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Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
- lhnz 7y agoIf the usernames free up, I wonder if this going to lead to something synonymous to domain squatting?
- dehrmann 7y agoI doubt they'd free up the usernames. Username reuse has problems with reputation hijacking, either for paid likes, spam, or making it look like the user said something they didn't. It also creates a bad experience with historic @users in tweets, and no one wants that bad PR tweets pretending to be from someone deceased.
- herendin2 7y agoWhat you said is true, but they will free up old usernames FTA- "previously unavailable usernames will start coming up for grabs after the 11 December cut-off"
- dehrmann 7y agoColor me incorrect. I wish them luck with that.
- dissidents 7y agoTwitter handles are worth a lot of money and hackers have spent much effort to steal them. See https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/how-i-almost-lost-my-500000-twitter-username-jb-and-my-startup/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/how-i... https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/twitter-restores-50000-n-username-to-its-owner/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/twitt... Amazing if Twitter is just going to release valuable namespaces worth millions all on the same day.
- ummonk 7y agoI imagine they want to free up accounts that never did anything. You should be able to safely make a handle available after deleting an account if it has never tweeted, has not been tweeted at, and hasn’t logged in in a long time.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoThey could rewrite @mention urls on recycled accounts to a /recycled page that explains this.
- Nextgrid 7y agoA solution could be to make the usernames available after a random period of time (for up to a year), so popular usernames aren't released all at once to be grabbed by a squatter. With a staggered release this at least allows the chance for someone legitimate to stumble upon the username before a squatter arrives.
- codetrotter 7y agoIf squatting Twitter names becomes even marginally profitable you can be sure that squatters will be setting up bots that will monitor the availability of deactivated usernames that were popular in the past and that as soon as these are released they will be taken. A delay of the kind you suggested will not stop the bot writers.
- mc3 7y agoYes better to put the account names up for auction and bring in some revenue.
- robjan 7y agoThey already have this problem now. This may actually be one of the few positive things that come with this change
- Carpetsmoker 7y agoOn the other hand, my username (arp242) is already "squatted" by an account that never tweeted or had any other apparently activity. I don't use Twitter much, but people have erroneously "mentioned" this account on a few occasions.
- symplee 7y agoWow, this is happening on December 11th? That seems rather abrupt. Why not freeze and hide the accounts instead of deleting? I.e. don't push any tweets to them, or anything else computationally intensive. Then when they log in again, have them click a button to "catch up." Probably not as profitable as annoying a lot of surprised users who try and log in after Dec 12...
- ummonk 7y agoI imagine the goal is to free up handles for new users.
- siftrics 7y agoThe article explicitly states the goal, which is not to free up handles: "The site said it [the upcoming deletions] was because users who do not log-in were unable to agree to its updated privacy policies." Although, to your credit, the handles will indeed become available: "...previously unavailable usernames will start coming up for grabs after the 11 December cut-off - though Twitter said it would be a gradual process, beginning with users outside of the US."
- cyborgx7 7y agoThe evidence suggests that the suspect committed the crime. Oh nevermind, the suspect explicitly stated he did not commit the crime. I don't even think freeing up usernames is necessarily a bad thing, but trusting the stated motivation of big companies for their actions seems awfully naive.
- syshum 7y ago>>Wow, this is happening on December 11th? That seems rather abrupt. Just in time for Christmas, image wanting to look back over your deceased father tweets on the holiday only to discover Twitter black-holed them for you... it never cease to amaze how incompetent management is at Large corporations, it seems the bigger a company gets more incompetent is management becomes
- throw_m239339 7y ago> In future, the firm said it would also look at accounts where people have logged in but don't "do anything" on the platform. Yes, Twitter is going to purge a lot of accounts, the same accounts Twitter boasted about having pre IPO in order to fake growth.
- mc32 7y agoThat sucks! I have an account. I log in but I never post. I only use it to follow some interesting accounts —that is all. I don’t contact customer service i don’t feign outrage I don’t virtue signal I don’t post memes... it’s by all means passive. WTF, I just want to follow some accounts which disseminate useful information.
- tehwebguy 7y agoI think that counts as doing something
- iamaelephant 7y agoThat represents probably the overwhelming majority of Twitter usage. Your account will be fine.
- cvhashim 7y agoThey probably have ways of getting the metric usage for lurkers
- lilyball 7y agoDo you come into contact with Twitter advertising? Then you’re probably fine.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago> Twitter will begin deleting accounts that have been inactive for more than six months, unless they log in before an 11 December deadline.
