I wonder what will happen to the twitter accounts of folks who have passed away? Eg. Aaron Swartz: <a href="https://twitter.com/aaronsw" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/aaronsw</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/aaronsw_hv" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/aaronsw_hv</a><p>> 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.<p>Yeah, this is bad.<p>EDIT<p>----<p>Archive Team is making an effort to archive twitter accounts of dead users. Please see these links:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1199459588594176000" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1199459588594176000</a><p><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbCbDZEPfxPCqOLRvo525QYGgwRnNgL3dmemZGdtRWk_epsQ/viewform" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbCbDZEPfxPCqOLRvo...</a><p><a href="https://www.archiveteam.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.archiveteam.org/</a>
Awful move. If they just remove users with all their tweets it breaks internet and I hate when companies do that. The stated reason (not logged in can't agree on terms changes) seems feeble - there's million ways to handle it better. And why do that starting with Dec 11th, what's up with the rush?
Much more sensible way could be something like: set a policy before hand that requires login for example once a year (6 months seems too short) and if account didn't have any tweets or had like 3 tweets and 2 followers, delete it. That will allow to shed completely inactive users and free up some squatted handles, but will not be detrimental to the content.
This is awfull.<p>6 months is too short for any account.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Or simple just stopped tweeting for a while or permanently. I am sure many now dormant accounts have tweets linked from pages across the internet.<p>I do hate services that recycle usernames. So open for abuse.<p>I have a couple that is merely business or project related that tweet once per year if that. They should not be deleted.<p>I also have a few that I just created to demo something. After a year or so I can not argue against them being deleted.<p>I registered a few accounts for my kids, who are still too young to use it but thought I'd ensure they have the option of choosing their name as their handle. Never tweeted, so probably a prime candidate for deletion. Unfortunately.<p>I/we don't know the criteria they use specifically internally to decide who might get deleted. But I hope it is some sort of scoring based on several criteria. Not just when they last logged in. like:<p>* how many tweets have they sent<p>* where the account used over time, not just after registering<p>* last login<p>* how many times did they login<p>* does it have a profile picture<p>* detailed profile<p>* have they requested not to be deleted<p>* are any of their tweets backlinked from other sites<p>* have x followers<p>* following/followers is more than x
This is actually useful for me. The name of my new company is taken by a 10 year old account that has never tweeted, and I haven’t managed to find somebody at Twitter who can get the name for me.<p>Does anybody know what’s going to happen to the names? Are they going to become available to register on 11th Dec? I hope somebody isn’t waiting there with a dictionary to squat them all...
Apparently, I'm the only one who likes the move. Two reasons:<p>1. I actually think services should store less about people. It's good that stuff gets removed from parts of the internet.<p>2. I fully understand the idea of archiving a part of history. But in a way, I treat the websites more like a shopping window and less like articles and artifacts of time: They will be rearranged, stuff is removed, new stuff is added. Nobody would argue that redecorating a shopping window somehow destroys culture or history. If that is important to someone: go ahead and take pictures of store fronts. Make an archive if you want. But don't expect the store owner to keep an accurate history of their shopping window.<p>After all, most websites are actually the fronts of shops that are open 24/7.
I worked at Twitter back in the early days. I left because I had an inkling there were tons of fake accounts and bot accounts. I thought at some point this would nosedive the company because Facebook’s growth at the time was all about how many active users they had. Twitter seemed to have too many accounts that weren’t justifiably real.<p>A few years later I Had conversation at another job with coworkers and told them how easy it was to fake followers with $40. Sure enough I found a site that promised a certain amount of followers for $40. I paid the $40 and went from a couple dozen followers to 4,000 over the course of a few days. I think for an extra $60 I could have them retweet something for me as well. At that point I knew my suspicions were correct and knew I made the right choice to leave.
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 monuments of our entire generation. Looking at these misguided arbitrary corporate decisions of culling data isn't comforting. Archive.org is trying to do its best but there needs be better efforts in preserving memories of who passed away and we need to be more sensitive about that even though they are going to produce ad click revenues.
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.<p>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.<p>I think this is a great descision by Twitter in terms of user privacy.
Wow, this is happening on December 11th? That seems rather abrupt.<p>Why not freeze and hide the accounts instead of deleting? I.e. don't push any tweets to them, or anything else computationally intensive. Then when they log in again, have them click a button to "catch up." Probably not as profitable as annoying a lot of surprised users who try and log in after Dec 12...
> In future, the firm said it would also look at accounts where people have logged in but don't "do anything" on the platform.<p>Yes, Twitter is going to purge a lot of accounts, the same accounts Twitter boasted about having pre IPO in order to fake growth.
There are so many now deceased person's account which contains very interesting, and are definitely considered as an important historical material. These historical materials will be lost on this move.<p>Yes, we can't expect the for-profit companies to preserve the history. But these are so hard to preserve.
CCPA is probably at least part of the reason behind this. It takes effect on Jan 1. The article mentions users not being about to accept their privacy policy.
