Are there rules/guidelines for auto-tweeting?
Is there anything in the terms of use about best practice for auto-tweeting? I've had a scan over the API terms, and although there's a lot about automation, I don't see specifically this.
I refer to the irritating practice an app automatically tweeting a viral message from your account when you authenticate. e.g. "I just got 50% somethingfactor on somelameapp.com, what's yours?"
It should be against the terms of use to do this without the *minimum* of a warning message, e.g. "logging in will send a tweet from your account" - best practice would be an opt-in checkbox or some such UI.
There needs to be a way for applications to be reported for doing this.
I refer to the irritating practice an app automatically tweeting a viral message from your account when you authenticate. e.g. "I just got 50% somethingfactor on somelameapp.com, what's yours?"
It should be against the terms of use to do this without the *minimum* of a warning message, e.g. "logging in will send a tweet from your account" - best practice would be an opt-in checkbox or some such UI.
There needs to be a way for applications to be reported for doing this.
2 Answers
Janos P Toth, My startup PicFog uses the twitter ap...
2 votes by Anon User and Georgios Kaperonis
Using read-only access more isn't the right direction - 90-odd percent of the apps are asking for read-write access, just in case.
What would help is having some sort off credible feedback method for applications. As a user, if an application burnt me, I want to vent somewhere so that fellow users can avoid the problem. This then could appear on the auth form (saying: this app is used by this and this many users and a lot of them like it).
What would help is having some sort off credible feedback method for applications. As a user, if an application burnt me, I want to vent somewhere so that fellow users can avoid the problem. This then could appear on the auth form (saying: this app is used by this and this many users and a lot of them like it).
Mario Menti, twitterfeed.com founder, swiss-brit, ...
1 vote by Pepijn de Vos
IMO the best solution would be for twitter to allow a user to explicitly select "read only" when authorizing an app via OAuth. This obviously won't work if the purpose of the app is to update your status, but many apps (including the one that caused this post) don't require read-write access to function. Currently in twitter OAuth the user has no option to change this, and can only give the app full access (if that's what it asks for), or choose not to use the app at all.
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