Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#111

Post by lonelappde » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

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…

What is a "real name" if not the name someone goes by? There is no Earth Name Authority

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#112

Post by dillonmckay » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

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…

Heh. Learned this lesson in college when a friend started registering all of our acquaintances names on AOL instant messenger, and impersonating a large number of people.

It has been an issue for several decades.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#113

Post by dillonmckay » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #106

exit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Most Twitter users are not malicious in the way you suggest. the odds of, at a minimum, any given twitter profile being at least wildly off-brand for your namespace colliding persona are still very high. this looks like a legitimate edge case anxiety to me.

Regardless anyone seeing it will quickly realize it’s not you. From the bio/location/topics etc. This isn’t that big of a deal at all. Plus all you have to do is login once in a while to keep it active as far as Twitter is concerned. I think 6 months is way too aggressive though.

We have known instances of people’s twitter accounts being hacked, and then fired from their job, after ‘their’ twitter feed posted objectionable content.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#114

Post by dillonmckay » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

byteshock wrote: post #97

tom_mellior wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It depends on the severity of head injury.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#115

Post by koboll » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

digitalsushi wrote: post #94

carc1n0gen wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you use a "short, simple" string as a username across various services, the price you pay is that various others are going to be using that same name on other services.

You aren't entitled to a certain username on every service simply because you happened to be the first to register it on one service.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#116

Post by C14L » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

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.

And that should be the cutoff for account deletion: Unused for years, no content, no followers.

Deleting accounts with lots of content and followers, only because there was no tweet for a few month, is just dumb.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#117

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#118

Post by octavn » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

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…

Actually, under the GDPR, as a general rule, you can't just keep personal data on your servers forever so GDPR might be involved but for personal data cleanup reasons/requirements.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#119

Post by tom_mellior » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

lonelappde wrote: post #111

tom_mellior wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is a "real name" if not the name someone goes by? There is no Earth Name Authority

I get what you're saying. But in the context of this discussion, a "real name" would just be whatever Twitter thinks it is. They use the term a lot in their docs (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22real+name%22+site%3Ahelp.twitte...) but I don't know if they ever define it in a way that would make you happy.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#120

Post by Shank » Thu, Nov 28, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

arnaudsm wrote: post #99

They could have a threshold for deletion, only deleting account with <1k followers. This would spare accounts with real historical value.

“Sorry, your daughter has less than 1,000 followers, and has no real historical significance. Her account will be deleted and reclaimed as a result following the memorialization process.”