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Comment by wilg | Hacker News Reader

Seems like they could avoid this problem, keep old accounts, and still free up the namespace by just renaming all these accounts @_archived_originalname (or something better).

Maybe with some kind of process to re-activate the account under the original name (or a new one if it has since been taken). And some kind of hands-on resolution process for people who accidentally got deactivated. Feels tractable.

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> Twitter said the effort is not, as had been suggested by some users on the network, an attempt to free up usernames.

> The site said it was because users who do not log-in were unable to agree to its updated privacy policies.

That.. makes sense, but is almost suspiciously proactive.

6 months is quite a bold number, much harsher than domain names would do. I’d get like two years which is probably still tens of millions.

That’s a lot of potential digital content that will go dark.

Does that make sense? Why should a privacy policy be retroactive on things I already posted?

Because Twitter potentially bears liability by hosting them into the future, and is only willing to bear that liability if you agree to their terms.

Citation needed. If they receive a copyright takedown request and don't act on it, then they're liable. Otherwise I don't see where liability comes into play. Please cite court cases showing websites are liable for content posted by its users. Nobody is using Twitter to archive copyrighted material.

It may not be for content, but for user data analysis without consent.

Then don't analyze those records... such nonsense.

Indeed.

This is the exact purpose of Section 230 and why it is so important to preserve it.

Except that Section 230 explicitly states that they don't bear liability.

Does European privacy law have the same provision? They are removing non-US accounts first, after all.

Don't like that idea. There are a lot of direct links across the internet to tweets that would get broken if the handle was renamed.

As long as the id is okay the user name of a link does not matter

https://twitter.com/flurdy/status/1199290001143582721

Wow, I did not know that! I was worried about which tweet of mine you had found! :)

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