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Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

bbc.com

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Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#81

Post by byuu »

guessmyname wrote: post #51
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.

> … 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 created a Twitter account in 2012 and it was immediately put in “private mode” because I didn’t want to post anything; ±7 years later the account is still empty, no posts, no followers, nada. The only reason I created that account was to prevent cybersquatting over…

You can't be the first to register on every platform out there. If you ever become successful enough, people are going to impersonate and false flag you anyway. You have to balance putting your beliefs out there, so people know an obvious fake; with not over sharing to the point you annoy people with differences from you, which I can tell you first-hand is hard to recover from.

After that, make a links/contact section on your website to list all your accounts. Post a note that anything not on the list is an imposter or someone coincidentally using the same name as you (which does happen, especially when you naively pick a four-letter name.)

Anyone still conflating a false account with you with one step to verify it as a fake will be acting in bad faith regardless.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#82

Post by carc1n0gen »

guessmyname wrote: post #51
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.

> … 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 created a Twitter account in 2012 and it was immediately put in “private mode” because I didn’t want to post anything; ±7 years later the account is still empty, no posts, no followers, nada. The only reason I created that account was to prevent cybersquatting over…

> The only reason I created that account was to prevent cybersquatting over my short-and-simple username

Congratulations, you _are_ the very cybersquatter you feared so much.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#83

Post by Joe-Z »

manderley wrote: post #67
Joe-Z wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it didn't sound like they linked this dead account anywhere. They literally just squatted a name to never use for anything. Real class move btw, I hope GPs account gets deleted soon. (And then the flood of people having nothing better to do than destroy some nobody's reputation on social media comes in I guess...)

It's a Twitter account name. Let's not act like this is some huge imposition.

It's ego-centric behaviour which leaves everbody worse off. Thank god it's only a Twitter account name! (...and not global politics governed by old farts out of touch with reality, which is another area where this behaviour is rampant)

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#84

Post by adambyrtek »

nindalf wrote: post #60
kkarakk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 7 years in tech, i've learnt it's not like dealing with real humans. You're dealing with a business engine - never assume good intent or competence when trying to reason out why a product arrived at it's current level of success or failure

Ah yes, the Littlefinger approach. “What’s the worst reason someone could have for doing the things they do and acting they way they act?” Notice you still haven’t said how Twitter is supposed to do everything Facebook does but with 1/9th the number of employees. You and everyone else have directly assumed that Twitter has decides not to work on memorialisation because they are malicious or incompetent ... when it’s…

With product development it's not about having "enough people" to do everything, it's about having the right priorities and choosing what to focus on.

We could discuss if this feature should have been prioritised or not, but claiming that Twitter is this little understaffed company that cannot be expected to implement something like that is a bit disingenuous.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#85

Post by koolba »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #43
marban wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a similar issue on Github and Gitlab.com - my handle there (same as here) overlaps with a certain annotation from Java's Hibernate, so I get a lot of @mentions from random repos. (And all that because Github and Gitlab are both case-insensitive when matching @mentions.)

I’d blame that on users not using backticks / code blocks.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#86

Post by softwarelimits »

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 am absolutely sure a pro like you can provide a much better site with a better service - please do!

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#87

Post by vectorEQ »

honestly i am a bit surprised why it would be an issue to delete content from a user who is no longer a user... it's kind of in the name of the thing. a user is generally 'able to use' the thing, hence `user`... if someones dead, they are not a user anymore. i think its a bit silly people are claiming disk space and resources for their deceased loved ones and heroes on some other people's service / servers. it seems even indecent to request such a thing... its a free service.

that being said it would likely be trivial to add something like isActivelyViewed as a condition not to delete an account. if a lot of people view a page still it could be considered active. despite the account not being used anymore. If no one looks at it, delete it ...

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#88

Post by softwarelimits »

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…

I am not a Twitter engineer, but I guess that this is nothing else but a great marketing campaign - suddenly many people remember all their accounts and login and that will help to produce very nice reports about the "active user base".

But why is this needed?

My guess: many people are sick of Twitter and since one president of one nation made it his personal propaganda vehicle it is becoming a mental wasteland - new ecosystems are growing and people inside these new communities are quite happy that all the zombies are contained in that trash dump, like facebook.

Actually we should all be happy that these first big "social" networks decontaminated the internet for us - these are now the Tschernobyls of social media where all the toxic waste is collected, hopefully for many years.

Interesting things now can happen somewhere else.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#89

Post by caymanjim »

fphilipe wrote: post #9
undefined3840 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It has always amazed me how one can be a part time CEO, let alone CEO at two companies simultaneously. How would a board even allow that?

CEOs aren't that busy. That's what they hire people for. The most successful people aren't running around like maniacs all the time. They are organized, they delegate, and they focus. How much of your day is spent actually working? How much is spent on pointless meetings, status updates, and busywork? CEOs don't have to waste their time on other peoples' priorities. Board members work far, far less. To them, it's the CEOs that look like they're busy all the time.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#90

Post by glenstein »

guessmyname wrote: post #51
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.

> … 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 created a Twitter account in 2012 and it was immediately put in “private mode” because I didn’t want to post anything; ±7 years later the account is still empty, no posts, no followers, nada. The only reason I created that account was to prevent cybersquatting over…

I think yours is an extremely idiosyncratic special case, and there are always going to be one-off special cases. You can't reasonably expect policy for the other 330 million users to grind to a halt to solve something that you could solve yourself by logging in once every six months.
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