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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

#41

Post by duskwuff »

lilyball wrote: post #22
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.

A simple fix would be to make an exception for accounts with >X statuses posted or >Y followers.

The inactive accounts that people are worried about losing are the ones that used to be active, or which were significant enough to make a lot of people follow them. However, the bulk of inactive accounts probably have very few (<10) statuses posted or followers, and deleting those is likely to be uncontroversial.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#43

Post by TeMPOraL »

marban wrote: post #27
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.

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.)

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#44

Post by inapis »

pentae wrote: post #33

I really sometimes wonder if it would be a net negative or net benefit to humanity if we could just shut down Twitter. I don't use it but I can't remember the last time I heard something positive happening on there. From my standpoint it's all just trolls, hate, arguments, trump, drama and angry mobs using the platform for censorship.

Curate the hell out of who you follow. Keep politics an arms length away if it impacts you. Use lists to organise who you follow based on a common theme. Makes twitter a gold mine of information if you know how to really mine it. Don’t let the algorithm dictate what you read.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#45

Post by kkarakk »

lilyball wrote: post #22
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.

I can understand not making a tool to memorialize users in first 3 years of creation but once twitter became a household name they really SHOULD have already updated their roadmap.

In the era of cloud computing, how expensive would it be to make an account readonly and store the paltry data it created in a cached location somewhere?

All of their tech decisions feel really reactive nowadays

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#46

Post by nindalf »

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…

This is uncharitable, IMO. It is not fair or reasonable to accuse a group of people of amateurism without knowing or understanding the constraints they’re working under.

You compare Twitter with Facebook but Facebook has 9X or so employees. Presumably that means that while a feature like memorialisation gets worked on at Facebook, there isn’t enough manpower to work on it at Twitter. They’re too busy working on the core parts, keeping the lights on. But again, there could be even more constraints that I’m not aware of and you’re not aware of.

Please please please let’s not sit on our ergonomic chairs and ask “why don’t you just” without understanding their perspective. Let’s assume good intent and reasonable competence. Of course we look smarter and more competent by accusing someone of being the opposite, but we should resist the urge.

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#47

Post by kkarakk »

jdnenej wrote: post #26
cryptoz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You must not be interacting with it in ANY way at all. I periodically use twitter to sign up for stuff at max and worst i've gotten is a compulsory password reset

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#48

Post by kkarakk »

nindalf wrote: post #46
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…

This is uncharitable, IMO. It is not fair or reasonable to accuse a group of people of amateurism without knowing or understanding the constraints they’re working under. You compare Twitter with Facebook but Facebook has 9X or so employees. Presumably that means that while a feature like memorialisation gets worked on at Facebook, there isn’t enough manpower to work on it at Twitter. They’re too busy working on the c…

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

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#49

Post by kkarakk »

cheald wrote: post #8
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it’s something that interesting. I’ve read it’s mostly a legal thing regarding the original terms and conditions accepted by the user.

What's with the rash of accounts with hex/base64 names today? They've been popping up all over.

Having an account name like that just makes me completely skip any opinion a person has on social media.It's probably just some convoluted logic for a throwaway shitposting account

Re: Twitter account deletions on 'pause' after outcry

#50

Post by L_Rahman »

kkarakk wrote: post #45
lilyball wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can understand not making a tool to memorialize users in first 3 years of creation but once twitter became a household name they really SHOULD have already updated their roadmap. In the era of cloud computing, how expensive would it be to make an account readonly and store the paltry data it created in a cached location somewhere? All of their tech decisions feel really reactive nowadays

With roadmap decisions like these, the compute or storage cost for the data is an insignificant part of the product decision making.

The real cost of doing something like this is doing user research to figure out the set of human behaviors around the memorialization process, deciding where in the product to make the functionality available, training material for how it escalates up to human support teams, and what other things are on the team's plate at the same time.

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