
Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users - alexanderdmitri
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50567751
======
rahuldottech
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)
[https://twitter.com/aaronsw_hv](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 see these links:

[https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1199459588594176000](https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1199459588594176000)

[https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbCbDZEPfxPCqOLRvo...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbCbDZEPfxPCqOLRvo525QYGgwRnNgL3dmemZGdtRWk_epsQ/viewform)

[https://www.archiveteam.org/](https://www.archiveteam.org/)

~~~
rb808
I worked with a guy who died of a heart attack. Every year LinkedIn asks me to
congratulate him having worked X+N years at the company. You have to wonder
when they'll give up.

~~~
sircastor
I have a friend who passed away from cancer a few of years ago. I still get
these notifications for him. I was trying to call someone recently and my
phone suggested my dad who has been gone for a couple of years. We need a
better mechanism to gracefully transition accounts of individuals.

~~~
Frondo
I realize you probably don't want to for personal reasons, but have you
removed your father from your phone book?

I didn't remove mine for the longest time, though his number has long been
reused by someone else; I only did when I finally got a notice that that
person joined Signal and Telegram. Too spooky to see "[your father] has joined
Signal!"

~~~
TurkishPoptart
I think there is a Russian Black Mirror reboot where this is the premise of
the first episode.

------
aquadrop
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.

~~~
samfriedman
>And why do that starting Dec 11th

It's tied to someone's year-end KPIs.

------
flurdy
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 for a while or permanently. I am sure many now
dormant accounts have tweets linked from pages across the internet.

I do hate services that recycle usernames. So open for abuse.

I have a couple that is merely business or project related that tweet once per
year if that. They should not be deleted.

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.

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.

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:

* how many tweets have they sent

* where the account used over time, not just after registering

* last login

* how many times did they login

* does it have a profile picture

* detailed profile

* have they requested not to be deleted

* are any of their tweets backlinked from other sites

* have x followers

* following/followers is more than x

~~~
whywhywhywhy
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.

~~~
tcd
Twitter et al IS a historical archive of information however - Imagine if
Donald Trump's handle was to EVER be recycled, who'd get it? what would the
consequences be? What about news pieces that embed or screenshot his tweets?

I feel context is vitally important here, usernames are an important identify
in who said what at what time, and can be used "on the record".

~~~
austincheney
> what would the consequences be?

Twitter is not and has never been an officially sanctioned government press
release channel. The consequences to government and policy would be trivial to
none. Since most of the tweets from Trump are void of fact/research or are
bizarre conspiracy theories I suspect a troll taking over the account would go
largely unnoticed.

~~~
roywiggins
DoJ lawyers have argued otherwise in court.

[http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/government_says_trump...](http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/government_says_trumps_tweets_are_official_presidential_statements)

~~~
austincheney
But what did the court confirm?

In a more practical context I was in CENTCOM supporting troops in Syria when
news of complete withdraw stunned the world via Twitter. The military did not
act on a tweet. No formal change in policy in the government occurs via tweet.

In a more clear example remember back when Trump ordered, via tweet, the
military will ban all transgender persons from military service? The military
ignored that tweet without repercussion.

~~~
icebraining
The court confirmed that the Twitter account was used for official
communications with the public (and therefore couldn't be arbitrarily
restricted).

Does the military act on press releases? I would think both have importance
based on how everyone else reacts to them, not because they serve as internal
communication channels for the government.

~~~
austincheney
A tweet is not a press release and neither of those are lawful orders.
Congressmen, for example, have numerous options for communicating _officially_
with their constituents. That communication is not an indication of lawful
actions or policy though.

Its like comparing the correspondence of a legal action from the government to
a campaign rally. Just because many people in the public cannot tell the
difference does not make them equivalent.

~~~
roywiggins
What's the difference between a press release and a tweet? Letterhead? A press
release is just an email. What if a press release is published by tweet?