- mc32 7y ago
- generalpass 7y ago> The cull will include users who stopped posting to the site because they died... Indeed, your tweets die with you. I wonder about really popular personalities?
- kick 7y agoThey suspended Robin Williams's account after he died, so they probably wouldn't be against it.
- generalpass 7y agoI think that's really sad. Maybe someone will make a tweet in peace site.
- rahuldottech 7y agoI wonder what will happen to the twitter accounts of folks who have passed away? Eg. Aaron Swartz: https://twitter.com/aaronsw https://twitter.com/aaronsw https://twitter.com/aaronsw_hv https://twitter.com/aaronsw_hv > The cull will include users who stopped posting to the site because they died - unless someone with that person's account details is able to log-in. Yeah, this is bad. EDIT ---- Archive Team is making an effort to archive twitter accounts of dead users. Please see these links: https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1199459588594176000 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1199459588594176000 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbCbDZEPfxPCqOLRvo525QYGgwRnNgL3dmemZGdtRWk_epsQ/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbCbDZEPfxPCqOLRvo... https://www.archiveteam.org/ https://www.archiveteam.org/
- wilg 7y agoSeems like they could avoid this problem, keep old accounts, and still free up the namespace by just renaming all these accounts @_archived_originalname (or something better). Maybe with some kind of process to re-activate the account under the original name (or a new one if it has since been taken). And some kind of hands-on resolution process for people who accidentally got deactivated. Feels tractable.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago> Twitter said the effort is not, as had been suggested by some users on the network, an attempt to free up usernames. > The site said it was because users who do not log-in were unable to agree to its updated privacy policies.
- eggsome 7y agoThey've already started deleting old tweets for some reason. I only tweeted 4 times and the 2 oldest tweets are gone :(
- fullstop 7y agoI had a tweet from 2006, right after launch. It just said "this is dumb". It's gone now.
- echelon 7y agoWait, is this really happening? Can you confirm or post evidence? This is a big deal if so.
- dylan604 7y agoHow does one prove a negative? A deleted tweet from 2006 where nobody has taken a screen shot. It's not an active account like POTUS with the entire world watching specifically for catching deletes. I'm seriously asking
- eggsome 7y agoI can't provide proof, but I _know_ that I tweeted @adom_dev around the time of it's kickstarter and one of the Baldurs Gate EE devs about gemrb around the time they announced that project. Both tweets are gone.
- zatkin 7y agoTangentially, has anyone obtained a username via trademark infringement? How did that go?
- greglindahl 7y agoYes. It works sometimes, and not others.
- nikolay 7y agoYeah, bots will stay - they post like crazy and make me not use Twitter. Another idiotic decision from Twitter!
- lazzlazzlazz 7y agoThis overall seems extremely poorly considered. Hopefully, archiving services and efforts are going into overdrive to fix Twitter's errors here. Allowing hijacking of old, valuable historical Tweets makes no sense — even if it would be nice on some level to reclaim the handles. It may not be worth it.
- ig0r4eva 7y agoSomeone is writing some bots to build up a nice portfolio as we speak
- riffic 7y agoTime for a regular reminder that Twitter's namespace is the sole property of Twitter, Inc.
- echelon 7y agoWe should really get about replacing it. How's Mastodon holding up? I could never get over the ridiculous name or "toots", but if it scales we should really be using it instead. Another thing that shocks me is that ads actually pay for Twitter. How did they build such a massive company (expensive employees and outsized market cap) on ad revenue? It seems like the wrong demographics for ads to actually work and persuade people into buying. I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter becomes ground zero for the advertising bubble to burst. The advertising bubble will burst.
- Yolta 7y agoMastodon is holding up just fine and growing rapidly, the atmosphere is much nicer and every few weeks, there's a massive influx of new users whenever Twitter is upsetting its user base.
- riffic 7y agoThe Fediverse (which Mastodon is just one particular implementation of) is shockingly healthy right now. I surmise that it will look quite a bit different once you have, oh, a bbc.com implementing its underlying protocol and pumping out content onto it. At that point who knows what'll happen.
- Mirioron 7y ago>I surmise that it will look quite a bit different once you have, oh, a bbc.com implementing its underlying protocol and pumping out content onto it. I hope this never happens. It's rare that something doesn't become worse when it becomes mainstream online.
- robjan 7y agoIt's pubsub so if you don't like the BBC's content then you just don't follow them.
