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Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

bbc.com

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Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#31

Post by unityByFreedom »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #23
wilg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems 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.

> 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.

Does that make sense? Why should a privacy policy be retroactive on things I already posted?

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#32

Post by yungnoob »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #25
mc32 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 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.

> Twitter will begin deleting accounts that have been inactive for more than six months, unless they log in before an 11 December deadline.

The old Yahoo Mail strategy. See how well that one worked out.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#34

Post by syshum »

symplee wrote: post #4

Wow, 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...

>>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

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#37

Post by echelon »

fullstop wrote: post #20
eggsome wrote: post #17

They've already started deleting old tweets for some reason. I only tweeted 4 times and the 2 oldest tweets are gone :(

I had a tweet from 2006, right after launch. It just said "this is dumb". It's gone now.

Wait, is this really happening? Can you confirm or post evidence? This is a big deal if so.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#38

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

This 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.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#40

Post by CKN23-ARIN »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #31
hombre_fatal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Does that make sense? Why should a privacy policy be retroactive on things I already posted?

Because Twitter potentially bears liability by hosting them into the future, and is only willing to bear that liability if you agree to their terms.
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