Whether you’re a recent college graduate looking for a new job or you’re just someone who’s been online for a long time, there’s a strong case for deleting your tweets. Not just the bad, the dumb or the ignorant. All tweets.
If Twitter is supposed to be a town square as some would argue, then there is no need for a permanent record of everything most people say or do, just as there is no need for a permanent record of the conversations people have in coffee shops or bars. . Privacy tools could make it easier to treat Twitter more like Snapchat: a repository for quick thoughts that don’t need to be encoded in the public record.
Deleting old tweets also makes sense for practical reasons. For one, it’s easy for other people to take an old and badly dated post out of context (which everyone has seen happen many times). And it doesn’t matter if you’re in the public eye or not, as companies can use social media background checks as part of the hiring process and keep an eye on you even after you’re hired. Past tweets can also include seemingly irrelevant details about you that other parties can use for phishing, such as your birthday, which operating systems you use, or which apps you prefer. Or maybe your Twitter account has been hacked for crypto, and you’re just looking for a way to quickly delete a few thousand meaningless tweets about fake money after you get your account back.
Twitter doesn’t have any kind of tool to mass delete tweets, but many third-party services do. After using a few, I’ve found Semiphemeral to be the best option. The process is pretty straightforward:
- Download your Twitter archive. This isn’t required, but if you’re worried about losing all your great tweets, this way you have a local backup of them. Semiphemeral also includes an option to download tweets, but there’s no reason not to take the official route.
- Head to Semiphemeral. Click Sign in with Twitter and authorize the application.
- Semiphemeral takes a while to go through your tweets. Meanwhile, click SETTINGS. Here you can set rules to delete tweets older than a certain number of days or to avoid deleting tweets that meet certain conditions, such as a specific amount of retweets or likes. Set the rules for whatever you’re comfortable with. I like anywhere from 30 days to three months.
- Once everything is imported, you can also run PANEL and manually save any other tweets before the deletion process begins.
Once you’ve set the rules, Semiphemeral runs in the background, automatically cleaning up old tweets. The developer, Micah Lee, has a more detailed breakdown of each option.
Keep in mind that even though these tweets will be removed from Twitter, that doesn’t mean they’re gone from the internet forever. Some old tweets will remain accessible through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and if someone took a screenshot, they’ll always be able to share that copy at any point in the future. It is also possible that Twitter itself maintains a cache.
When everyone’s social media accounts are public, they’re all essentially LinkedIn, and if you’ve ever had a job interviewer (or interviewee, for that matter) directly mention your tweets, you know exactly that. how scary it can be. when someone breaks the unspoken rule not to talk about tweets.
A privacy tip: Use LinkedIn as privately as possible
I’ve tended not to think that LinkedIn has the same level of oversight as social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook – but boy, was I wrong. It turns out that the Microsoft-owned job networking site likes to share all kinds of data. Here are some settings to adjust right away:
- Opt out of personalized ads: You are not your business and should not be advertised as if you were. Turn off these ads by clicking ME > Settings and Privacy > Advertising data and turning off each option.
- Block sponsored messages: LinkedIn allows advertisers to access your inbox, but you can opt out by clicking Me > Settings & Privacy > Communications > Messages and disabling the change under “Allow LinkedIn partners to show you sponsored messages on LinkedIn?”
- Check who sees what: As with any social network, you should occasionally double-check what information is publicly displayed on your profile. Click ME > Settings and Privacy > Visibility and audit all the different options.
How-To Geek offers a closer look at some of the other settings. As always, be sure to use a unique password and enable two-factor authentication on your LinkedIn account.
Other privacy news we’re looking at
👩⚖️ Consumer data privacy laws in the United States have been a mess. With no federal option, a handful of states have passed their own laws, but it seems like with each new state law, they are gradually weakened. Markup found that many of the recent laws have been written with far more input from tech lobbyists, leading to lax laws that do little to protect people’s data.
🚨Speaking of consumer privacy laws, members of Congress have released a bipartisan bill known as the American Privacy and Data Protection Act (PDF), which marks a realistic first step toward a federal law that U.S.- he has seen it for a long time. It seems to mostly capture the status quo without offering much protection, but we’ll keep an eye on the bill to see if it goes anywhere.
🍩 Fast-food chain Tim Hortons came under fire for inappropriate collection and use of location data in its app during an investigation led by Canada’s privacy commissioner. The app was constantly tracking location whether it was open or not, prompting this memorable quote from Michael McEvoy, British Columbia’s information and privacy commissioner: “This investigation sends a strong message to organizations that cannot to spy on your customers just because it fits into your marketing strategy.”
This article was edited by Mark Smirniotis.
