Hi Julian,

I was very interested in this topic as well when I heard about it. The reasonable expectation to privacy regarding twitter is a rough sell in my opinion. I think the fact that they are knowingly searchable for 2 weeks eviscerates much of the idea that there is a reasonable expectation to privacy. With that being said, I still don't agree with the methods these social networking sites deal with initial privacy settings. The very fact that you have to opt-in to sufficient settings to acquire privacy offends the entire notion of privacy to begin with. Google got a lot of flack for their implementation of Google Buzz, but like you said, Facebook operates in a very similar fashion when releasing "new features," yet most of the privacy concerns are allowed without nearly as much fanfare. I don't get it. Maybe FB is just that ingrained into our society?

In any case, I agree with Professor Moglen that Twitter's death is imminent. I've always thought of Twitter as a rough and dirty way to do what it tries to do. There has to be a better way to do this type of stuff.

-- EdwardBontkowski - 14 May 2010

This is an interesting essay, valuable for what it shows yet again about the dangers of unfree services. There wasn't any reason to centralize microblogging anymore than there would have been for centralizing blogging, and trying to get everybody in the world to put their blogs in the same place, so that server operator would have all the logs to analyze and sell. Twitter like Facebook is an architectural pathology, and what you're describing is a part of the pathology. Of course, the real point is that by making their data public they are acknowledging that Google already has the opportunity to do so, which means they can't sell it. And Google has the advantage that although they allow everyone else to search the stream, they alone can combine that whole stream with everything else they also have, to create a richer combination than anyone else could make.

Hi Julian, interesting work.

Just a comment that supplements your concerns about the privacy part of a public tweet database: privacy isn't binary (it's not all or nothing) and it encompasses a right of self-informational determination. For example, the fact that a person shares private information on her Facebook page, which is accessible to 100 friends, doesn’t mean that she wants to share it with the world. I don't see how a public searchable tweet database will respect this right, unless the users explicitly and specifically provide their consent for such use

-- NikolaosVolanis - 26 Apr 2010

How Your Tweets Are Forever Searchable

What You Thought

What’s True

But what use is information in 2010 without means to quickly search it? Google Replay allows users to search tweets available on a specific date and time. Eventually, “it will reach back to the very first tweets.” Your instantaneous reaction will become instantaneously searchable ad infinitum.

We still don’t know whether user’s profile information, followers, geo-locational data and deleted tweets will be available. Will users be classified like books?

Twitter’s terms of use relinquish any intellectual property rights in material posted and claim the copyright remains in the hands of the posting user. Therefore, Twitter would not claim it held the copyright. The blogosphere consensus maintains that about 90% of all tweets are non-copyrightable statements of facts and references to other facts. Although the specific way of expressing facts has copyrightable potential, 140 characters and common knowledge ideas significantly limit the opportunity for original expressions. Most bloggers also believe the chances of individuals pursuing copyright infringement claims of their tweets are slim to none.

Whether we are discussing tweets made before or after the announcement, current privacy law likely doesn’t cover public tweets. However, there are cases which hold that the fact the privacy one expects in a given setting is not complete or absolute does not render the expectation unreasonable as a matter of law ([[http://lw.bna.com/lw/19990713/s059692.htm] [Sanders v. ABC]] (Cal. 1999)). Holdings like this leave open the possibility for tweeters to claim the tort of intrusion even in a public place.

Although politically unlikely for multiple reasons, a statutory safeguard for tweeters would provide certain protection. There is recent legislative precedent for protecting privacy in public places. However, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004 only protects individuals in public places when they reasonably believe their private areas would not be visible to the public. Also tweeters are a far less sympathetic group than victims of voyeurism. Finally, a tweet protection statute would have to be clear that a reasonable person has an expectation of privacy after a specified time following a public tweet.

The Consequences Of A Public Tweet Database

My prediction is that any controversy over this will mirror closely the controversy surrounding Facebook’s introduction of the mini-feed feature. A small but significant group of users will complain about the feature as it is fully introduced and its repercussions are felt. This will result in a public apology and the introduction of new copyright and privacy controls for users to opt-in to. In this case, Twitter will likely allow users to be entirely private, public, or non-archived public. This will somewhat alleviate concerns but less users will opt in to the additional copyright and privacy controls over time. Finally, these controls will be slowly relaxed until they are unrecognizable or entirely removed. The frog will boil slowly.

The final result will more or less mirror the initial concerns. However, users who did not initially give up the service or adopted the service afterwards, will barely be aware of the privacy and copyright issues. Basically, despite whatever ruckus you hear in the coming weeks and months, Google Replay and the Library of Congress now have all your tweets. For better or worse, even though you will slowly age, your tweets will remain forever young.

Forever Young: How Your Tweets Are Being Preserved For Public Consumption

-- By JulianBaez - 16 Apr 2010

What We Were Told

Your Twitter account is public by default. You see an interesting news story on healthcare reform and punch out a reaction in a minute. “Democrats are doubling the deficit and enacting a government take over of #healthcare,” or “Republican #HCR filibuster = 30 million Americans sentenced to death or bankruptcy.”

Your followers, all friends you know personally, see the tweet on their mini-feeds. In 12 hours, it’s no longer visible on your followers’ front pages. If any follower has your tweets forwarded to their phones, it’s in their inbox. As soon as it’s deleted, your tweet is gone (although possibly kept in a telephone company’s text message archive). In two weeks, you can’t even see your momentary reaction anymore. Or so we thought.

What’s Actually Happening

In the summer of 2009, the Library of Congress informed the public that it intended to compile all tweets related to Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination, via twitter no less. This was part of the Library’s Web Archiving plan, originally intended to preserve primary source materials. On April 14th 2010, Twitter announced it would donate its entire archive of public tweets to the Library: “Only after a six-month delay can the Tweets will be used [sic] for internal library use, for non-commercial research, public display by the library itself, and preservation.”

But what use is information in 2010 without a way to quickly search it? Google replay will allow users to search which tweets publicly available on a specific date and time. Eventually, “it will reach back to the very first Tweets every created.” Your instantaneous reaction will become instantaneously searchable ad infinitum.

The Law

Copyright

Twitter’s terms of use relinquish any intellectual property rights in the material posted on the service and claim the copyright remains in the hands of the posting user. Therefore, the Twitter Corporation would not have a claim against the Library of Congress. The blogosphere consensus maintains that about 90% of all tweets are non-copyrightable statements of facts and references to other facts. Although the specific way of expressing facts has copyrightable potential, 140 characters and common knowledge ideas significantly limit the opportunity for original expressions. Most bloggers also believe the chances of individuals pursuing copyright infringement claims of their tweets are slim to none.

Privacy

Copyright law is not the only concern. There’s also the matter of privacy.

The Consequences

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