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Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

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181–190 of 266 posts

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#181

In 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.

So log in to it now.. literally just log in

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#182

I 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 ---- Archive Team is making an effort to archive twitter accounts of dead users. Please…

Aaron Swartz (hv) ‏

@aaronsw_hv 12 Sep 2011 More Wow, Newt flipflopped instantaneously on that one. #CNNTeaParty

Yeah really bad that we can't save this shit? Why do you think we should save crap written by dead people? This period will archive so much digital history, it will mostly be considered a joke in the future.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't get this reference: what happened at Yahoo mail and how did it work out?

They removed inactive accounts. And made the handles available to register again by someone else.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#185

I 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 ---- Archive Team is making an effort to archive twitter accounts of dead users. Please…

I regularly visit Adam West's feed. I knew Adam and going to see some of his corny posts (like Moose Wayne) are an occasional comfort and not only remind me of him but remind me of watching the tv series as a child with my late father.

Sadly, I've noticed that DMs don't seem to be forever on twitter as all of our private messages to each other are all gone, the bulk were gone before he even passed away.

Given his account is verified I would hope that Twitter keeps that content as long as the service survives, but for those with family and friends that have passed that weren't high profile, they may also take comfort in going through then posts of those accounts and this is kinda blah.

I get it from a cost view, it costs money to keep all of that data but I somewhat feel that a company that has user created content is socially obligated to maintain that content as long as they continue to have that product or until the user wants it removed whichever comes first.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#186

Super dumb move. This will cause all kinds of impersonation and fraud troubles.

The 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.

x@y should be unique, forever. It's not as though we're running out of bits.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#187
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would is mess with Screen readers? the Alt tag has been a thing for a long time.

Why then embed tweet as an image if you're going to copy its text anyway?

So when twitter changes an API, or is down, and someone happens upon your page they can still see what you intended to include.

Also if you're documenting something like John Smith said "Kill all Muppets, they're taking human jobs" and his publicist goes "John, you really need to delete that tweet" and he does, you can show a screenshot of it to prevent revisionist history.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#188
post #26

I 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 ---- Archive Team is making an effort to archive twitter accounts of dead users. Please…

This was my first thought at reading the headline before clicking through. Thank you for sharing the form from archive team. My first thought was Hal Finney, whose account I occasionally browse for a reminder of what twitter was like 10 years ago. https://twitter.com/halfin >Harold Thomas Finney II (May 4, 1956 – August 28, 2014) was a developer for PGP Corporation, and was the second developer hired after Phil Zimme…

"working"

"Just back from walking the dogs"

"Running bitcoin"

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#189
post #65
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm wondering what your acquaintance's tech stack is, and more generally, what the most reliable way to keep running scheduled jobs after death is - since Twitter won't remove accounts that still log in, I kind of want to set up a cronjob to keep my username active for as long as I can. (Assume that the job itself doesn't change, i.e., there's no need to move away from a deprecated API.) Maybe Lambda + CloudWatch…

He probably used IFTTT.

I've tried ifttt. The Twitter recipes will stop in a few months for me. Have to go in and turn it in manually every so often. Just trying to repost from Twitter at a location to WordPress. ymmv

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#190
> 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?

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