Twitter’s continued failures in protecting privacy is just a sign of the times in the race to the bottom.
Dick Morrell, a podcaster and journalist, had ran a tight ship on Twitter. After becoming dissatisfied with the service last November, Morrell deleted all but five of his 38,000 tweets — an indicator to anyone visiting his profile that he no longer used the site. However, about five days ago on a warm summer’s day in England, he woke up to that 34,000 of the 38,000 tweets he had deleted suddenly reappeared on his profile. He was quick to re-run Redact, an Electron app which allows users to purge content from multiple accounts at once, and later posted about the incident to Mastodon.
Why Should I Care?
You may remember that last month Twitter had a ’security incident’ that led to Circle tweets, which are like Instagram close friend stories… but tweets, were temporarily not private and were appearing on For You pages for those who followed the original posters — and sometimes when they weren’t. For some, this resulted in their nudes appearing on stranger’s timelines. A privacy nightmare. This time around, where so-called ‘deleted’ tweets are suddenly re-appearing, might be cause for legal concerns as under GDPR platforms are obligated to delete a user’s data when they request it.
In the past, Twitter had historically placed significance on the trust between the company and the users. In 2014, when the Turkish government blocked access to Twitter as wiretapped recordings of the prime minster had leaked on there, the then Dick Costolo-led Twitter challenged the order and managed to get it overruled.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former Head of Trust and Safety under Dorsey and Agrawal, was a significant player inside Twitter in balancing access to controversial figureheads, who would have otherwise been banned for rule violations, whilst also enforcing Twitter’s content policies through limiting their reach. In short, despite its reputation, Twitter’s old guard cared deeply about preserving the global conversation whilst maintaining obligations to keep the platform safe for advertisers.
If you’re interested, Roth (joined by Casey Newton of Platformer fame) goes into depth about his time at Twitter on this excellent This American Life episode aptly named What I was Thinking As We Were Sinking.
When Elon Musk arrived at Twitter, with a sink in his hands like a pillock, he initially seemed understanding of Twitter’s content moderation challenges. His first request to Roth was access to Twitter’s backend moderation tools, to which he was told by Roth that he cannot give him access due internal checks and balances at the company. Musk said this was fair enough and moved on.
Fast forward a few months and Roth has resigned, sighting an unwillingness to go against his moral guidelines, has been a victim of a targeted hate campaign incited by Musk, and Twitter has bowed down to a new request from the Turkish government to remove content ahead of its presidential election — with Musk insinuating that a Bloomberg columnist was brain dead for even suggesting that Twitter should have challenged the request.
Musk talked big game about how he wanted to turn Twitter into a free speech haven. Today, it is a near unrecognisable version of its former self. Verified accounts, from people who are actually notable, are no more. Musk had hoped that removing legacy checkmarks would have spurred on real celebrities to get the subscription, which didn’t work, so he resorted to forcing checkmarks upon accounts with one million followers or more, and Matt Binder, of course.
Die hard Musk fans and right-wing extremists litter the timeline. Reply sections have become genuinely intolerable due to the litany of posts containing transphobia, grovelling and spam. Replies used to be a part of Twitter where anyone could join in on a conversation notable individuals were having or comment on events in the news. Today, anyone who can cough up eight bucks can have their hateful views or product promotion rocketed to the top. Fun!
Since Musk’s takeover, usage of slurs against minorities have risen anywhere from 33 to 202% and engagement on these posts have increased 273%, according to Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate has identified over 1.7 million tweets and retweets since the start of 2022 that mention the LGBTQ+ community via a keyword such as ‘LGBT’, ‘gay’, ‘homosexual’ or ‘trans’ alongside slurs including ‘groomer, ‘predator’ and ‘pedophile’.
This isn’t an accident, Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the group, says: “Musk put up the ‘Bat Signal’… encouraging [bigots] to flood onto Twitter. Not only has Musk’s ownership of the platform coincided with an explosion of the hateful ‘grooming’ narrative, but Twitter is monetising hate at an unprecedented rate.”
Twitter is failing to provide basic functionality like deleting tweets. A couple years ago, this may have been more publicised as the trust and reputation of old Twitter was much greater. Think of all the activists and whistleblowers who rely on Twitter to share their message, then delete it when the threat of prosecution comes. Today, failures to provide essential functionality are but a footnote in Twitter’s messy ride to the bottom. It can no longer uphold its responsibilities to privacy and preventing harassment, so why bother trading in your time for subpar service? Though, on the other hand, it’s nice to watch it burn.