Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
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Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#2If the usernames free up, I wonder if this going to lead to something synonymous to domain squatting?
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#3If the usernames free up, I wonder if this going to lead to something synonymous to domain squatting?
I 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.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#4Wow, 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...
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#5If the usernames free up, I wonder if this going to lead to something synonymous to domain squatting?
I 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.
What 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"
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#6> 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.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#7If the usernames free up, I wonder if this going to lead to something synonymous to domain squatting?
A 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.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#8> 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?
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#9If the usernames free up, I wonder if this going to lead to something synonymous to domain squatting?
A 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.
If 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.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#10I 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_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
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Archive Team is making an effort to archive twitter accounts of dead users. Please see these links:
https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1199459588594176000
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbCbDZEPfxPCqOLRvo...