In 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.
Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
201–210 of 266 posts
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#202This 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 fo…
Twitter is just an internet forum with a handful of famous users, internet forums come and go so do user names. Twitter is not the real world, despite what Twitter addicts and journalists (who benefit from Twitter because it makes their jobs easier) would like you to believe, most normal people barely use it. If Twitter disappeared tomorrow I think you'd be surprised how little it would matter.
Twitter et al IS a historical archive of information however - Imagine if Donald Trump's handle was to EVER be recycled, who'd get it? what would the consequences be? What about news pieces that embed or screenshot his tweets?
I feel context is vitally important here, usernames are an important identify in who said what at what time, and can be used "on the record".
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#203Awful 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 m…
>And why do that starting Dec 11th
It's tied to someone's year-end KPIs.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#204This 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...
Conversely, it's problematic for me - my Twitter account is up for grabs and someone might impersonate me, assisted by several mentions of the account on old pages.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter is just an internet forum with a handful of famous users, internet forums come and go so do user names. Twitter is not the real world, despite what Twitter addicts and journalists (who benefit from Twitter because it makes their jobs easier) would like you to believe, most normal people barely use it. If Twitter disappeared tomorrow I think you'd be surprised how little it would matter.
Twitter et al IS a historical archive of information however - Imagine if Donald Trump's handle was to EVER be recycled, who'd get it? what would the consequences be? What about news pieces that embed or screenshot his tweets? I feel context is vitally important here, usernames are an important identify in who said what at what time, and can be used "on the record".
> what would the consequences be?
Twitter is not and has never been an officially sanctioned government press release channel. The consequences to government and policy would be trivial to none. Since most of the tweets from Trump are void of fact/research or are bizarre conspiracy theories I suspect a troll taking over the account would go largely unnoticed.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#206I 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…
So 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?
In 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.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s rare but not unheard of for people to be found decades after death. https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/10/29/inenglish/1572340728_79...
More humorously I remember reading about a German guy that forgot where he parked his car and it sat in an office garage for 20 years or something.
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter et al IS a historical archive of information however - Imagine if Donald Trump's handle was to EVER be recycled, who'd get it? what would the consequences be? What about news pieces that embed or screenshot his tweets? I feel context is vitally important here, usernames are an important identify in who said what at what time, and can be used "on the record".
> what would the consequences be? Twitter is not and has never been an officially sanctioned government press release channel. The consequences to government and policy would be trivial to none. Since most of the tweets from Trump are void of fact/research or are bizarre conspiracy theories I suspect a troll taking over the account would go largely unnoticed.
DoJ lawyers have argued otherwise in court.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/government_says_trump...
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#209I 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 :)
Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users
#210> 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?
They suspended Robin Williams's account after he died, so they probably wouldn't be against it.
I think that's really sad.
Maybe someone will make a tweet in peace site.