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Comment by comice | Hacker News Reader

> "In the meantime, you will be able to download your subscriber list"

...

> "Twitter, Inc. has not obtained permission for you to use subscriber information for any purpose."

Twitter thinks it has permission to provide account owners with their subscriber lists but explicitly says that those same account owners have no permissions of their own for the data.

I do not think this is how how most countries' data privacy laws work.

This is a very murky situation and Twitter seem to be writing it all off with a wink and a nod.

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It's very much how most privacy laws work.

According to Revue's platform privacy policy[0], Revue processes subscriber emails as a data processor. Each newsletter publisher owns the email addresses of their respective audiences. Revue would have a legal obligation to make those email addresses available to the newsletter publishers until the shutdown date.

[0]: https://www.getrevue.co/privacy/platform?locale=en

Their privacy policy very strongly suggests that they are the data processor only when the account owner (Publisher) provides the email address, which they call indirect subscription.

Direct subscribers are users who subscribed themselves via the Revue service. and the privacy policy says nothing about providing direct subscribers' private data to the Publisher.

Their closure announcement does not distinguish between the types of subscriber.

So either the Publisher is only getting the indirect subscribers' info (and isn't being told they are losing the direct subscribers) or the Publisher is getting direct subscriber info which the direct subscriber never agreed to allowing (unless that is a separate agreement from the privacy policy, in which case presumably some permission was indeed obtained).

> explicitly says that those same account owners have no permissions of their own for the data

"Twitter has not obtained permission for you" is not the same as "you have no permissions"

You have whatever permissions you brought to the table, and nothing else.

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