- paul7986 7y agoAre there any Twitter folks here... how can i can access to my 12 year old account? I lost the email its associated with and really would like to regain access! Has anyone been able to recover their account that was in this state?
- kick 7y agoIf you remember what the email was, check for if it's ever been in a data breach, then run a password cracker on the hash.
- jeromegv 7y agoWow this is quite smart. Never thought of that
- kick 7y agoWhen I was younger, it was a fun hobby to help people with.
- paul7986 7y agoCool idea, thanks! I actually just gained access to that email and unfortunately since I only used it once years ago it was wiped. Darn, I hope they don't wipe my account... there is no support .. premium support even as Id pay to have access and use it again.
- kick 7y agoIf it was wiped but you now have access to it, just send the recovery email anyway. Companies can't check if an address was deleted and then remade.
- IronWolve 7y agoI wish they would clean up the honeypots that keep adding people. I report and block about a dozen fake accounts that add me with an account created within 30 days. I know 1 guy who actually fell for a honeypot, even sent her money. Its gotta be profitable for scammers with as bad as its getting.
- kingofpandora 7y agoAre we calling those "honeypots" these days?
- sandoooo 7y agoThere is a nonzero chance that various political figures will have their handles 'accidentally' deactivated and inserted into the available pool. An enterprising body should set some bots up right now just in case there's lulz to be had. Should also have a tweet lined up, in case they catch their mistake fast. Something like 'we're nuking wales tmr'.
- james305 7y agoCCPA is probably at least part of the reason behind this. It takes effect on Jan 1. The article mentions users not being about to accept their privacy policy.
- sytelus 7y agoWhile talking with my parents I realized how little of their generation is available to us. What did they eat in there travels? Where? What music did they listen to? What kind of cloths did they wear? I have a few fragments of photos, anecdots and not much more. I was thinking about how highly detailed memories of our generation would be available to future generations. Facebook, Twitter etc are in a way digital monuments of our entire generation. Looking at these misguided arbitrary corporate decisions of culling data isn't comforting. Archive.org is trying to do its best but there needs be better efforts in preserving memories of who passed away and we need to be more sensitive about that even though they are going to produce ad click revenues.
- shard972 7y agoHave you tried reading a book? I don't see how an old facebook timeline is going to provide a lot of insight about a culture in the past compared to what we already do with books and to some extent movies.
- mikorym 7y ago> arbitrary corporate decisions There was a HN thread about an open source Twitter implemented in Haskell with the full stack in one page (it's called something specific) and that made me think that maybe decentrialisation is really just having decentrialised habits. If you can figure out storage, the rest is all just done on the client side. It would kind of be like a exodus back to 1997, when everyone just slapped together some HTML and had a web page (I think; back then I was playing SC2 and didn't know what HTML was). I thought of this example yesterday: Often people lament something like "the master craftsmen are all old, what would happen in the next generation". But I think the next generation is busy inventing the craft independently. Much like leathercraft or book binding on Reddit. I do think people can get lazy because of YouTwitFace. But I do think that a lazy person can become very efficient and prolific precisely because of revolt against their self-imposed boredom. It does not require a lot of people (e.g.: archive.org) to make a rather large difference. GNU/Linux and the rest are examples of that 90% viewers/lurkers, 9% interaction, 1% creators. I don't know if I am misquoting that, but maybe people should be active in choosing what they preserve. That is, you are your own 100%; there is no 90-9-1 with regards to your legacy. You have to store it yourself.
- thrwaway4832 7y agoIn April of 2011 I made a twitter account to post wherever I had updates to post on a certain subject. I haven't had updates to post in a few years on that subject (I last posted in 2017) but I don't think I should have my account culled. EDIT: And it doesn't even make any sense. It's a publishing platform. The author already agreed to anything necessary.
- corobo 7y agoSo log in to it now.. literally just log in
- bfirsh 7y agoThis is actually useful for me. The name of my new company is taken by a 10 year old account that has never tweeted, and I haven’t managed to find somebody at Twitter who can get the name for me. Does anybody know what’s going to happen to the names? Are they going to become available to register on 11th Dec? I hope somebody isn’t waiting there with a dictionary to squat them all...
- haasted 7y agoI’m in a similar situation. Does anyone know of a service that can be made to automatically pick up a Twitter name as it becomes available?
