Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 159 posts

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#21

Post by wsn_101 »

danShumway wrote: post #11
echelon wrote: post #4

I wonder what the real reason for account deletions is. Could it be possible they have overflowed their primary / foreign key allocation necessary to support further user growth? Depending on their internal architecture, a migration to a wider key might not be feasible within the time horizon they have. Maybe it's easier to delete accounts? If they have weird sharding and a lot of microservices, this might be their o…

It could be a variety of reasons. If you forced me to guess though, I think the most straightforward, simplest one is that threatening account deletion is a good way to force older users to become active again, which will increase engagement on their platform and allow them to deliver more ads. In other words, the same reason that Facebook will start spamming your email if you stop logging in. I can't imagine any man…

>>In other words, the same reason that Facebook will start spamming your email if you stop logging in.

Are you sure that's what is actually going on? patio11 calls it lifecycle email marketing, and Nir Eyal thinks it is just a harmless way to keep your users "hooked". Why would you even say such things about such a brilliant technique which provides such great joy to the "growth hackers"?

Oh, I just got a "notification" from Facebook that someone I care about said something I probably don't care about, but there isn't any way to know for sure so I have to log back in to Facebook again. I will be back in 3 hours.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#22

Post by lilyball »

Sendotsh wrote: post #15

I understand why some people are upset about it (Eg due to accounts of deceased people), but I was really REALLY hoping to snap my first name which was registered by a European person 10 years ago, has 0 followers, and has never posted. I definitely feel like they could compromise and at least delete those blatantly unused ones.

They haven't scrapped their plans for this. They said they'll put it on pause until they've come up with a tool for memorializing accounts. So presumably accounts that are legitimately not going used will still eventually free up.

Assuming of course that the account is truly idle and not being used to read without every interacting.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#23

Post by kevingadd »

avian wrote: post #20

Did Twitter already delete inactive accounts in the past? When I created my account in 2008 my preferred handle was taken by an empty account that seemingly never posted anything. With this recent news about account deletions I was curious if maybe I could get it, so I checked it again. I was surprised to see that it’s now a very active account with a “joined in” date in 2014. So it looks like the old inactive one wa…

My understanding is that twitter employees were able to manually delete an inactive account in the past to free up the handle for use. I know a couple people who got their preferred handles that way.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#24

Post by SyneRyder »

avian wrote: post #20

Did Twitter already delete inactive accounts in the past? When I created my account in 2008 my preferred handle was taken by an empty account that seemingly never posted anything. With this recent news about account deletions I was curious if maybe I could get it, so I checked it again. I was surprised to see that it’s now a very active account with a “joined in” date in 2014. So it looks like the old inactive one wa…

I'm sure they've at least proposed it before - some years ago I setup a recurring reminder to tweet on each of my Twitter accounts every six months "to prevent account deletion".

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#25

Post by aikah »

Maxion wrote: post #10
echelon wrote: post #4

I wonder what the real reason for account deletions is. Could it be possible they have overflowed their primary / foreign key allocation necessary to support further user growth? Depending on their internal architecture, a migration to a wider key might not be feasible within the time horizon they have. Maybe it's easier to delete accounts? If they have weird sharding and a lot of microservices, this might be their o…

No I highly doubt it. This is most likely as they say a GDPR issue. Per the GDPR they'll have to keep track of which users have agreed to which version of the ToS and Privacy Policy and make sure that they only process their data in accordance. This is a PITA, much easier to deem accounts inactive and delete their data. They've probably been contacted by the data commissioner of some EU country and asked nicely to co…

We're talking about users that last logged in more than 6 month ago here. It has obviously nothing to do with government sponsored shills or the GDPR. It's just that Twitter wants to eliminate users that are not "monetizable", they are also looking into users I quote "log in but don't do anything" on Twitter.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#26

Post by jdnenej »

cryptoz wrote: post #18
Sendotsh wrote: post #15

I understand why some people are upset about it (Eg due to accounts of deceased people), but I was really REALLY hoping to snap my first name which was registered by a European person 10 years ago, has 0 followers, and has never posted. I definitely feel like they could compromise and at least delete those blatantly unused ones.

Not posting on twitter doesn't mean the account is unused. Lots of people make accounts and follow people and are DAU but never post.

Twitter always bans my accounts if I dont post or interact.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#27

Post by marban »

Sendotsh wrote: post #15

I understand why some people are upset about it (Eg due to accounts of deceased people), but I was really REALLY hoping to snap my first name which was registered by a European person 10 years ago, has 0 followers, and has never posted. I definitely feel like they could compromise and at least delete those blatantly unused ones.

Even 10 years ago you were 3 years late...

As a firstname user, life isn't easy when it comes to notification spam b/c people think that putting a space between first and lastname still gets sent to the correct user. I've basically stopped checking them.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#29

Post by ganzuul »

undefined3840 wrote: post #5
atticmanatee wrote: post #3

It never ceases to amaze me how Twitter is so unprepared for anything they do. This was something Facebook did a few years ago Even Google+ (rest in peace) had a similar feature. How could they have forgotten that dead people may have used their platform, and living relatives would be upset? Either Twitter is completely run by amateurs - since its inception - or by people who just don’t care. Which one is worst, I wo…

It’s pretty disappointing. Their share price has been completely flat since IPO. I’m surprised shareholders have not revolted against Jack being a part time CEO. Clearly there needs to be some dedicated focus to clean up the app. So much potential to be so much better.

Twitter, Facebook, and similar might be of interest because of power and knowledge. If you are already super rich then making another billion or two may be less important than say analytics of how some popular uprising goes.

My pet theory is that Imgur is actually what the NSA needs all that diskspace in Utah for. :o)

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#30

Post by mike_hock »

atticmanatee wrote: post #3

It never ceases to amaze me how Twitter is so unprepared for anything they do. This was something Facebook did a few years ago Even Google+ (rest in peace) had a similar feature. How could they have forgotten that dead people may have used their platform, and living relatives would be upset? Either Twitter is completely run by amateurs - since its inception - or by people who just don’t care. Which one is worst, I wo…

I mean, Twitter is an anus-to-web content delivery system, so it's a bit fucked up to live so much of your life on Twitter that you expect it to stay up and immortalize you after you die.

But fair enough, Twitter should understand their cattle better.

Post reply on HN