Deleting a Retweeted Tweet

[Dewald Pretorius]

With the new retweeting, what happens with retweets if the original
tweet is deleted, or the author's account is closed or suspended?

Do all the retweets of that tweet also just disappear with it?

Dewald

[Marcel Molina]

If the original retweet is deleted its retweets will also disappear.

--
Marcel Molina
Twitter Platform Team
http://twitter.com/noradio

[Cameron Kaiser]

> If the original retweet is deleted its retweets will also disappear.

I don't know if I like that. Yes, it might save the original tweeter some
embarrassment, but sometimes it's useful to make a tweet survive. Imagine a
political gaffe that could be withdrawn instantly and everything that
referenced it.

--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * cka...@floodgap.com
-- The best of all: God is with us. -- John Wesley ----------------------------

[Adam Cloud]

I think that's the point. They can always just do a manual "re"tweet of a tweet. People aren't given the "undo" button for rumors and leaked info in real life, but we're not in real life :D

[Cameron Kaiser]

> I think that's the point. They can always just do a manual "re"tweet of a
> tweet.

Of course. That brings us back to the whole question of what purpose the new
retweet system serves if the old manual system will still suffice ;-)

--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * cka...@floodgap.com

-- The steady state of disks is full. -- Ken Thompson -------------------------

[Josh Roesslein]

Now does this deletion occur recursively including retweets of retweets?
Let's say Bob retweets John and Mike retweets Bob's retweets. Will
Both John and Mike retweets
be deleted if John original tweet is deleted or just Bob retweet?

I'm not sure I like the idea of the delete of retweets if the original
tweet is deleted.
Unless there is a good reason for doing so (the tweet is spreading a
bad link that causes harm, etc)
the retweets should be treated as a regular tweet and left alone.

Josh

[Dewald Pretorius]

I definitely do not like the fact the a deletion of a tweet also
deletes the retweets. It means someone else's actions can subtract
content from my time line and completely negate an action that I
performed on my account, namely a retweet.

To be very honest, I think Twitter is oiling a wheel that did not
squeak and is fixing something that was not broken.

Three things I do not like about the retweet system:

a) The deletions, of course.

b) The fact that the original poster's mugshot is shown against the
retweet, with the retweeter being attributed in the source area,
instead of the other way around.

c) The inability to modify or add to the tweet text that you are
retweeting.

The old/current retweeting method is/was not broken.

Dewald

[Adam Cloud]

b) Completely agree

c) I thought the reason for even implementing this despite the fact that most 3rd party clients already handle retweets by creation of a new tweet, was to allow text that's being sent by 100's 1000's and so on to be stored in a single location to save on database space as well as to allow for quicker retrieval of the tweet by allowing for more specific caching.

Again, that was a thought, since i dont actually know :)

[Josh Roesslein]

I think the extra meta data the retweet API brings is a good addition.
Currently you have to use up
some of your 140 chars for the retweet heading + username ("Rt
@whoever ..."). So
you might get stuck having to truncate the original tweet. With the retweet API
you no longer need to include that in your tweet and can retweet the
full original tweet.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

c) The inability to modify or add to the tweet text that you are
retweeting.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure I like the idea of modifying what the original author tweeted then
referencing it as what "they said". I would like the ability to put my
own comment
describing why I am retweets this tweet. This could be done by just
posting a second
tweet with the reply parameter pointing at the retweet.

Josh

[Hwee-Boon Yar]

On Sep 24, 2:16 pm, Josh Roesslein <jroessl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This could be done by just
> posting a second
> tweet with the reply parameter pointing at the retweet.

With the current way RT works (without the RT API) and at least as of
a month ago, making RTs a reply makes it limited to people who follow
both the sender and the original author (since it's a reply). This
greatly diminishes the point of retweeting and was the reason why I
stopped setting the reply to ID for RTs in SimplyTweet.

--
Hwee-Boon

[Joseph Cheek]

what? Every time my app submits a tweet with the reply id set, that
limits the people who can see it?

Joseph Cheek
jos...@cheek.com, www.cheek.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/cheekdotcom

[Cameron Kaiser]

> > With the current way RT works (without the RT API) and at least as of
> > a month ago, making RTs a reply makes it limited to people who follow
> > both the sender and the original author (since it's a reply). This
> > greatly diminishes the point of retweeting and was the reason why I
> > stopped setting the reply to ID for RTs in SimplyTweet.
>

> what? Every time my app submits a tweet with the reply id set, that
> limits the people who can see it?

Yes. I confimed this was intended behaviour with Alex a while back.

--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * cka...@floodgap.com

-- How are you gentlemen? All your base are belong to us! ---------------------

[Joseph Cheek]

ouch! deleting tweet IDs in my messages ASAP...

Joseph Cheek
jos...@cheek.com, www.cheek.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/cheekdotcom

[Neicole]

Boy, this concerns me. People definitely need to be able to add their
own comments to the RT.

And removing the retweets if someone deletes the original tweet?! No
way. Once it's retweeted, that retweet "belongs" to the retweeter and
must stay. I think it violates social media principles to delete them.

> > Yes. I confimed this was intended behaviour with Alex a while back.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[TjL]

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Neicole <nei...@trustneicole.com> wrote:
>
> Boy, this concerns me. People definitely need to be able to add their
> own comments to the RT.

No they don't. If they want to comment on it, let them write a comment
and post an URL to the original message.

If you could add a comment to an RT and someone "favorites" that, who
does the favorite go to? This way the recipient is clear: it should go
to the person who originally said it.

> And removing the retweets if someone deletes the original tweet?!  No
> way. Once it's retweeted, that retweet "belongs" to the retweeter and
> must stay.

If you want to "own" something, come up with your own words.

> I think it violates social media principles to delete them.

Fortunately Twitter doesn't think you own the right to control someone
else's words just because you repeat them.

Personally I've never really understood 99% of the RTs, especially
when someone with 50 followers RTs something that someone with 600k
followers said, but that's also beside the point.

[TjL]

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 9:59 AM, Joseph Cheek <jos...@cheek.com> wrote:
>
> what?  Every time my app submits a tweet with the reply id set, that
> limits the people who can see it?

Were you not around for The Great @Reply Upheaval of 2009?

> ouch! deleting tweet IDs in my messages ASAP...

As long as you understand that means a) people are going to see
@replies to people they do NOT follow, which is NOT what the vast
majority of Twitter users wanted; and b) this will break any app which
tries to "thread" conversations in Twitter, making it impossible for
people to see which message it was in reply to.

Dropping the in_reply_to would be like replying to an email sent to a
discussion list, changing the Subject, and not quoting any of the
message you are replying to.