Is a locked Twitter, a good Twitter?
Yesterday I talked about how Twitter made itself available only to logged in users, but I missed something else too.
Twitter also limited the viewable tweets every day to 600 for unverified (unpaid) accounts. 300 if your account is new. For verified (paid) accounts the limit is now 6000.
Officially Elon Musk says that the reason why he did this (take Twitter private adn reduce the available data) is to prevent scraping.
So here’s a question?
Who is scraping Twitter? Is it you? Is it me?
No, it’s data miners, and data at this level is only being mined at gigantic corporation or government levels.
Agencies and organizations that were mining Twitter data to profile individuals or to monitor narrative are suddenly at a loss. Without a feed they are blinded and while most users can still communicate effectively, they can’t see anymore how the information is flowing.
This changes the game in terms of privacy. Unless Twitter gives entities a private pipeline of tweets, you are more secure on Twitter than any other similar public network if you comment on political or sensitive issues.
This is a conflict between the marketer and the activist. As a marketer I want data to be open. My data should reach more people and I should have unencumbered access to data, but the activists want to only reach the people they want to influence, and they want to do it in security.
Personally I think what Twitter did is not sustainable. You can’t build a social platform that has arbitrary limits.
I sometimes read more than 600 tweets in one hour. When Twitter prevents me from spending more time on their platform, they are reducing their own use as a platform because I will spend that time somewhere else.
So what’s the solution? How about giving control to those who actually want it? Let Twitter users decide whether their account is publicly accessible (without login) or available only to signed in users (with login) and rethink the limits.
This will allow users who want to have public tweets to be indexable, embeddable and readable without login. Those who talk about sensitive topics and are ready for a smaller reach for more anonymity, they can opt for signed in readers only.
What do you think? As a marketer and as a human being. Do you have any other ways that the platform could help marketers and still become more secure?
Twitter has been a publicly visible social network since pretty much the beginning. This has led to its virality and the ability for individual tweets to have broad public impact and visibility.
Making it a 'closed' network at this stage will only hinder it's ability to be used as a public broadcasting platform, will lessen the value of each tweet and will lessen the overall value of the network.
These changes are yet another ill-thought out reaction by the company to a perceived issue. If they wanted to stop other companies scrapping their data then there are other ways of doing this instead of simply locking it all behind a login and shooting themselves in the foot.
Thanks for your insightful opinion.. I do agree with what you said as a marketer.
It's definitely a thin line to balance on. I remember back in the day Facebook had those kinds of privacy settings and gave people control (how much good that did is debatable). People's data is the most valuable asset on the internet right now, and I can't say there is a great balance between privacy and making marketers happy, other than giving people a true choice.
I totally agree! Well, in another news Twitter has already removed that experiment. The data is openly available now.
I heard someone saying that this the beginning of the end of social network as we know it. Maybe this is a good thing.
I've definitely felt that I was getting diminishing returns from Social networks. It's not the same as earlier
A locked Twitter account means your tweets won’t be visible to the wider public, potentially limiting your reach and engagement. If your goal is to share information, engage in conversations, or build a following, having a locked account may hinder those objectives. Additionally, your tweets will not show up in search results, making it harder for others to discover and interact with your content.
Ultimately, whether a locked Twitter account is good for you depends on your specific goals and priorities. It’s worth considering the trade-offs between privacy and visibility when deciding how you want to use the platform.
Absolutely true! It can be helpful in some cases only... And definitely not to marketers. Well, it seems Twitter already withdrew this.
A locked Twitter is breaking conversations in other places like Discord, for example. Or on news websites. It’s annoying, yes. But the irony is that many places that profited from links to tweets or embedded tweets are locked as well.
For me personally, a locked Twitter is not useful. Twitter’s appeal for me was it’s optionality.
Twitter was an important piece of public infrastructure in private hands. Maybe we need to have a discussion about who should own and control important infrastructure when it’s digital.
There is usually consensus that key physical infrastructure in private hands should be regulated. E.g. operating a power grid comes with requirements to serve areas that might not be profitable to serve. Why not expand this tested concept to digital infrastructure?
That's an interesting conversation to have. I do think like you that websites that have significant public investment of time and content need to be answerable. They should not get away with a blank policy check.
I am sure over time a public policy will evolve to give people rights here.
People are mad because can't see logic and reasoning on what is going on. But since Musk is the owner of the ball, he pretty much decides how he wants to handle his own website.
As a marketer you should be linking your products or your personal brand and own controlled website at the end of your post, or build a newsletter so people interested in you can reach out to you directly. And both at your own control.
As a activist you should link your website / blog or cause at the end of your post, or build a newsletter so people interested in your cause can reach out to you directly. And both at your own control.
Do you see the pattern? There is no point to get mad at someone for doing whatever the dumbest idea they decide to do with their own stuff. This should be a heads up for everyone to claim back control of their own data. And not couch riot to a billionaire so he can have mercy on everyone conversion funnel pipeline.
I never though in my entire life that I would cheer so hard for the time where people would partner with each other to exchange links on their own websites and blogs. Doesn't seen easy or sustainable. but to be honest, the internet was never built to be a couple of websites.
I hope Twitter, Reddit and any other "social" platform doubles down on their decision, so we can see this "social network" era ends. Really tired of what internet became in the past 15 years.
Arthur, I gotta tell you, I feel pretty much the same way. Musk does have the complete freedom to run his product into the ground, or ban us marketers if he wants to. We'll find ways to sell somehow.
And yes, it eventually takes the entire network down.
sorry about the rant