- goshx 7y agoYou just gave out the idea to someone to do just that
- Theizestooke 7y agoI mean domain squatting has been a thing since the inception of the net. Not too far off to think this will happen over and over again.
- biddlesby 7y ago> previously unavailable usernames will start coming up for grabs after the 11 December cut-off - though Twitter said it would be a gradual process, beginning with users outside of the US.
- nathancahill 7y agoSame situation here. I've emailed them several times about it with no success. Hoping this pans out.
- corobo 7y agoYeah honestly I understand all of the negative effects people are saying but I’ll be so glad if the username I want is released from the user that signed up, tweeted once, got hit by a spam virus in 2011, never tweeted again. I’ve even got a few reminders in my calendar to check on the username availability on the 11th and 12th. Really hoping it’s a full on user delete rather than just making them inactive
- someonehere 7y agoI worked at Twitter back in the early days. I left because I had an inkling there were tons of fake accounts and bot accounts. I thought at some point this would nosedive the company because Facebook’s growth at the time was all about how many active users they had. Twitter seemed to have too many accounts that weren’t justifiably real. A few years later I Had conversation at another job with coworkers and told them how easy it was to fake followers with $40. Sure enough I found a site that promised a certain amount of followers for $40. I paid the $40 and went from a couple dozen followers to 4,000 over the course of a few days. I think for an extra $60 I could have them retweet something for me as well. At that point I knew my suspicions were correct and knew I made the right choice to leave.
- alecco 7y agoI always wondered why doesn't Twitter do this to purge those bot accounts. They can even do a money-back request to the payment processor afterwards as the service is breaking laws.
- icebraining 7y agoBreaking TOS, not necessarily breaking laws.
- matt4077 7y agoSo you left Twitter 5+ years ago expecting them to soon fail, and you feel vindicated by the very-much-still-existing Twitter of today purging some accounts?
- someonehere 7y agoIn a sense, yes. When I was there the company had a ton of other issues too. Mostly how to monetize the service. They couldn’t figure out how to make money, but they were spending money like they were Facebook. Facebook at least had ad revenue. Twitter really couldn’t figure out how to sell ads. The concern was to me, fake accounts and fake retweets/followers creating fake user growth. That’s purely my perspective and likely not how the company saw it. I wasn’t comfortable investing my time into a place that gave me that feeling.
- _bxg1 7y agoIf the goal is to make follower counts more accurate, why not just clear the old accounts' follows? That would dodge the many issues with this that people are pointing out.
- stunt 7y agoI hope Facebook does the same thing at least for deleted users. I’ve deleted my FB account for ages and I still receive emails from FB asking me to go back while I’m not subscribed to any email notification from FB.
- alabixer 7y agowinter is coming
- xg15 7y agoI find it interesting that what Twitter is doing here would have been absolute standard procedure in any small forum 10 years ago - yet everyone seems to panic when Twitter does it. I think the reaction shows how much the internet has changed - and, to be honest - how much the tech crowd has been seduced by the idea that all data should be around forever. I think this is a great descision by Twitter in terms of user privacy.
- AstralStorm 7y agoThe difference being that content posted to forum from a deleted account is still accessible unless explicitly removed - just marked as from deleted user, while Twitter feed or post is not.
- TheHypnotist 7y agoI'm not sure that's better or not.
- ezoe 7y agoThere are so many now deceased person's account which contains very interesting, and are definitely considered as an important historical material. These historical materials will be lost on this move. Yes, we can't expect the for-profit companies to preserve the history. But these are so hard to preserve.
- shabirgilkar 7y agoI'm wondering about those users who are under govt clamped internet shutdown since months and were not able to login since months e.g. Kashmir (Indian Administered) where internet shutdown is continuing since Aug 5 2019?
