Even though I’m not a Twitter addict, I do use it sparingly for getting real time updates in the case of any breaking news. In fact, during the last Mumbai Attacks, Twitter proved to be a reliable news source by letting the people share the real time updates. Some people still believe that the Twitter updates helped the terrorists also to plan their move.
Coming to the point of this post, Twitter has a nifty feature called Re-Tweet (RT in short), where in a particular tweet from a twitter user can be repeated/quoted in your tweets. When you do a RT, the resulting twitter message may include the twitter user name of the original source of that message. The catch here is you can modify the RT message and the source twitter user name. I.e, if you are re-tweeting a message from user abcd, it is possible that you can remove @abcd from the RT message and you can put some other persons name instead of abcd. So, the RT message,
RT @abcd here is a not-so-good twitter message.
can be modified into,
RT @xyz here is a not-so-good twitter message.
So, when your twitter friends see your update, they could think that the message “here is a not-so-good twitter message” is said by @xyz but it is actually from @abcd.
What’s wrong with the RT?
So, what’s wrong with this? Well, if any one decides to damage your image, they can simply RT any spam/vulgar messages with your twitter ID included, thus creating an impression that you said that message. By any chance, if that particular twitter message gets much attention, then there is a high possibility that many people could think that you actually said that message.
And there is no way to verify the source of the information. One possible solution is to take the RT message and do a search in the twitter user’s (mentioned in RT) profile to see whether the user actually tweeted the message or not (a good idea for a twitter app. any takers!?). Again, I doubt that how many people will take this pain to verify the message source.
I feel Twitter should consider adding a message source verification to all RTed twitter messages. What is your thought?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Very good article veera. Twitter should take care of this serious issue.
Thanks Vishnu.
I have to disagree with this one.
1. RT is not a feature of Twitter – its something the users do.
2. Its simple to verify whether a tweet came from x or not – just go to x’s profile and see.
Hi Binny,
@1
Agree that RT is not a built-in feature of Twitter. But if you are using any Twitter Clients (like TweetDeck), they provide the option to RT a message. I used the word ‘Twitter RT’ because most people knows that RT is somethind to do with Twitter.
@2
Yup. As of now that’s the only way to find out the message source. But I doubt how many people will be ready to browse thru the n-number of twitter pages and check for a particular message. Again, this is a manual task, which is another pain.
Hi Binny V A says
// Its simple to verify whether a tweet came from x or not – just go to x’s profile and see. //
It is very simple to verify, but how many people ready to check the original tweet?. Technology is only for people.
+1
Hi Binny V A says
// Its simple to verify whether a tweet came from x or not – just go to x’s profile and see. //
It is very simple to verify, but how many people ready to check the original tweet?. Technology is only for people.