How to deal with deleted tweets in a third party service

[Dotnetster]

Hi there,

I’d like to know what the policy is regarding deleted tweets and how to remove them from a third party service.

I’ve created a service that allows you to search and organise your Twitter favourites. Now suppose, Donald Trump tweets something and 10K people like it, and then he subsequently deletes it. If, say, 5 of my users liked the tweet, it would be available to see in my service. It is possible to remove likes in my service, but it is up to the user to do so.

Is it enough to mention in my Privacy Policy that deleted tweets are not automatically removed from my service? Or is there a better way of dealing with deleted tweets?

Thanks in advance,

Ross

[Dotnetster]

Anybody able to help me out with this one?

[andypiper]

Is it enough to mention in my Privacy Policy that deleted tweets are not automatically removed from my service?

No.

The Developer Policy states “Promptly respond to Content changes reported through the Twitter API, such as deletions or the public/protected status of Tweets.”- so if you do store the Tweet bodies, you’ll need to regularly check for the status of the Tweets, or subscribe to the streaming API to listen for deletion notices.

Alternatively, do not store the Tweets in your app, just the Tweet IDs. That way, you’ll retrieve them each time from Twitter, and if they have been deleted or otherwise removed, you’ll have an API error.

[user2017]

The Developer Policy states “Promptly respond to Content changes reported through the Twitter API, such as deletions or the public/protected status of Tweets.”- so if you do store the Tweet bodies, you’ll need to regularly check for the status of the Tweets, or subscribe to the streaming API to listen for deletion notices.

As per latest change in twitter developer policy on June 18 2017 , these paragraphs have been removed.

Also, this paragraph has been removed -

Only surface Twitter activity as it surfaced on Twitter. For example, your Service should execute the unlike and delete actions by removing all relevant Content, not by publicly displaying to other users that the Tweet is no longer liked or has been deleted

Does this mean it is no longer required to check the status of the tweets ?

[andypiper]

The policy has been updated, correct.

See I.C.3:

If Content is deleted, gains protected status, or is otherwise suspended, withheld, modified, or removed from the Twitter Service (including removal of location information), you will make all reasonable efforts to delete or modify such Content (as applicable) as soon as reasonably possible, and in any case within 24 hours after a request to do so by Twitter or by a Twitter user with regard to their Content.

This is substantially the same guidance provided before, with some additional commentary added around location data etc.

Additionally see section I.C.4:

If your Service will display Content to the public or to end users of your Service, and you do not use Twitter Kit or Twitter for Websites to do so, then you must use the Twitter API to retrieve the most current version of the Content for such display. If Content ceases to be available through the Twitter API, you may not display such Content and must remove it from non-display portions of your Service as soon as reasonably possible.

In both cases you should not be storing Tweets for the long term and then indiscriminately sharing or displaying them in the cases where the content is not public or has been deleted from Twitter. It is indeed very important that you abide by these rules as they are central to the privacy of Twitter’s users.

The use of Twitter Kit or Twitter for Websites for display of the content automatically ensures that your service is compliant with the Display Requirements, and with the guidance on not displaying protected or deleted content.

[user2017]

Thanks Andy

[user2017]

In both cases you should not be storing Tweets for the long term and then indiscriminately sharing or displaying them in the cases where the content is not public or has been deleted from Twitter.

Andy,

Say I am storing 50 tweet IDs for tweets having keyword “bag” in database. And I connect to twitter Rest API and display these tweets at 12 PM. on my webpage. Say a user deleted one of his tweets on 12-10 PM, so now only 49 tweets are existing on twitter with keyword “bag” . Then, after how much duration is it required to show the updated content ?

[andypiper]

You refer to Tweet IDs rather than to complete Tweet content. Generally speaking if you’re only storing IDs you’ll have to hydrate IDs to display at runtime, so this should not be a problem.

The policy states:

you will make all reasonable efforts to delete or modify such Content (as applicable) as soon as reasonably possible, and in any case within 24 hours after a request to do so by Twitter or by a Twitter user with regard to their Content

… again, if you were to be using Twitter’s web widgets to actually display the content, you would automatically be compliant as the deleted Tweet content would not be displayed.

If in fact you’re storing whole or partial Tweets then you should make efforts to check the status of that content on a regular basis to avoid it being presented after it has been deleted from the Service.

[user2017]

you will make all reasonable efforts to delete or modify such Content (as applicable) as soon as reasonably possible, and in any case within 24 hours after a request to do so by Twitter or by a Twitter user with regard to their Content

I could not find full documentation for using twitter embedded timelines for passing a collection of tweet IDs.

It is not clear what is meant by “reasonably possible” . Is it possible to give some example links of websites for full clarification ?