By Aaron Miller-
A twitter bug that breached user’s privacy for 14 months affecting its feature on Android apps has finally been addressed, according the social media giant.
Twitter says the bug was triggered when users turned on the “Protect your Tweets” setting and made unrelated changes to their accounts, like updating their email addresses.
The “Protect your Tweets” setting makes individual’s account private, blocking anyone who does not follow the user from seeing their tweets . It requires new followers to await the consent of the twitter user. The feature was subjected to a pervasive bug for 14 months, spreading private tweets on the public domain of the social media platform, effectively infringing on the privacy of users. The breach which continued for this long was a nuisance for thousands, if not millions of affected users, many of whom would have probably struggled to get a response from twitter.
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Twitter says it fixed the bug two days ago, on January 14, admitting that the bug has affected users since November 3, 2014.
Twitter explained that it had already reached out to users who were affected by the bug, but it warned that it “can’t confirm every account that may have been impacted.” This means twitters claim to have reached out to affected users tells us little about the percentage of affected users twitter actually reached out to. Twitter says it has turned the privacy setting back on for users who had the feature disabled. The accuracy of this statement is questionable in the face of the the very admission of the social media platform that they cannot say with any degree of certainty how many users were affected. More professional and reliable would have been an announcement on their news feed or via the media inviting those affected to communicate with them to rectify the problem, or announcing a solution openly.
That would have appeared to be bad publicity for them except that they now realise the greater nobility about being transparent about the difficulties they encounter as they occur. Twitter is a global social media platform that has transformed the spread of news or information, but its operation still needs to be as top quality as the idea that introduced twitter to the world.
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These days, the social media giant seems to respond as quickly as possible whenever fundamental glitches occur that disrupt the flow of its services. A more proficient mechanism is needed to prevent these failings from taking place in the first instance. Twitter was once seen as a brilliant social media platform of genius thinking, but the recurrent imperfections are concerning enough to call for higher expertise to maintain a consistent delivery of quality.
One major problem still not addressed is the ability for twitter users to prevent or delete abusive comments they may not like. This publication has reported on deep complaints of racist or mysogynistic abuses against users. The brains behind twitter need to establish a mechanism whereby twitter users need photo I.D to register an account, or find a way whereby twitter owners can deplete unwanted and harassing remarks. Those are the most serious weakness of the social platform. These other problems that surface from time to time are a symptom of the wider problem of imperfect synchronicity in the system showing a more serious and fundamental weakness.
A statement from Twitter today read:
“We recognize and appreciate the trust you place in us and are committed to earning that trust every day. We’re very sorry this happened and we’re conducting a full review to help prevent this from happening again.
Reached by Gizmodo, a Twitter spokesperson reiterated that it does “not have a complete list of impacted accounts,” and said that it “provided a broad notice so that anyone potentially affected by this can ensure their privacy settings reflect their preferences.”
“We recognize and appreciate the trust you place in us, and are committed to earning that trust every day,” Twitter said in its post. “We’re very sorry this happened and we’re conducting a full review to help prevent this from happening again.”
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