- flurdy 7y agoThis is awfull. 6 months is too short for any account. I can understand the need to cull some never really used accounts. There are a lot of never really logged on accounts filling up the space. So some weeding of those is understandable. But not ones that have been used but not that active any more. E.g. dead, seriously ill in hospital, backpacking for a year or travelling to Mars. Or simple just stopped tweeting for a while or permanently. I am sure many now dormant accounts have tweets linked from pages across the internet. I do hate services that recycle usernames. So open for abuse. I have a couple that is merely business or project related that tweet once per year if that. They should not be deleted. I also have a few that I just created to demo something. After a year or so I can not argue against them being deleted. I registered a few accounts for my kids, who are still too young to use it but thought I'd ensure they have the option of choosing their name as their handle. Never tweeted, so probably a prime candidate for deletion. Unfortunately. I/we don't know the criteria they use specifically internally to decide who might get deleted. But I hope it is some sort of scoring based on several criteria. Not just when they last logged in. like: * how many tweets have they sent * where the account used over time, not just after registering * last login * how many times did they login * does it have a profile picture * detailed profile * have they requested not to be deleted * are any of their tweets backlinked from other sites * have x followers * following/followers is more than x
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- fyfy18 7y agoI feel that you are over thinking this. The email I received (apparently I have a lot of accounts I registered for demos but no longer use) says this: "you need to log in and follow the on-screen prompts before Dec. 11, 2019, otherwise your account will be removed from Twitter." So they are sending the email to all inactive accounts, and leaving it up to the owner to perform an action if they want to continue to using it. Apart from the rather short timeframe, it seems like a good way to handle it.
- flurdy 7y ago
- lawlessone 7y agoHow about removing the nazis?
- krapp 7y agoThey can't remove the nazis, because apparently if they did, it would remove too many Republican accounts[0]. Also because the nazis are, unfortunately, quite active. [0]https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-twitter-treat-white-supremacy-like-isis-because-it-would-mean-banning-some-republican-politicians-too https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-twitter-t...
- sojmq 7y agoYeah... How about they remove everybody who doesn't think the way I do, eh? Now wouldn't that be great?
- TheHypnotist 7y agoYou created an account to say you look like a nazi?
- moonbug 7y agoRather of the opinion that Twitter should have an annual Big Reset.
- sudoaza 7y agoI whish they put more effort on blocking the thousands of propaganda bots that are created apparently with lots of ease https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20970888/bot-campaign-twitter-facebook-bolivia-uprising-coup-confusion https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20970888/bot-campaign-tw...
- jacquesm 7y agoSuper dumb move. This will cause all kinds of impersonation and fraud troubles.
- alkonaut 7y agoThe removed handles should be quarantined for say 10 years after the removal I think. That makes it at least no harder to create a fake account that's similar to the original than it already is.
- jacquesm 7y agox@y should be unique, forever. It's not as though we're running out of bits.
- Frondo 7y agoWhy should it be? We might not be running out bits, but keeping those bits maintained takes effort; it doesn't happen by magic. and I can't think of any form of identifier that guarantees uniqueness; even the stone markings on graveyards eventually weather away.
- jacquesm 7y agoBecause bits aren't stone markings on graveyards. If you want they can last as long as the service does, which is a fine cut-off. Otherwise you get the same trouble with every other kind of method of authentication: after your ID is recycled whoever picks it up again even after it has been carefully scrubbed will inherit all the inbound links and so on. That doesn't really happen with gravestones.
- Frondo 7y agoI'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm looking for something more than "it's possible to do this." Or rather, I don't think there's a need to go to such an extent to preserve old usernames and histories. I think it'd be sufficient to let archivists at whatever data they wanted, and return the names to the churn.
- olivierduval 7y agoAn interesting move... at an interesting time!!! I posted few days ago here, on HN "Ask HN: Do you know a regular Twitter user?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21584586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21584586) ;-) I see it as an interesting move because it will allow Twitter to have a more "honest" number of real used account. Moreover, for Twitter, it's a way to build stronger engagement: a lot of people will connect to unused account to avoid the risk of loosing it (even if they don't really use it, just to avoid loosing it). So the active accounts number will not be that honest! In a way it's a kind of FUD... And it reminds everybody that Twitter is about "live and news", not building some kind reference.
- jhow15 7y agoThis seems like a great opportunity to grab that twitter handle you always wanted.
- aquadrop 7y agoAwful move. If they just remove users with all their tweets it breaks internet and I hate when companies do that. The stated reason (not logged in can't agree on terms changes) seems feeble - there's million ways to handle it better. And why do that starting with Dec 11th, what's up with the rush? Much more sensible way could be something like: set a policy before hand that requires login for example once a year (6 months seems too short) and if account didn't have any tweets or had like 3 tweets and 2 followers, delete it. That will allow to shed completely inactive users and free up some squatted handles, but will not be detrimental to the content.
- samfriedman 7y ago>And why do that starting Dec 11th It's tied to someone's year-end KPIs.
- jl6 7y agoAre tweets being deleted or just accounts? What happens to historically important tweets (e.g. from a government office holder) who happens to have died, 5, 10, or 50 years from now?