There is a nonzero chance that various political figures will have their handles 'accidentally' deactivated and inserted into the available pool. An enterprising body should set some bots up <i>right now</i> just in case there's lulz to be had.<p>Should also have a tweet lined up, in case they catch their mistake fast. Something like 'we're nuking wales tmr'.
Are tweets being deleted or just accounts?<p>What happens to historically important tweets (e.g. from a government office holder) who happens to have died, 5, 10, or 50 years from now?
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.<p>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></i><i></i><i>I would give them a phone number for SMS verification. </i><i></i><i></i><p>So in order to keep this old account, I have to disclose my phone number to Twitter. I'm furious.
I whish they put more effort on blocking the thousands of propaganda bots that are created apparently with lots of ease <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20970888/bot-campaign-twitter-facebook-bolivia-uprising-coup-confusion" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20970888/bot-campaign-tw...</a>
An interesting move... at an interesting time!!! I posted few days ago here, on HN "Ask HN: Do you know a regular Twitter user?" (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21584586" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21584586</a>) ;-)<p>I see it as an interesting move because it will allow Twitter to have a more "honest" number of real used account.<p>Moreover, for Twitter, it's a way to build stronger engagement: a lot of people will connect to unused account to avoid the risk of loosing it (even if they don't really use it, just to avoid loosing it).<p>So the active accounts number will not be that honest! In a way it's a kind of FUD...<p>And it reminds everybody that Twitter is about "live and news", not building some kind reference.
This overall seems extremely poorly considered. Hopefully, archiving services and efforts are going into overdrive to fix Twitter's errors here.<p>Allowing hijacking of old, valuable historical Tweets makes no sense — even if it would be nice on some level to reclaim the handles. It may not be worth it.
I'm wondering about those users who are under govt clamped internet shutdown since months and were not able to login since months e.g. Kashmir (Indian Administered) where internet shutdown is continuing since Aug 5 2019?
Ooh! A story about me! I'm a very inactive Twitter 'user' (Can you really be an inactive user? I'm not using it at all.) Ages ago I made a Twitter account[0] mostly to test some social media links for a website I was working on.<p>I don't even know what half of my tweets are about. Spammy contests apparently? But I do stand by my Scala comment. (Actually, thanks to EcmaScript 6 it makes more sense to me now.)<p>[0] <a href="https://twitter.com/MartijnCVos" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/MartijnCVos</a>
I hope I'll get my real name when this happens. The account that has it now hasn't tweeted in 7 years. They also appear to have been a fake female profile.<p>I don't even get why. My name is pretty clearly male.
In related news, all the people who quit Twitter years ago but never actually deleted their accounts will be getting together on December 10 to collectively shed one single tear.
They're backpedaling until they figure out an archive/memorialization strategy for people who passed away: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/27/20986084/twitter-inactive-accounts-usernames-memorialize-deceased-users-not-removing" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/27/20986084/twitter-inactiv...</a>
> The cull will include users who stopped posting to the site because they died...<p>Indeed, your tweets die with you. I wonder about really popular personalities?
In April of 2011 I made a twitter account to post wherever I had updates to post on a certain subject. I haven't had updates to post in a few years on that subject (I last posted in 2017) but I don't think I should have my account culled.<p>EDIT: And it doesn't even make any sense. It's a publishing platform. The author already agreed to anything necessary.
This is both good and bad, gets rid of squatters but also could delete accounts of those that have passed away and have generated great content. Why not just change it to...deleting inactive accounts that have under X amount of engagement and overall tweets. That would save most accounts of the deceased while getting rid of the other problem.
I wish they would clean up the honeypots that keep adding people. I report and block about a dozen fake accounts that add me with an account created within 30 days.<p>I know 1 guy who actually fell for a honeypot, even sent her money. Its gotta be profitable for scammers with as bad as its getting.
I got notified by this because I have a few old accounts, like, I set up a ton of accounts just because I needed to test something.<p>And actually, if anyone wants to own `@INeedToTest` (maybe a QA oriented account?) let me know :)
I hope Facebook does the same thing at least for deleted users. I’ve deleted my FB account for ages and I still receive emails from FB asking me to go back while I’m not subscribed to any email notification from FB.
Are there any Twitter folks here... how can i can access to my 12 year old account? I lost the email its associated with and really would like to regain access!<p>Has anyone been able to recover their account that was in this state?
If the goal is to make follower counts more accurate, why not just clear the old accounts' follows? That would dodge the many issues with this that people are pointing out.
> That said, previously unavailable usernames will start coming up for grabs after the 11 December cut-off - though Twitter said it would be a gradual process, beginning with users outside of the US.<p>> beginning with users outside of the US.<p>> outside of the US.<p>Why is Twitter discriminating against US users? Also, how do I ensure I can get that username that's been squatted and has no activity at all?
They could just tombstone the user and not treat them like a normal user. I imagine they are trying to clean up indexes and evidence that their network is just tie with abuse.