LEGAL UPDATE: Tweet Archives now available on Twitter. Impact for Defamation Law?
Users can now look back on their entire history on the microblogging network for the first time. Mollie Vandor of the User Services Engineering Team said "we’re introducing the ability to download your Twitter archive, so you’ll get all your Tweets (including Retweets) going back to the beginning. Once you have your Twitter archive, you can view your Tweets by month, or search your archive to find Tweets with certain words, phrases, hashtags or @usernames. You can even engage with your old Tweets just as you would with current ones."
Twitter announced "We’re rolling out this feature slowly, starting today with a small percentage of users whose language is set to English. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll make it available to all users around the world, for all the languages we offer. We’re really excited to bring this feature to everyone, and we appreciate your patience as we work to do so."
When can I get it?
Twitter have been working on introducing the feature since July, and it is currently only available to a small number of members. The option will become available to most users and those who don’t yet have the functionality on their feed to do so should see it appear soon via the settings link.
What will the archive look like and how do I access it?
If youre wondering what it will look like the archive will come as a compressed .zip folder, containing members' tweets in .csv spreadsheet format, and as .json file, a format often used to transfer and represent data online. Metadata, such as location, is also included. Twitter says the easiest way to explore the data is via a link provided, which opens a searchable web page as a portal to the archive. Deleted tweets are not included.
Comment
The availability of such Tweets is an interesting concept however this may present a very real risk in the defamation context. Usually defamation proceedings must be brought one year from the date of publication, however the law is still unclear as regards re-tweets and re-posts, will the one year time scale begin again if any individual re-posts an archived Tweet.
Look out for a new post by me about the legality of this area of law in the coming days. if you have any insights youd like to see in the article please feel free to leave a comment.
Twitter announced "We’re rolling out this feature slowly, starting today with a small percentage of users whose language is set to English. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll make it available to all users around the world, for all the languages we offer. We’re really excited to bring this feature to everyone, and we appreciate your patience as we work to do so."
When can I get it?
Twitter have been working on introducing the feature since July, and it is currently only available to a small number of members. The option will become available to most users and those who don’t yet have the functionality on their feed to do so should see it appear soon via the settings link.
What will the archive look like and how do I access it?
If youre wondering what it will look like the archive will come as a compressed .zip folder, containing members' tweets in .csv spreadsheet format, and as .json file, a format often used to transfer and represent data online. Metadata, such as location, is also included. Twitter says the easiest way to explore the data is via a link provided, which opens a searchable web page as a portal to the archive. Deleted tweets are not included.
Comment
The availability of such Tweets is an interesting concept however this may present a very real risk in the defamation context. Usually defamation proceedings must be brought one year from the date of publication, however the law is still unclear as regards re-tweets and re-posts, will the one year time scale begin again if any individual re-posts an archived Tweet.
Look out for a new post by me about the legality of this area of law in the coming days. if you have any insights youd like to see in the article please feel free to leave a comment.
