I wanted to pose the question to all of you. What do you think? If you're following someone who has a private Twitter account, is it appropriate to retweet something they've said on Twitter?
If you have a private Twitter account, have you ever been annoyed that someone retweeted something you only meant a handful of people to see?
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12 comments:
I keep my account protected for privacy. Most of the time, what gets retweeted is either a link to an interesting article, funny news item, or an inspiring quote.
If I say something private, like personal news or a mini vent or something, it's meant for the group of people I have accepted into my twitter circle (mostly other photographers) - if that were to get retweeted, I might be upset.
Ultimately, even protected streams become semi-public via others' twitter streams that are public.
Tweets from a locked account should, as a matter of courtesy, not be retweeted without permission.
While I find it exceedingly odd that businesses would go private on a social network, I do honor their decision and don't publicly rebroadcast their thoughts.
I have a locked account, but its not because I don't like my tweets getting around, its to keep my personal life seperate. I had some acquaintances that were a bit too nosy, twisting my words around and ended up hurting some business for me. Too bad I have to lock my account over just a few bad apples. But, I would have no problem at all with people RTing my tweets. If I accepted you in the first place, I would say it is fine to pass them on.
In my opinion, I think that having a "locked" profile is a joke. Anything you put out there is out there and you should realize that as a possibility. Making it locked should only be used so someone (namely spammers) cannot follow your every tweet. Or, take the case of my friend who is a teacher... she doesn't want her students following her though she isn't tweeting anything embarrassing or that would get her in trouble. She's just avoiding an awkward situation.
I know I personally don't check the profiles of people before I RT something... (in fact it never really occurred to me as an issue until now). But, can you imagine how time-consuming that would be if you were to try?
I'm ok with retweeting something like a link to an article or news blurb, and I'll do an @ to the original poster's name just to give them credit. I wouldn't retweet something that was personal though.
And I agree, because of the conversational nature of Twitter, there often is personal information that comes out in other people's public streams.
Honestly, once I am accepted and can see the tweets I wouldn't know who has a locked profile anyway, so I may actually retweet by accident, but in general I would attempt to avoid it.
My mother always taught me never to write anything to anyone that I wouldn't want put on the front page of the New York Times. (She was talking about writing notes in school but it still applies here.) Despite a profile being "locked" Twitter is very much a public forum and should be treated as such. You have NO privacy on the internet. I guarantee that if someone with a "locked" profile ran for government office we would hear about EVERYTHING they wrote.
That's a great thought. Once I've never thought about. On all honesty, I don't know who I follow that locks their profile. I'm sure there are some, I just can't remember. I've probably RT-ed them before. It's too hard to keep up with once you are following or followed by a lot of people. Maybe twitter can make a symbol over the avatar's of locked profiles. Or... their tweets should be locked from re-tweeting. That would solve all the problems and make much more sense.
Like a few others I really never gave much thought to locked profiles. I also agree with the people that basically said anything that you put out there can be seen, period. If there's something you're not comfortable with the world seeing then you should reconsider posting it.
This is a good discussion. I recently read a tweet that I thought was really good and wanted to RT - then I realized that the person had a locked profile, so instead I just @replied them and told them what a great idea they had. Better safe than sorry!
When tweets from a protected profile show on your Twitter home (or elsewhere), the person's name will have a faint padlock icon next to it. But it's true, from that person's page there's no way to see that they've chosen to stay protected.
As far as retweeting a protected tweet, I don't. I'll reply to them, but since there's no context, everyone else is in the dark. Which makes protected tweeting essentially Web Whispering, which is kind of rude.
On second thought, while I like the term Web Whispering™, you can't blame someone for wanting a little privacy on the wild wild web.
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