I Want My Tweets Back
Dawn Bovasso August 5, 2009
“Don’t delete my tweets Pete.” (image via Ben Pearce)
I had a slight panic attack yesterday when an entire string of direct Tweets disappeared from my account. I’d been having an intense back-and-forth with a friend; at first I thought I’d been blocked, then I thought my account was corrupted, and then I just had no idea what happened.
So I did some tests using two of my accounts. It turns out that both the sender and the recipient of the Tweet have equal control over the deletion of the Tweet, even when it’s a direct message. If you delete direct Tweets from your sent box, they also disappear from the recipient’s inbox. And if the recipient of a direct Tweet deletes it from their inbox, it disappears from your sent box. It even disappears from your iPhone text notifications.
I was mortified – as a librarian, as a content strategist, and as a social stalker. Those direct messages that disappeared became mine once they were sent to me! The copies may belong to the sender, but once the messages were sent to me, the final ownership changed hands, didn’t it? And how can someone have the right to delete something out of my inbox? Or out of my sent box?
This debate over who owns digital content isn’t new. Back when my co-workers and I at the Boston Public Library began digitizing rare books, we ran into similar issues: is the owner the original copyright holder of the intellectual property itself, the creator of the digital version, or the recipient of the digital content? This question has shifted into social media, like whether or not Facebook has ownership rights to what is posted. But no one is really debating the ownership of privately sent digital content – like a direct Tweet or Facebook message – the equivalent of handwritten letters.
For example, if you send me a handwritten letter, I am the permanent owner of that letter – you can’t demand it back. Libraries never even considered ownership/copyright issues around the hardcopies of the manuscripts, because it’s just assumed that the physical recipient is the legal owner. But if you send me an email or a direct Tweet, aren’t I the indefinite owner? Do I own the future rights to it, or do you? According to Twitter, we both own and control it equally.
I’d seen minor versions of this, but nothing on this level. I wasn’t as alarmed by the “undo” in Gmail, because you only have a few seconds to retrieve your content; it’s more like a second thought than a reclamation. Amazon’s similarly outrageous behavior with the Kindle (changing/removing books from your Kindle without your consent) gets into this gray area too, though somehow it feels like less of a violation because it isn’t a message that someone has given to me directly.
But Twitter has taken ownership of content into an entirely new place by allowing direct, personal, and given content to be taken back – without permission or even notification. Why is it ok to allow the sender to rescind without permission of the new owner just because the delivery method is electronic? Why is it okay for the recipient to delete content from the sender’s account?
And, most importantly, who will set the precedent for ownership of electronic content? Is it really going to be Twitter?
Wow, Dawn, I have responses to almost all of your points! :)
I think the issue here is technical, not socio-legal. Unlike email or other copy-and-send content, Tweets are really nothing but VARCHAR(140)’s stored in a database with the twitterer’s account ID attached to it. In the case of a direct message, it also has the recipient’s account ID attached to it. Delete the item, and you delete the record, removing it both from the sender’s and the recipient’s stream. Annoying? Maybe. But it’s just system architecture, not thought police.
Think of Twitter as a giant cork board that people stick notes to. If someone tacks up a folded note with your name on it, you can read it. If you leave it tacked there afterward, the same person can come along and take it down, and you can’t read it any more. Tweets were designed from the start to be ephemeral.
Re: GMail’s “undo” feature, I’d call it analogous to writing a letter, sealing it in an envelope, addressing it, and then putting it in the shredder unsent. GMail isn’t reaching into your inbox to “retrieve” anything; it’s simply holding the message unsent for 5 seconds in case I change my mind about sending it at all. Nothing alarming about it in the least.
The Kindle issue I find the most alarming of all. Despite the fact that they promise not to use it again in the future, the idea that Amazon retains the technical infrastructure, and the right, to delete content off of a customer-owned device gives me the chills. I understand the issues involved — they accidentally sold unauthorized editions from a publisher who should have known better. But the proper way to handle it would have been to (a) pull the book from the store, (b) settle with the rights holder for the copies already distributed, and (c) collect on the payout from the publisher who started the whole thing. At no time should content purchased in good faith be removed from a customer-owned device.
And not to pile on or anything, but I think you’re wrong about the letter. If I send you a letter, you have the right to retain physical custody of it, but the copyright remains mine. You can transfer, sell, or donate the original, but you can’t copy or publish it without my consent. You own the paper; I own the words.
“Libraries never even considered ownership/copyright issues around the hardcopies of the manuscripts, because it’s just assumed that the physical recipient is the legal owner.”
That’s not quite accurate. The recipient certainly is the legal owner of the physical property of the letter, but copyright to the letter’s text remains with its author. You don’t get that from possessing the physical letter anymore than you would get the copyright by buying a book published in a single copy. Libraries do indeed have to consider the copyright issues regarding the manuscripts they own all the time–see for instance the burdens Stephen Joyce has placed on James Joyce scholars who want to quote his work.
Right, I’ve never doubted that what’s happening on Twitter is technical, and that they probably never really thought about it from a content-ownership point of view. But they’re still setting a precedent through it, philosophical or not.
To both points about letters and copyright, I should have phrased it better. I meant “Libraries never even considered ownership/copyright issues around the hardcopies of the manuscripts, because it’s just assumed that the physical recipient is the legal owner [of the hardcopy].” You’re both right – copyright varies and is complicated, and isn’t just assumed. Thanks for pointing that out.
Btw, Michael, nice to hear from you! I’m glad to see we’re both still on the digital frontier. :)
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complex post. simply one detail where I bicker with it. I am emailing you in detail.
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