~~~
austincheney
This sounds like an equivocation fallacy. Official letterhead can have legal
ramifications that a tweet cannot. A more absurd example is: _What 's the
difference between a tweet and a medical prescription? Letterhead?_

------
bfirsh
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.

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...

~~~
lazyjones
Conversely, it's problematic for me - my Twitter account is up for grabs and
someone might impersonate me, assisted by several mentions of the account on
old pages.

~~~
icebraining
Why is your account up for grabs? Are you unable to login and confirm you're
active?

~~~
lazyjones
I'm not active and haven't been for several years ever since Twitter started
asking for phone numbers obnoxiously.

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, seems like they have a habit of suspending accounts and asking for
numbers. I've been lucky until now.

Seems like you can contact support to get it active again without having to
give out your phone, but I understand if you'd rather not use the platform at
all.

------
WA
Apparently, I'm the only one who likes the move. Two reasons:

1\. I actually think services should store less about people. It's good that
stuff gets removed from parts of the internet.

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.

After all, most websites are actually the fronts of shops that are open 24/7.

~~~
WildGreenLeave
But Twitter isn't a shop. If in 10 years Amazon goes bankrupt (or any other
big shop) and it won't get archived, I don't really care. But Twitter has a
lot of discussions or other information that may still be important. I think
Twitter is more of a library than a shop and you wouldn't throw away books
from a library either.

~~~
WA
I think there are several perspectives on this:

\- For some, Twitter is a chat and chats usually are meant to be short-term
with an expiration date.

\- Twitter is a store front, because it is used to promote services or
products and only the stuff that got posted recently is relevant. Furthermore,
some people auto-delete their older Tweets with tools for various reasons.

I think it makes sense to archive Tweets of public figures, especially
politicans to hold them accountable in a way or just for historic purposes.
This can, should and is done by third party services. But this isn't the only
way to see it.

------
someonehere
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.

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.

~~~
matt4077
So you left Twitter 5+ years ago expecting them to soon fail, and you feel
vindicated by the very-much-still-existing Twitter of today purging some
accounts?

~~~
someonehere
In a sense, yes. When I was there the company had a ton of other issues too.
Mostly how to monetize the service. They couldn’t figure out how to make
money, but they were spending money like they were Facebook.

Facebook at least had ad revenue. Twitter really couldn’t figure out how to
sell ads.

The concern was to me, fake accounts and fake retweets/followers creating fake
user growth. That’s purely my perspective and likely not how the company saw
it. I wasn’t comfortable investing my time into a place that gave me that
feeling.

------
sytelus
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.

~~~
mikorym
> 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
together some HTML and had a web page (I think; back then I was playing SC2
and didn't know what HTML was).

I thought of this example yesterday: Often people lament something like "the
master craftsmen are all old, what would happen in the next generation". But I
think the next generation is busy inventing the craft independently. Much like
leathercraft or book binding on Reddit. I do think people can get lazy because
of YouTwitFace. But I do think that a lazy person can become very efficient
and prolific precisely because of revolt against their self-imposed boredom.

It does not require a lot of people (e.g.: archive.org) to make a rather large
difference. GNU/Linux and the rest are examples of that 90% viewers/lurkers,
9% interaction, 1% creators. I don't know if I am misquoting that, but maybe
people should be active in choosing what they preserve. That is, you are your
own 100%; there is no 90-9-1 with regards to your legacy. You have to store it
yourself.

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

------
xg15
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 privacy.

~~~
AstralStorm
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.

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

------
symplee
Wow, this is happening on December 11th? That seems rather abrupt.

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...

~~~
jijji
The fact that twitter has a size limit of 280 bytes (used to be 140 bytes),
they are probably trying to free up some inodes to save some disk space, as
greedy as it sounds.

~~~
hendi_
They neither store each tweet in a single file, nor is is 140 bytes but 140
characters (think ASCII vs UTF-8)

~~~
raverbashing
Also pictures/videos attached to the tweet

------
eggsome
They've already started deleting old tweets for some reason. I only tweeted 4
times and the 2 oldest tweets are gone :(

~~~
fullstop
I had a tweet from 2006, right after launch. It just said "this is dumb".

It's gone now.

