of stuff they shouldn't, and I wouldn't trust anything they say about opting out.
ycombonator 7y ago
they need to asked to shut up with pi-holes !

> 'fesses up Can we have proper English at least in the HN submission titles? I know that this is a direct quotation of the original, but "confesses" is much clearer and more readable than the original slang term.

TheChaplain 7y ago
Agreed. I am non-native English speaker and first I thought it something about Twitter had messed up..
- simonswords82 7y ago
  It is something that Twitter has messed up (edit: Again). They shared data that they should not have.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
Can we just not post anything from TechCrunch? Their website is horribly anti-user.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Heh on my HN client for Android (Material) I never could open TechCrunch articles with the built-in browser. I gave up on using the built-in browser as a result. I wouldnt outright ban TechCrunch but I agree it can be entirelt unusable. Sidenote: Wondering if anybody outside of Google offers an embedded browser component for Android like Mozilla and co. They might be able to provide a better experience.
  - t0astbread 7y ago
    Mozilla has GeckoView[1]. They also distribute a set of helper components for building browser-like applications on Android called Mozilla Android Components[2]. [1] https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview [2] https://mozac.org https://mozac.org Aside from that I'm also using this client on my phone, and I stopped using the built-in browser as well. I've configured the app to use my native browser which means I now get all the benefits from that when reading articles in Material (like having uMatrix on).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    RE: Sidenote I think the FF preview works as webview?
- joosters 7y ago
  Techcrunch pages seem to have the highest number of adware/spyware scripts and links attached to them. I'd be amazed if the site hasn't also got a huge number of GDPR breaches in its workings.
  - wastedhours 7y ago
    Oath does have that truly awful preferences dialogue that pops up on first visit. It's frankly enough to make me navigate away most times.
  - userbinator 7y ago
    The linked page displays surprisingly well when visited with JS off, although it's ~10KB of article text embedded in 365KB of other (inline) crap. There's not even a nag to goad you into turning JS on.
jasode 7y ago
>Can we have proper English [...] , but "confesses" is much clearer and more readable than the original slang term. I can't speak for non-native English readers' difficulties but as an fyi... "confess" is not an exact replacement for "fess up" because both have different connotations. Therefore, if the (USA) writer is deliberately using connotations to shade the text, then the more informal "fesses up" is also proper English. E.g. respectable publications such as The New York Times have had writers and editors using the the phrase "fess up" for decades: https://www.google.com/search?q="fesses+up"+site%3Anytimes.com https://www.google.com/search?q="fesses+up"+site%3Anytimes.c...
- dub 7y ago
  Both "confesses" and "fesses up" seem like improper English here. The article does not provide any evidence to suggest that Twitter was reluctant about sharing this information or lied about it previously. "Disclosed" seems like a more sensible and less sensationalist word to describe an entity sharing new information. The writer knows this: "Twitter has disclosed" are the first words of the article. Twitter also apologized, said they're taking steps to avoid making this mistake again, and provided a way to contact their Office of Data Protection for questions. That part didn't make it into the headline, though.
- GordonS 7y ago
  Agreed, but "proper" English could still be used; "admits" works as an alternative to "''fesses up"
tempguy9999 7y ago
Monolingual Brit here with very good English. I'm happy for others to alter, amend, extend and evolve this language. I am less interested in the finer points of grammar or vocabulary than people use it properly; to put across a statement that is relevant, precise, concise and in all other ways, well-expressed. IOW I'm OK with this.

ignoramous 7y ago

Reminds me of an ex-Amazon ad exec, Kivin Varghese, 'fessing up about the wrongs in the business dealings there and eventually getting the boot [0]. The only difference is that perhaps Twitter, as a company, is 'fessing up and not any individual working against the interests of a company. Seems like all sides of the ad-industry is a giant cess pool, and no one's playing it fair. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8600716

DarwinMailApp 7y ago

So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locally running Alexa only to see ads relating to our specific conversation 10 minutes later on the web. Can anybody think of a technological approach to flagging this behavior?

