@world Hello. May 20, 2011 11:59 PM Subscribe
The recent tweets page appears to be publicly accessible while the status boxes shown in profiles are not. Is this by design?
Not only can non-members see tweets on that page, but they get scraped by sites like this and eventually leaked out into Google's cache. While it's true that tweets need to be public in order to show up there at all (and thus anyone can scrape them directly from Twitter profiles anyway), it's a little strange that they're aggregated on a public page when they're not normally visible to non-members. Bug?
Not only can non-members see tweets on that page, but they get scraped by sites like this and eventually leaked out into Google's cache. While it's true that tweets need to be public in order to show up there at all (and thus anyone can scrape them directly from Twitter profiles anyway), it's a little strange that they're aggregated on a public page when they're not normally visible to non-members. Bug?
Oh wait, sorry I'm the one that is mistaken. I actually had no idea we hide so much from non-members on user profile pages. I thought we just hid email contact links and showed everything else.
This may be a bug as I honestly don't remember talking about this years ago when we set it up. I think profile pages should look pretty much the same to non-members, just hide the optional email address from non-members.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:07 AM on May 21, 2011
This may be a bug as I honestly don't remember talking about this years ago when we set it up. I think profile pages should look pretty much the same to non-members, just hide the optional email address from non-members.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:07 AM on May 21, 2011
I'm a little mistaken as well. It looks like making social apps public is an option (I had assumed they were all hidden), but tweets are shown to everyone on the recent tweets page regardless of that setting. I think the only way to resolve that would be to have the recent tweets page show different content depending on whether a user is logged in or not.
posted by howlingmonkey at 12:24 AM on May 21, 2011
posted by howlingmonkey at 12:24 AM on May 21, 2011
I like the way the profile page breaks down for non-members, and so I think extending the same viewing restrictions to the aggregate social page displays would be appropriate.
It's a little awkward, since even though there's no official link from the site to those pages unless you're logged in (right?) you can still link them from anywhere. (IE the wiki, metatalk threads, etc.)
posted by carsonb at 6:18 AM on May 21, 2011
It's a little awkward, since even though there's no official link from the site to those pages unless you're logged in (right?) you can still link them from anywhere. (IE the wiki, metatalk threads, etc.)
posted by carsonb at 6:18 AM on May 21, 2011
We give people a choice for social apps of making that available to members only or everyone. That might be where the problem is. I think the idea of having anything that is members only is very difficult to enforce. If someone has public tweets but they don't want those associated with their MetaFilter account they probably shouldn't add it to their list of social apps here.
posted by pb (staff) at 6:41 AM on May 21, 2011
posted by pb (staff) at 6:41 AM on May 21, 2011
I blame Ryan Giggs, the litigious loonspud.
posted by Abiezer at 6:41 AM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by Abiezer at 6:41 AM on May 21, 2011 [2 favorites]
hey, is there a link to the recent twitter page on metafilter somewhere? I mean like from the front page or something. I never knew this existed until this post.
posted by smalls at 8:12 AM on May 21, 2011
posted by smalls at 8:12 AM on May 21, 2011
No, it's linked from the wiki and from profile pages that include Twitter. Under the latest tweet on a profile page is a link to "Recent tweets from all".
posted by pb (staff) at 8:14 AM on May 21, 2011
posted by pb (staff) at 8:14 AM on May 21, 2011
ahh, I see it now. I like it! Almost makes me want to join twitter.
posted by smalls at 8:16 AM on May 21, 2011
posted by smalls at 8:16 AM on May 21, 2011
I just updated the aggregate Twitter, Last.fm, and Flickr pages so that members who have their social apps listed as "members only" will not appear on them. If we need to make more changes beyond that we can, but that should keep Twitter accounts out of places like page2rss without breaking that type of service for people who want to use it.
posted by pb (staff) at 8:26 AM on May 21, 2011
posted by pb (staff) at 8:26 AM on May 21, 2011
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:03 AM on May 21, 2011