~~~
echelon
Wait, is this really happening? Can you confirm or post evidence? This is a
big deal if so.

~~~
eggsome
I can't provide proof, but I _know_ that I tweeted @adom_dev around the time
of it's kickstarter and one of the Baldurs Gate EE devs about gemrb around the
time they announced that project.

Both tweets are gone.

~~~
kretor
I don't think those tweets are gone.

The "Tweets & replies" section of your profile
([https://twitter.com/eggsome/with_replies](https://twitter.com/eggsome/with_replies)
) has two tweets that seem to match your description:

[https://twitter.com/eggsome/status/228459378859180032](https://twitter.com/eggsome/status/228459378859180032)

[https://twitter.com/eggsome/status/189888249500680192](https://twitter.com/eggsome/status/189888249500680192)

------
lhnz
If the usernames free up, I wonder if this going to lead to something
synonymous to domain squatting?

~~~
dehrmann
I doubt they'd free up the usernames. Username reuse has problems with
reputation hijacking, either for paid likes, spam, or making it look like the
user said something they didn't. It also creates a bad experience with
historic @users in tweets, and no one wants that bad PR tweets pretending to
be from someone deceased.

~~~
herendin2
What you said is true, but they will free up old usernames

FTA- "previously unavailable usernames will start coming up for grabs after
the 11 December cut-off"

~~~
dissidents
Twitter handles are worth a lot of money and hackers have spent much effort to
steal them. See

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/01/how-i...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/01/how-i-almost-lost-my-500000-twitter-username-jb-and-my-
startup/)

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/02/twitt...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/02/twitter-restores-50000-n-username-to-its-owner/)

Amazing if Twitter is just going to release valuable namespaces worth millions
all on the same day.

------
throw_m239339
> In future, the firm said it would also look at accounts where people have
> logged in but don't "do anything" on the platform.

Yes, Twitter is going to purge a lot of accounts, the same accounts Twitter
boasted about having pre IPO in order to fake growth.

~~~
mc32
That sucks!

I have an account. I log in but I never post. I only use it to follow some
interesting accounts —that is all. I don’t contact customer service i don’t
feign outrage I don’t virtue signal I don’t post memes... it’s by all means
passive.

WTF, I just want to follow some accounts which disseminate useful information.

~~~
hombre_fatal
> Twitter will begin deleting accounts that have been inactive for more than
> six months, unless they log in before an 11 December deadline.

~~~
mc32
I’m responding to my parent poster who quotes: “In future, the firm said it
would also look at accounts where people have logged in but don't "do
anything" on the platform.”

I guess it depends on what “don’t do anything” translates to in Twitterspeak.

~~~
stOneskull
Maybe "on the platform" should be emphasised. Like if you just use your
twitter account to log into another site or something.

------
ezoe
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.

Yes, we can't expect the for-profit companies to preserve the history. But
these are so hard to preserve.

------
james305
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.

------
sandoooo
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 _right now_ just in case there's
lulz to be had.

Should also have a tweet lined up, in case they catch their mistake fast.
Something like 'we're nuking wales tmr'.

------
nikolay
Yeah, bots will stay - they post like crazy and make me not use Twitter.
Another idiotic decision from Twitter!

------
jl6
Are tweets being deleted or just accounts?

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?

------
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.

~~~
thisguyuknow
I also refused and replied to the email saying so and they enabled the
account. This was a few months ago.

------
sudoaza
I whish they put more effort on blocking the thousands of propaganda bots that
are created apparently with lots of ease
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20970888/bot-campaign-
tw...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20970888/bot-campaign-twitter-
facebook-bolivia-uprising-coup-confusion)

------
olivierduval
An interesting move... at an interesting time!!! I posted few days ago here,
on HN "Ask HN: Do you know a regular Twitter user?"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21584586](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21584586))
;-)

I see it as an interesting move because it will allow Twitter to have a more
"honest" number of real used account.