lonelappde 7y ago
Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now. Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign, or it was a coincidence, there are a lot of people seeing a lot of ads every 10 minutes.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- DarwinMailApp 7y ago
  I like your point as I can relate to that opinion. However my outlook has changed in the last year or so. There has been several occasions where my conversation somehow turned into relevant web ads. I don't think I'm making a mistake here. A friend of mine told me of his good friend who left Amazon recently as his job was to listen to what users say to Alexa and ensure Alexa responded correctly. FYI that's both when users say Alexa first and also when they do not. More on that here [1]. I would love some more clarity into what's going on here. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/05/tech/alexa-amazon-human-voice-review/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/05/tech/alexa-amazon-human-v...
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    1) I would assume your entire social network is well documented. A lot of conversations include one person looking something up before or after the conversation. Most conversations don’t come up randomly. That can probably signal that you might be interested in such a topic too. For 2) it’s worth noting that when you say you didn’t say Alexa, it means Alexa at least thought you did. It’s not trying to constantly record, but may still be a problem to you.

userbinator 7y ago

"We are committed to providing you meaningful privacy choices" -> "We are committed to selling your data if you let us" I hate this sort of pseudo-friendly weasel-wording that's getting increasingly popular these days.

1qaz2wsx 7y ago
unfortunately "selling your data" is why your 401k has been growing for last few years. it is not going to stop unless regulated by governments and tweaked over time as loopholes in those regulations are found (or added via lobbying). my take is, it is not going to stop, just kept in a pseudo check due to public awareness.
- treypitt 7y ago
  regulatory capture by oil & gas companies, big ag, big pharma are also responsible for 401k growth
tfha 7y ago
My favorite is from Amazon, when selling Prime. "We are sorry to hear that you do not want FREE two day shipping." It really agitates me. I wish it didn't bother me so much but it cuts pretty deep sometimes.
- _jal 7y ago
  I think there's a linguistic study in there somewhere, tracking how US commercial culture ended up settling on stilted, awkward, passive-aggressive delivery mixed with robotic Gee-Golly Isn't Everything So GREAT phrasing for all communication with the cattle. I mostly find it ridiculous. Reminds me of stock phrases used by grubby bureaucrats asking for a bribe. But then just about everything about Amazon (and related automate-everything customer service shops) reminds me of the worst sorts of governmental dysfunction. If what you want is what they want or they have some reason to care about you, things are great. Otherwise, you don't even get indifference; you're literally arguing with a machine.
- 7y ago

olivierduval 7y ago

For me, it looks like the European GDPR - that received a lot of harsh words here, on HN - is a little bit improving the situation for everybody on the net, at least regarding the Big Players. Maybe some regulations is not bad after all (at least for de facto monopolistic business like Google, Amazon & co)...? ;-)

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
It's super effective and is making all companies pretty damn privacy conscious all of a sudden - except they also still violate it. The problem is that they will find ways to skirt around the edges of the GDPR as much as possible - or straight violate it in the hopes that nobody will find out.
- bad_user 7y ago
  > "The problem is that they will find ways to skirt around the edges of the GDPR as much as possible" Many companies like to believe that, however the GDPR is pretty strict in certain regards. And such companies continue to operate only because no data protection authority has targeted them yet. There's also the matter that many US companies have ignored GDPR due to not having a legal entity in the EU, but unfortunately for them there are trade agreements in place between the US and the EU, which makes the GDPR enforceable for companies having EU users / customers, even without a legal entity in the EU. Give it time. And send complaints to your local DPA about violations that you see, because it does help.
cameronbrown 7y ago
Maybe it has, but I still believe in the long run it will do us more harm than good. We were starting to see a massive push to shift away from FAANG, but GDPR has just made those incumbents far stronger. They roadblocked the free market.
- passivepinetree 7y ago
  Can you offer any sources for your assertions? In my observation, we were seeing the exact opposite of > We were starting to see a massive push to shift away from FAANG In my experience we were/still are seeing ever-greater consolidation towards Google/Facebook services. As an example, authentication/login with Google and Facebook is becoming the default on many web services, excluding users who may have deleted or never acquired such an account.

