
Twitter urged firms to delete data during 2016 campaign - jeffwass
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/27/twitter-russia-election-data-244226?lo=ap_d1
======
falcolas
Twitter has been urging firms using their data streams to delete data that
users have deleted since they implemented deletion.

Want to get cut off from Twitter? Don't delete posts marked as deleted.

This comes back to a previous point I've made: Twitter has a set of corporate
morals, and isn't afraid to stick to them, even when there's a cost. I admire
that trait.

~~~
makomk
Ironically, over the last year or so a lot of journalists have taken to auto-
deleting all their tweets after a short period to stop people digging their
old tweets up. One presumes the author doesn't intend this archiving to apply
to those tweets since that practice got almost universal support from other
journalists, only to tweets that let journalists drag others through the mud.

~~~
1337biz
Is there a tool for that? In the current climate that's a really smart idea.
Twitter seems to be full of people getting satisfaction from ruining other
people's lifes.

~~~
makomk
Yep, there is. I think TweetDelete is the tool most people use for this. I'd
link to their tweets about it, but...

------
gcb0
deletion policy is a good thing. overall. stop trying to twist it as a bad
thing.

prosecution and all law enforcement agencies involved in this are a joke for
having missed all this, and still be missing, despite all their multibillion
spying programs.

~~~
gus_massa
Deletion is only an illusion. The people with a multibillion spying program
surely keep a "backup" of the "deleted" tweets forever.

This is only enforceable against newspapers and other organizations that have
to publicly show the "deleted" tweets.

~~~
joshmn
> Deletion is only an illusion. The people with a multibillion spying program
> surely keep a "backup" of the "deleted" tweets forever.

people with curl will too.

------
detaro
Spring 2016 also saw GDPR (new european data protection regulations) being
finalized and people starting to review the consequences of that. When
Twitters changes were discussed back then, many at least over here saw them in
this context: Twitter preparing themselves and their ecosystem to comply with
these rules.

Points to a general principle: as difficult as it can be, if you want to study
data from the web later you should be archiving it yourself. You can't trust
it or archives not affiliated with you to be available. If you handle it
right, you probably can get away with breaking quite a lot of ToS to do so.

------
Sacho
I'd like to turn this topic around and ask HN: do you like reading articles
like this? I am continuously baffled by their poor quality, in more ways than
one:

1) the main thrust of the story is confusing. At one point we're discussing
Twitter privacy rules, later on the security researches talk about Twitter's
policies on deleting content that violates their ToS. Which one is it? It's a
fairly important distinction. If Twitter is protecting the privacy of their
users(demanding that companies delete tweets that users have themselves
deleted), then this is a big non-story. If Twitter is deleting things
breaching their ToS, then the researchers may have a point about preserving
that information.

2) the accounts are conflicting. The journalist initially writes:

 _" In June and September of 2016, the company posted updates to its privacy
policy and user agreements that reminded firms"._

Later on, the journalist presents a statement from a Mr Woolley:

 _“All social media companies have deletion policies,” Woolley added.
“However, when policies are changed during pivotal political moments — and
when the company has regularly been warned its platform is the vessel for
civic manipulation in similar moments — one is right to wonder, why then?”_

This quote does not make sense, since by the journalist's assertion, Twitter
did not change their policy. Keep in mind, the journalist did not quote
Twitter as saying "we reminded firms", the journalist stated this as if it was
fact.

3) the story lacks details. The main "twist" of the story is here:

 _" But some government and private-sector cybersecurity analysts said the
changes were far more significant, and had the effect of prompting data firms
to destroy potentially large amounts of information that could be relevant to
probes of Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election. "_

None of the quotes following this illuminate how the changes were more
significant, and why they had this effect. The talking head points either
repeat Woolley's assertions, or give you conclusions, like this:

 _“Their implementation and the decision to physically destroy these data
raises critical issues on accountability that social-media service providers
should be asked to address moving forward,”_

(You can only argue this if you have already proven that their changes were
"far more significant"!)

Later on, you have a wild assertion based on zero sources:

 _" For at least four years before the 2016 election, researchers who monitor
Twitter had openly criticized Russia for using the platform to meddle in other
elections, especially in Ukraine."_

This sounds like something important! Too bad there's no source, no follow-up,
no examples. If it was actually followed up, it would bolster the argument of
the researchers. (it's not like the article doesn't have links to other
stories, just not anything relevant...) Speaking of which...

4) the story does not argument well why we should care

The reason why we should care is given in the last paragraphs of the story:

 _“If certain aspects of content on Twitter reveals that there has been
interference in our elections, especially by foreign actors but also by people
in our country, the public has a right to know,” Woolley said.

“But before the public has the right to know, I think that congressional
investigators, third-party researchers, a lot of other people need to have
this information. And this effort to obfuscate information that has been
deleted or made private is super problematic.”_

Where does this come from? Why does the public have a "right to know"? There's
no law behind this(or at least, it's not quoted here); this is a moral plea
disguised in the trappings of authoritative language.

The only group from the listed aggrieved parties with an actual "right to
know" are congressional investigators; those already have a mechanism to
demand information be preserved for an investigation. Now, if the story was
that something was under congressional investigation, and Twitter had been
told to preserve documents, but had refused to do so, this might be actually
something. But none of that is here. Why should we care that "information
warfare experts" have certain demands that Twitter isn't meeting? What makes
their demands important? The article starts off with the conclusion that what
they're doing is important, and thus it's "super problematic" for Twitter to
not respond.

Since the article's main argument is a moral plea - "we have a right to know",
_I_ need to know the underlying moral principles that the researchers or the
journalist used to argue this position. I cannot see any good faith attempt to
reconcile Twitter's privacy concerns, or Twitter's right to conduct their
business with the demands from the researchers; therefore, I conclude that
this isn't a principled stance but rather just another call to abandon laws
and principles in the face of the Great Trump Moral Panic.

~~~
neom
This is, unfortunately, the state of press + CTR revenue model. It feels like
the line between long form journalism and reporting has become so blurred that
you end up with these bits that are neither a well-researched opinion/story or
editorial nor a well-researched news report. Growing up, every week my mum
would buy the weekend copy of The Times, The Guardian, and The Scotsman and
read them end to end in the afternoon. That's how she formed the basis of her
opinions on current events. These days I don't think people have the attention
span for this, and I don't think that the web revenue models lend itself to
that anyways. Although I hate lots of words, It's damn shame if you ask me.

------
harryf
> Samuel Woolley, an information warfare expert who was director of Oxford
> University’s Computational Propaganda Research Team, questioned the timing
> of the directives, saying they came after he and associates had repeatedly
> warned Twitter officials that the existing deletion policy already was
> undermining their efforts — and those of many other researchers — to
> determine the extent of Russia’s attempts to manipulate the social media
> platform.

So next time get a subpoena?

