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Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

bbc.com

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Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#191

Post by mikorym »

mikorym wrote: post #97
sytelus wrote: post #82

While talking with my parents I realized how little of their generation is available to us. What did they eat in there travels? Where? What music did they listen to? What kind of cloths did they wear? I have a few fragments of photos, anecdots and not much more. I was thinking about how highly detailed memories of our generation would be available to future generations. Facebook, Twitter etc are in a way digital monu…

> arbitrary corporate decisions There was a HN thread about an open source Twitter implemented in Haskell with the full stack in one page (it's called something specific) and that made me think that maybe decentrialisation is really just having decentrialised habits. If you can figure out storage, the rest is all just done on the client side. It would kind of be like a exodus back to 1997, when everyone just slapped…

Edit: SC1, obviously. I am sorry to concede that I didn't have a future copy of SC2 back in 1997.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#192

Post by Darkstryder »

Reading this news, I remembered I had an old secondary account (for a musical project) that I hadn't used in years but wanted to keep.

I logged in using this old account, and Twitter asked me to prove I was not a bot. It required I would fill a recaptcha but also that I would give them a phone number for SMS verification.

So in order to keep this old account, I have to disclose my phone number to Twitter. I'm furious.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#194

Post by TheHypnotist »

AstralStorm wrote: post #173
xg15 wrote: post #129

I find it interesting that what Twitter is doing here would have been absolute standard procedure in any small forum 10 years ago - yet everyone seems to panic when Twitter does it. I think the reaction shows how much the internet has changed - and, to be honest - how much the tech crowd has been seduced by the idea that all data should be around forever. I think this is a great descision by Twitter in terms of user…

The difference being that content posted to forum from a deleted account is still accessible unless explicitly removed - just marked as from deleted user, while Twitter feed or post is not.

I'm not sure that's better or not.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#196

Post by whywhywhywhy »

flurdy wrote: post #143

This 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.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#197

Post by cyborgx7 »

siftrics wrote: post #22
ummonk wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the goal is to free up handles for new users.

The article explicitly states the goal, which is not to free up handles: "The site said it [the upcoming deletions] was because users who do not log-in were unable to agree to its updated privacy policies." Although, to your credit, the handles will indeed become available: "...previously unavailable usernames will start coming up for grabs after the 11 December cut-off - though Twitter said it would be a gradual pro…

The evidence suggests that the suspect committed the crime. Oh nevermind, the suspect explicitly stated he did not commit the crime.

I don't even think freeing up usernames is necessarily a bad thing, but trusting the stated motivation of big companies for their actions seems awfully naive.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#199

Post by rahuldottech »

sojmq wrote: post #153
rahuldottech wrote: post #10

I wonder what will happen to the twitter accounts of folks who have passed away? Eg. Aaron Swartz: https://twitter.com/aaronsw https://twitter.com/aaronsw_hv > The cull will include users who stopped posting to the site because they died - unless someone with that person's account details is able to log-in. Yeah, this is bad. EDIT ---- Archive Team is making an effort to archive twitter accounts of dead users. Please…

Why is it bad? Why should dead people take up usernames? What will happen in 50 years, half of good usernames will be taken by graveyard dwellers?

I don't care about their usernames. Just their content.

Re: Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

#200

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

geofft wrote: post #59
prawn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I follow an acquaintance on Twitter who set up an auto-tweet while he was alive. Now, after his death, he still tweets whenever the weather drops below a certain temperature in Scotland.

Now I'm wondering what your acquaintance's tech stack is, and more generally, what the most reliable way to keep running scheduled jobs after death is - since Twitter won't remove accounts that still log in, I kind of want to set up a cronjob to keep my username active for as long as I can. (Assume that the job itself doesn't change, i.e., there's no need to move away from a deprecated API.) Maybe Lambda + CloudWatch…

If you setup IFTTT then until that stops running which could be never??
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