Undetweetable saves the tweets that you delete, and publishes them | Hacker News Reader

Undetweetable saves the tweets that you delete, and publishes them

undetweetable.com

43 pointsblhack34 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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...

Anonymity and pseudonimity exist on the Internet. The main problem is that people don't care enough.

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."

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

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

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.

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.

This very well seems like copyright infringement. They also don't post a DMCA contact.

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

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

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 :-)

Is this not similar to how some media report about an event and include a tweet that has been since deleted. This just being done on a much broader scale.

It's in the public domain... it's open for grabs.

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...

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".

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

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.

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).

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...

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.

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

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

Bradley Griffith, creator of Undetweetable:

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

This is definitely against TOS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com