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).

So the active accounts number will not be that honest! In a way it's a kind of
FUD...

And it reminds everybody that Twitter is about "live and news", not building
some kind reference.

------
lazzlazzlazz
This overall seems extremely poorly considered. Hopefully, archiving services
and efforts are going into overdrive to fix Twitter's errors here.

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.

------
shabirgilkar
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?

------
mcv
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.

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.)

[0] [https://twitter.com/MartijnCVos](https://twitter.com/MartijnCVos)

------
jacquesm
Super dumb move. This will cause all kinds of impersonation and fraud
troubles.

~~~
alkonaut
The removed handles should be quarantined for say 10 years after the removal I
think. That makes it at least no harder to create a fake account that's
similar to the original than it already is.

~~~
jacquesm
x@y should be unique, forever. It's not as though we're running out of bits.

~~~
Frondo
Why should it be?

We might not be running out bits, but keeping those bits maintained takes
effort; it doesn't happen by magic.

and I can't think of any form of identifier that guarantees uniqueness; even
the stone markings on graveyards eventually weather away.

~~~
jacquesm
Because bits aren't stone markings on graveyards. If you want they can last as
long as the service does, which is a fine cut-off. Otherwise you get the same
trouble with every other kind of method of authentication: after your ID is
recycled whoever picks it up again even after it has been carefully scrubbed
will inherit all the inbound links and so on. That doesn't really happen with
gravestones.

~~~
Frondo
I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm looking for something more than
"it's possible to do this."

Or rather, I don't think there's a need to go to such an extent to preserve
old usernames and histories. I think it'd be sufficient to let archivists at
whatever data they wanted, and return the names to the churn.

~~~
jacquesm
They're not names, they're identifiers. There is absolutely no shortage of
those and Twitter threads in their original form have all kinds of uses. Court
cases, keeping the web in one piece, reference material, claims of prior art
and so on. The archives can not be searched and that makes them _much_ harder
to use for that purpose.

Our company is pretty handy in digging up stuff but you'd be surprised how
much of the web is rotting away while you're staring at it and every time that
happens there is a fair chance we lose something, forever. It need not be that
way.

Imagine we'd have a day-to-day account of the lives of the people from 500
years ago, and that you could home in on whatever individual from that time
stuck on the web. I personally think that unless the author removes it these
content farms owe it to the creators that gave them the content in the first
place to _at least_ support and store that content until copyright on the
content runs out.

~~~
Frondo
Thank you for elaborating. I'm actually more sympathetic to preserving
identifiers now!

I do think Twitter could handle this better. One problem with your distinction
between names and identifiers is that, for Twitter, they're largely the same.
And, Twitter lets any user change their name AND identifier at will. The
history on Twitter is already badly muddled; this doesn't change much, except
for a handful of high-profile accounts that people want to keep as memorials.

Twitter, I think, is not the right venue for that. They should make these
accounts available for archival, or spin them off into a separate namespace,
but I don't believe it makes sense for Twitter to keep inactive accounts
preserved as they are indefinitely, just because the whole twitter namespace
is already in such a flux (and it's not a good venue for memorializing the
deceased).

Still, thanks for clarifying and changing my mind somewhat.

~~~
jacquesm
I'd be ok with it if they preserved the history, timestamped the change of
ownership and made sure that from the page of the current registrant you could
backtrack to the history of the account over time. That would be an acceptable
middle-ground, maybe even show (#2) or so behind the name linking to the
account history to indicate the nth re-incarnation of that particular account.
That way all the old content would remain linked and you'd be able to find out
if someone has re-purposed an account right up front.

------
cyborgx7
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.

I don't even get why. My name is pretty clearly male.

------
excalibur
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.

------
parliament32
They're backpedaling until they figure out an archive/memorialization strategy
for people who passed away:
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/27/20986084/twitter-
inactiv...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/27/20986084/twitter-inactive-
accounts-usernames-memorialize-deceased-users-not-removing)

------
generalpass
> The cull will include users who stopped posting to the site because they
> died...

