2 ms·
I suspect that Twitter is keeping a list of people I followed in the past [..] Being a mere sentence fragment makes "followed by X"'s meaning ambiguous. Twitte
by petercooper 14y ago
I suspect that Twitter is keeping a list of people I followed in the past [..]
Being a mere sentence fragment makes "followed by X"'s meaning ambiguous. Twitter can have their cake and eat it too, as "followed by" could be either present or past tense, despite what we'd pragmatically expect it to mean in this case. I agree it's a bit weird, although it seems like one of those instances where Twitter wouldn't care since it probably provides users with some benefit anyway.
So, I'm not sure why Twitter thought @plan28 would care who @jgrahamc follows
I've noticed Twitter doing some interesting things in this regard. I create new Twitter accounts in a separate "clean" browser to avoid logging out and I often get myself suggested as a follow. They must be assuming people within either the same IP range or who are geolocated to a similar location would be interested in each other.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoI think it would be simpler than that - I have not checked but I expect I follow both @jgc and @plan28 and if there are enough then somewhere a k-value will be high enough that suggesting a follower of one should follow t'other will work. The geolocation idea is a nice one though - I will try and add it to my bag of tricks CMS - cheers
- PavlovsCat 14y agoGeolocation used that way exposes something like a location ("is nearby") without those users even having a choice or being aware. I'm not saying that's what Twitter does, but if it did, I wouldn't find that nice at all.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoThe death of privacy is not nice. But it is still dead, but the corpse is warm so hard to notice. Wait till governments notice what they thought was secrecy was actually privacy. Total freak out time.