- jimnotgym 7y agoI wonder if this will help combat the bots? They often sit dormant for years and then start posting.
- excalibur 7y agoIn related news, all the people who quit Twitter years ago but never actually deleted their accounts will be getting together on December 10 to collectively shed one single tear.
- OzzyB 7y ago> That said, previously unavailable usernames will start coming up for grabs after the 11 December cut-off - though Twitter said it would be a gradual process, beginning with users outside of the US. > beginning with users outside of the US. > outside of the US. Why is Twitter discriminating against US users? Also, how do I ensure I can get that username that's been squatted and has no activity at all?
- Darkstryder 7y agoReading this news, I remembered I had an old secondary account (for a musical project) that I hadn't used in years but wanted to keep. I logged in using this old account, and Twitter asked me to prove I was not a bot. It required I would fill a recaptcha but also that I would give them a phone number for SMS verification. So in order to keep this old account, I have to disclose my phone number to Twitter. I'm furious.
- thisguyuknow 7y agoI also refused and replied to the email saying so and they enabled the account. This was a few months ago.
- Shorel 7y agoAs long as they don't require me to login before I can read some tweet. I think that's the only reason I have an account.
- cyborgx7 7y agoI hope I'll get my real name when this happens. The account that has it now hasn't tweeted in 7 years. They also appear to have been a fake female profile. I don't even get why. My name is pretty clearly male.
- riffraff 7y agoI got notified by this because I have a few old accounts, like, I set up a ton of accounts just because I needed to test something. And actually, if anyone wants to own `@INeedToTest` (maybe a QA oriented account?) let me know :)
- WA 7y agoApparently, I'm the only one who likes the move. Two reasons: 1. I actually think services should store less about people. It's good that stuff gets removed from parts of the internet. 2. I fully understand the idea of archiving a part of history. But in a way, I treat the websites more like a shopping window and less like articles and artifacts of time: They will be rearranged, stuff is removed, new stuff is added. Nobody would argue that redecorating a shopping window somehow destroys culture or history. If that is important to someone: go ahead and take pictures of store fronts. Make an archive if you want. But don't expect the store owner to keep an accurate history of their shopping window. After all, most websites are actually the fronts of shops that are open 24/7.
- WildGreenLeave 7y agoBut Twitter isn't a shop. If in 10 years Amazon goes bankrupt (or any other big shop) and it won't get archived, I don't really care. But Twitter has a lot of discussions or other information that may still be important. I think Twitter is more of a library than a shop and you wouldn't throw away books from a library either.
- WA 7y agoI think there are several perspectives on this: - For some, Twitter is a chat and chats usually are meant to be short-term with an expiration date. - Twitter is a store front, because it is used to promote services or products and only the stuff that got posted recently is relevant. Furthermore, some people auto-delete their older Tweets with tools for various reasons. I think it makes sense to archive Tweets of public figures, especially politicans to hold them accountable in a way or just for historic purposes. This can, should and is done by third party services. But this isn't the only way to see it.
- y4mi 7y ago> you wouldn't throw away books from a library either. While i wouldn't, the libraries do throw books away which aren't being borrowed.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
- altcognito 7y agoThey could just tombstone the user and not treat them like a normal user. I imagine they are trying to clean up indexes and evidence that their network is just tie with abuse.
- partiallypro 7y agoThis is both good and bad, gets rid of squatters but also could delete accounts of those that have passed away and have generated great content. Why not just change it to...deleting inactive accounts that have under X amount of engagement and overall tweets. That would save most accounts of the deceased while getting rid of the other problem.
- dpcan 7y agoWish I could just pay an annual fee for a Twitter name like I do for domains so I don't lose them.
- btbuildem 7y agoThey would do a world of good if they just culled one particular, very active account instead.
- parliament32 7y agoThey're backpedaling until they figure out an archive/memorialization strategy for people who passed away: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/27/20986084/twitter-inactive-accounts-usernames-memorialize-deceased-users-not-removing https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/27/20986084/twitter-inactiv...
- mcv 7y agoOoh! A story about me! I'm a very inactive Twitter 'user' (Can you really be an inactive user? I'm not using it at all.) Ages ago I made a Twitter account[0] mostly to test some social media links for a website I was working on. I don't even know what half of my tweets are about. Spammy contests apparently? But I do stand by my Scala comment. (Actually, thanks to EcmaScript 6 it makes more sense to me now.) [0] https://twitter.com/MartijnCVos https://twitter.com/MartijnCVos