Indeed, your tweets die with you. I wonder about really popular personalities?

~~~
kick
They suspended Robin Williams's account after he died, so they probably
wouldn't be against it.

~~~
generalpass
I think that's really sad.

Maybe someone will make a tweet in peace site.

------
lawlessone
How about removing the nazis?

~~~
krapp
They can't remove the nazis, because apparently if they did, it would remove
too many Republican accounts[0].

Also because the nazis are, unfortunately, quite active.

[0][https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-
twitter-t...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3xgq5/why-wont-twitter-
treat-white-supremacy-like-isis-because-it-would-mean-banning-some-republican-
politicians-too)

------
thrwaway4832
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.

EDIT: And it doesn't even make any sense. It's a publishing platform. The
author already agreed to anything necessary.

~~~
corobo
So log in to it now.. literally just log in

------
partiallypro
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.

------
dpcan
Wish I could just pay an annual fee for a Twitter name like I do for domains
so I don't lose them.

------
IronWolve
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.

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.

~~~
kingofpandora
Are we calling those "honeypots" these days?

------
jimnotgym
I wonder if this will help combat the bots? They often sit dormant for years
and then start posting.

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btbuildem
They would do a world of good if they just culled one particular, very active
account instead.

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zatkin
Tangentially, has anyone obtained a username via trademark infringement? How
did that go?

~~~
greglindahl
Yes. It works sometimes, and not others.

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riffraff
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.

And actually, if anyone wants to own `@INeedToTest` (maybe a QA oriented
account?) let me know :)

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stunt
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.

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paul7986
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!

Has anyone been able to recover their account that was in this state?

~~~
kick
If you remember what the email was, check for if it's ever been in a data
breach, then run a password cracker on the hash.

~~~
jeromegv
Wow this is quite smart. Never thought of that

~~~
kick
When I was younger, it was a fun hobby to help people with.

~~~
paul7986
Cool idea, thanks!

I actually just gained access to that email and unfortunately since I only
used it once years ago it was wiped.

Darn, I hope they don't wipe my account... there is no support .. premium
support even as Id pay to have access and use it again.

~~~
kick
If it was wiped but you now have access to it, just send the recovery email
anyway. Companies can't check if an address was deleted and then remade.

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_bxg1
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.

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Shorel
As long as they don't require me to login before I can read some tweet.

I think that's the only reason I have an account.

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OzzyB
> 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.

> beginning with users outside of the US.

> outside of the US.

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?

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jhow15
This seems like a great opportunity to grab that twitter handle you always
wanted.

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moonbug
Rather of the opinion that Twitter should have an annual Big Reset.

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altcognito
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.

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riffic
Time for a regular reminder that Twitter's namespace is the sole property of
Twitter, Inc.

~~~
echelon
We should really get about replacing it. How's Mastodon holding up? I could
never get over the ridiculous name or "toots", but if it scales we should
really be using it instead.

Another thing that shocks me is that ads actually pay for Twitter. How did
they build such a massive company (expensive employees and outsized market
cap) on ad revenue? It seems like the wrong demographics for ads to actually
work and persuade people into buying. I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter
becomes ground zero for the advertising bubble to burst.

The advertising bubble will burst.

~~~
riffic
The Fediverse (which Mastodon is just one particular implementation of) is
shockingly healthy right now. I surmise that it will look quite a bit
different once you have, oh, a bbc.com implementing its underlying protocol
and pumping out content onto it. At that point who knows what'll happen.

~~~
Mirioron
> _I surmise that it will look quite a bit different once you have, oh, a
> bbc.com implementing its underlying protocol and pumping out content onto
> it._

I hope this never happens. It's rare that something doesn't become worse when
it becomes mainstream online.

~~~
robjan
It's pubsub so if you don't like the BBC's content then you just don't follow
them.

------
alabixer
winter is coming

