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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

#91

Post by K0SM0S »

This makes me realize that from now on, most human beings will probably increasingly be "memorialized" online.

I can't help but see in this a new form of modernized, digitalized mortuary ritual, comparable to all the things we humans have been doing with our deads for millennia. Egyptian tombs sought to preserve the body; now with big-tech tombs we seek to preserve the mind, what's left of it, what has been revealed by the deceased. I bet this is just the beginning of that.

The work of historians is changing, fast, in this fledging computing era. Think that, from now on, we may be increasingly able to replay then-dead-but-real people in real situations as if it were just another virtual world.

Which leads to this suggestion: maybe all the data held by big tech companies should be released for public research (public datasets) upon one's death, after anonymization etc. of course (and maybe a 'wait' period of 10 years, or a full generation or more, whatever precautions are necessary). The point being to learn cumulatively from all our deceased brothers and sisters, make them count forever in the great study of humanity and the cosmos. Of course people should choose for themselves (including delays and anonymity), like some have donor cards, may prefer incineration, etc.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#92

Post by matwood »

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…

People think that thinking through technical issues is hard, but thinking through issues dealing with people can make technical issues seem like child's play. This isn't just Twitter that botches thinking through the people aspect of changes. We see this happen to all sorts of companies across all industries.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#94

Post by digitalsushi »

carc1n0gen wrote: post #82
guessmyname wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … 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.

they dont fear the squatting, they fear the ultimate use of masquerading as them with easy, failed brand recognition.

we use online names as public certificates. we're doomed to this race.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#95

Post by snowwrestler »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #63
jiqiren wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burden is on you to simply login. That’s all twitter is asking - login to show you still want the username.

And agree to their new terms and conditions - THAT is the real reason why they're doing this. I'm sure the new T&C's grant Twitter the right to do more with existing accounts / tweets.

I think it’s far more likely that requiring human agreement to the new T&Cs is a convenient excuse to cull a ton of bots.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#97

Post by byteshock »

tom_mellior wrote: post #72
ForHackernews wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have such an important personal brand to protect, you presumably have something interesting to say Sorry, but do you actually believe this? In my experience, nearly everyone who talks about their "personal brand" is some variation of a dull-as-dishwater marketing drone. Be a human, not a brand.

> Sorry, but do you actually believe this? I believe it to the extent that if the person "cultivates" GitHub and GitLab profiles, presumably they at least have new releases of interesting features to announce, for whatever software they develop there.

Do you really think people will draw their concussions about you based on a Twitter account they found with the same username?

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#98

Post by valerij »

tom_mellior wrote: post #55
guessmyname wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … 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…

1. Most Twitter users are not malicious in the way you suggest. EDIT: 1'. Twitter has rules and procedures against impersonation: https://help.twitter.com/forms/impersonation though I don't know how effective they are if you are not going by a real name but by an Internet handle that you claim is unique. 2. If you have such an important personal brand to protect, your Twitter account should not be in private mode. It…

2. is a very sound advice, thank you

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#100

Post by snowwrestler »

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 is to cull high-volume bot programs, which are managed through the API. Note that every account will require a log-in to count as active, not just be posting.

If a single bot account was created by a person for fun, they can easily log into it once to prove activity.

But if a person (or, say, a national intelligence service) has created 20,000 accounts programmatically, they’re going to have a much harder time manually logging into every one of them to preserve them.

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