tictoc 7y ago

Here's an idea. Stop using twitter.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
You don't need to use Twitter (or Facebook, google, etc) for them to collect your data. Any site with a Twitter embed, a FB Like button, and/or Google Analytics will gather and process your data.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  You can block that, though I’m sure some gets through. Pihole and an add blocker work pretty well for me, and it’s really surprising to me that people tolerate browsing without some form of protection.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    I use the DDG extension for Firefox and it does a decent job as well. It regularly catches Google's and FB's trackers for me.
maximente 7y ago
yeah, and what about the other millions of web properties inundating your web browser with JS that tracks, beacons, analyzes, and whatever the hell else? unless you want to replace your comment with "stop using the web" you'd be way better off getting on the spectrum of defending yourself to an obviously hostile world, with things like uBlock Origin, pihole, $increasing_complexity, and so forth
- tictoc 7y ago
  Ooh. What's pihole and $increasing_complexity?
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Pihole is DNS level network wide blocking on a Raspberry Pi. It's brilliant. https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/

move-on-by 7y ago

There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them. Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments, and other small public interests that use their Facebook page as a sole means of announcements. They shouldn't be - but it doesn't change the fact that they are. The Ad industry needs strong and enforceable regulation, and quickly.

jpollock 7y ago
Blocking ads won't stop your info from being shared during the auction. That's a back end data transfer.
- _Understated_ 7y ago
  That's true but it will really limit what information they can gather from you in the first place. For example, the article mentions they knew about browsing habits but that wouldn't be the case if they couldn't see you. I suppose it comes down to "we have the data, so let's use it"... we need to stop the mass-gathering in the first place then these "bugs" are meaningless.
- move-on-by 7y ago
  You are correct, that is why I point out that regulation is the solution. Blocking what ads we can in the mean time is just a small way we - as unwilling users - can show that we are are unhappy with the way things currently are.
- dylan604 7y ago
  Depends on the block really. If you are using a blocker that just removes it from the UI, then yes the auction is still occurring. If you are blocking the JS code from even executing, then no data is transmitted. Unless I'm totally misunderstanding things, if the code doesn't run, then nothing happens.

driverdan 7y ago

There's a way to nearly eliminate all Twitter ads from your feeds. Whenever you see one tap / click the drop down arrow on the top right of it and select "I don't like this ad." After you do it enough Twitter will drastically reduce the volume of ads it shows you. I see one every day or two and it's usually Twitter's "you've been selected to fill out a survey" ad.

bernardlunn 7y ago

Regulation is not the answer. GDPR has not done much good. A way to pay for content without relying on ads is the only way

oneepic 7y ago

"Confesses"? I'm not a fan of everything Twitter does, but this headline is so biased. I'm actually angry now. Twitter is "disclosing" these on their own, afaik, and I take that as a morally good thing. Also, it's a bug, not intended behavior in the first place. So if I understand this whole thing correctly, they never had to tell anyone they fixed these bugs, but they did anyway and people are still writing articles trying to drum up anger at Twitter for it. Please.

pron 7y ago
The article says: > It suggests this leak of data has been happening since May 2018 — which is also the day when Europe’s updated privacy framework, GDPR, came into force. The regulation mandates disclosure of data breaches (which explains why you’re hearing about all these issues from Twitter) So, at least according to the article, they did have an obligation to disclose this.
- oneepic 7y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. Maybe this is moving the goalposts, but I'm still happy they're at least disclosing the issues and following the mandated procedure, instead of trying to hide it and save face.

dabei 7y ago

GDPR is a huge win for user privacy. All these have been going on and getting worse for years and finally getting surfaced.

pbecotte 7y ago

With the way the internet works and the tech they have built, it's harder not to collect stuff. All of these companies have all sorts of stuff they shouldn't, and I wouldn't trust anything they say about opting out.

ycombonator 7y ago

they need to asked to shut up with pi-holes !