

Undetweetable saves the tweets that you delete, and publishes them - blhack
http://undetweetable.com/

======
Construct
Warning: Don't enter your own twitter handle unless you want it permanently
added to their archive.

I entered my own twitter handle to see what (if anything) would come up.
Instead, I was greeted with a message that my handle was not yet in their
database, but it would now be added to their list because I entered it. Great.

~~~
goodside
Meta-warning: Don't rely on your ability to keep a low profile to keep you out
of trouble. Having your name on this list shouldn't bother you at all. These
are some of the nicest people that have ever spied on you.

~~~
danso
Right...people should just start to assume that anything they ever post on the
Internet will be publicly findable for the rest of the Internet's existence.

15 years ago, you could've written a local newspaper column espousing the most
radical of views and felt relatively comfortable that once you moved to a
different state that no future employer would ever associate those words to
your name. Not anymore. Hell, that's even true for people hundreds of years
ago, now that Google has digitized old newspaper collections.

Same with photos. Posting a photo devoid of any caption or metadata may seem
anonymous now...but five years from now, there will probably be the search
capacity for anyone to efficiently and accurately search by facial-features
and stumble across that random photo.

There's already services that mirror twitter feeds and scrape blogs, reposting
them for any number of reasons, even just for filling a spam blog. So, this
undetweetable just makes such exposure more explicit.

~~~
spc476
Um, I've worked under that assumption since I started using the Internet in
1991. I've found USENET posts I made 15 years ago on Google.

Don't want something public? Then don't put it on the _public_ Internet.

~~~
icebraining
That's certainly the best option, but using a pseudonymous goes a long way.

~~~
Dysiode
Unless you want to use Google+ or Facebook. Although, maybe we'll see a
resurgence of real name pseudonyms. Now I just need to think of a name as cool
as Mark Twain...

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kuahyeow
This is probably a violation of the Twitter API ToS, i.e.

"For example, your Service should execute the unfavorite and delete actions by
removing all relevant messaging and Twitter Content, not by publicly
displaying to other end users that the Tweet was unfavorited or deleted."

~~~
tricolon
API ToSes never stopped anyone determined enough; they could easily use
scrapers.

~~~
kuahyeow
I think Twitter has more resources at hand to block. On a less technical note,
this web-site is probably too focused on a negative issue, unlike say Wayback
Machine which is general archiving. It not only violates the letter of the ToS
but the spirit of how Twitter and its users work.

I expect it to be taken down by Twitter soon

~~~
tricolon
How would it be "taken down" by Twitter soon? I've had to deal with scrapers
before, and in the end I just gave up.

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Macha
Serious question:

> Q. Can I request to have a tweet or myself removed from Undetweetable? A.
> You can request it, but it won't happen.

Is this not copyright infringement? The irrevocable term in Twitter's TOS is
not passed on to random sites using the API to the best of my knowledge.

~~~
timf
You're assuming you have copyright on your tweets which is unlikely as this
essay lays out: <http://www.canyoucopyrightatweet.com/>

~~~
Cushman
That essay points out plainly that some, just not most, tweets are possibly
copyrightable. Your parent's point stands.

~~~
timf
I think it says that it's highly theoretical there would be one that is
copyrightable (and that you would need to register copyright on a tweet before
being able to take action). My point was that therefore it's unlikely you'd
consider what they're doing copyright infringement, but sure it's "possible".
Unethical is another question entirely :-)

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emp
Seems that they don't believe in their own product. Entering anyone on their
contact list shows "We had a problem adding @... to our database".

~~~
Cushman
FYI that seems to be happening for every username now. Probably not a feature.

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jesickala
I liked the what Dean Terry- wrote on his blog: "over the last couple of
months is that I thought very carefully about deleting a tweet, which in turn
made pressing send when composing one less casual than before. Everything felt
more permanent. I’ve always wanted to create something that made people feel
more tension when hitting “send” on a social network." We are a bit too
trigger happy when it comes to socializing on the net. The air we breathe
doesn't remember our spoken words but the internet does. Be careful.

~~~
Dysiode
I find myself automatically making judgment calls on my own thoughts,
especially on G+ where it's easy to make things no longer public. In general,
however, I've just posted everything publicly. If I have something
controversial to say then in general I'm prepared (and often do in the post
itself) to justify it rationally. Maybe I'm simply being naive :<

I wonder how the generation that grows up with semi-immutable thoughts will
learn to self-censor (for good or bad).

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blhack
Now hold on a second. A lot of people in this thread are saying things like
"well if you didn't want it on the internet, you shouldn't have put it there!"

A lot of this _isn't_ people that intentionally published things, and have now
changed their mind, or want it to be removed from the stormcloud.

A lot of this is people who _mistakenly_ posted things to their feed, then
deleted it after realizing their mistake.

Take this example:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/comments/j6c7y/i_made...](http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/comments/j6c7y/i_made_a_website_that_collects_deleted_tweets/)

The author is bragging about catching somebody accidentally posting a private
phone number to twitter; this "service" undoubtedly resulted in harassment for
the victim of the accident.

(In this case, it was one hip hop artist meaning to direct message another,
but accidentally making the post public).

People try to draw real-world analogs to this stuff. The reality is that there
aren't any. If I forget to close my blinds, my neighbor might see me jumping
out of the shower.

My neighbor.

Not the billion+ people on the internet.

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Pointsly
Wow - whoever made this is ridiculous... i kinda don't like this stuff... just
doesn't feel 'good' - anyone get what I'm saying?

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ebzlo
Cool a collection of twitter double posts. Seriously, who deletes tweets? I
don't even look at people's history of tweets.

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tonywebster
Bradley Griffith, creator of Undetweetable:

"Just got a cease and desist from twitter for undetweetable.com #legit"

<https://twitter.com/bradleygriffith/status/98639491778088960>

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danso
Doesn't Twitter's TOS forbid the archiving of tweets to provide to users at a
later date? I thought that's why Twapper Keeper died:
[http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-end-of-
twapperkeep...](http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-end-of-
twapperkeeper-and-what-to-do-about-it/31582)

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geuis
Hmm so there's no way to delete my name once its added? On the plus side, I
don't think this service will be running for long.

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jambo
Tom Scott's Tweleted demonstrated this a couple years ago, back when Twitter
search.twitter.com showed deleted tweets.

Knowing that it doesn't erase history, I still routinely delete
inconsequential tweets, particularly @replies, to make my public twitter
timeline page more representative of what someone who follows me will see.

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tlrobinson
Twitter banning them in 3... 2... 1...

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ams6110
Yet further proof... what happens on the internet, stays on the internet. If
you don't want your grandchildren reading it someday, don't post it.

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joshfraser
This is definitely against TOS.

