{"id":14567,"date":"2019-03-27T17:01:35","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T17:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/twitter-took-over-a-users-account-and-joked-about-reading-their-dms.html"},"modified":"2019-03-27T17:01:35","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T17:01:35","slug":"twitter-took-over-a-users-account-and-joked-about-reading-their-dms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/twitter-took-over-a-users-account-and-joked-about-reading-their-dms.html","title":{"rendered":"Twitter took over a user\u2019s account and joked about reading their DMs"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a time when tech giants have come under fire for failing to protect the private data of their users, Twitter took over one of its user\u2019s accounts for fun and then tweeted jokes about reading the account\u2019s private messages. The account, to be clear, was willingly volunteered<\/em> for this prank by social media consultant Matt Navarra, who\u2019s well-known in some Twitter circles for being among the first to spot new features on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n

In fact, TechCrunch itself has credited Navarra on a number of occasions for his tweets about features like Twitter\u2019s new camera<\/a>, Facebook\u2019s \u201ctime spent\u201d dashboard<\/a>, Facebook\u2019s \u201cExplore\u201d feed<\/a>, Instagram\u2019s \u201cDo Not Disturb\u201d setting<\/a>, and more<\/a>. Several other tech news sites have done the same, which means Navarra\u2019s private messages (direct messages, aka DM\u2019s) probably included a lot of conversations between himself and various reporters.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also regularly tipped off about upcoming features or those in testing on sites like Twitter. One could assume he has regular conversations with his network of tipsters through DM\u2019s, as well.<\/p>\n

Initially, we believed the whole \u201caccount takeover\u201d was just a joke \u2013 perhaps a case of Navarra poking fun at himself and his own obsession with social media. After all, \u201ctakeovers\u201d are a common social media stunt these days, particularly on Instagram Stories. But they usually involve an individual posting for a brand \u2013 not a brand posting for an individual.<\/p>\n

Navarra had the idea on Monday, and tweeted out a call for someone to run his account for a day.<\/p>\n

He tells TechCrunch he had a tragic incident in his family, and offered the chance for someone else to tweet as him for the day so he could take a day away from Twitter. He also thought it could be fun. (Twitter tells us he remained logged in while the company was tweeting from his account, however.)<\/p>\n

\n

*raises hand*<\/p>\n

\u2014 Twitter (@Twitter) March 25, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Navarra says he was surprised that Twitter volunteered for the job, and he agreed to give them control. Most of his followers \u2013 fellow social media enthusiasts \u2013 were excited and amused about the plan, which they touted as \u201cepic<\/a>,\u201d \u201cgold<\/a>,\u201d and a \u201cgreat idea!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

We\u2019ve never been more ready<\/p>\n

\u2014 Twitter (@Twitter) March 25, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Navarra on Tuesday tweeted out photos of himself handing over his account key to Twitter in a DM thread.<\/p>\n

\n

pic.twitter.com\/FgX4VpWECC<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) March 26, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\n

Are you ready? @twitter<\/a> is in!<\/p>\n

Do me proud! pic.twitter.com\/349a2LrCno<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) March 26, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

On Tuesday, Twitter began tweeting as Navarra. This mostly involved some gentle roasting \u2013 like tweets about muting people asking for an \u201cedit\u201d button<\/a>, and other<\/a> nonsense<\/a>. Twitter said then it was going to tweet out some of Navarra\u2019s drafts, and posted things like \u201cwho has a Google Wave code?\u201d and something about BBM, among other things. (Navarra says these were fake \u2013 not real drafts.)<\/p>\n

\n

Twitter will now allow Tweets from Twitter to appear on Tweets in Twitter that use Twitter that previously used the Twitter API #Twitter<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) March 26, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

But other jokes were less funny. Twitter said it was reading Navarra\u2019s DMs, for example.<\/p>\n

(At the time of posting, these embedded tweets were posted from \u201cTweet Navarra\u201d as Twitter temporarily changed the account name while it was tweeting as Matt. But it\u2019s been since changed back, so these embeds show the current account name, \u201cMatt Navarra.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n

yikes, there are a lot<\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) March 26, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\n

DMs: read. Time for the Tweets.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) March 26, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The company then posted a screenshot of his Direct Message inbox to poke fun at the fact that he had DM\u2019d with an account called \u201cSatan,\u201d in one incident.<\/p>\n

Navarra played along, joking from his new account for the day @realmattnavarra for Twitter to \u201cignore that DM from Zuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Uhhhhh\u2026. HELLO?!<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t tweet Facebook. <\/p>\n

And ignore that DM from Zuck. <\/p>\n

WTF have I done. pic.twitter.com\/4tDWlIbhJn<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Real Matt Navarra (@realmattnavarra) March 26, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

While I personally had not DM\u2019d Navarra anything compromising, I can\u2019t speak for everyone who had ever messaged him. Even if Navarra had signed up to have his account taken over, those he messaged with had not volunteered to have their privacy violated. And though my conversations with him were innocuous, it was disconcerting to know that my message history with a private individual was accessible by someone at Twitter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reached for comment, Navarra claims his \u201cDMs were all deleted\u201d before Twitter entered his account. Unfortunately, there\u2019s no way to verify this as DM deletion on Twitter is one-sided<\/a>. That means that even if he deleted the DMs, the person who sent them could still view them in their own inbox.<\/p>\n

It also appears from the screenshot Twitter posted that the entire inbox hadn\u2019t been wiped.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, Navarra may have been misguided with this stunt \u2013 perhaps he should have first demonstrated that he had cleaned out his inbox by posting a tweet of it being empty \u2013 but he is not a public social media company. It\u2019s completely nuts that Twitter thought this was a funny idea.<\/p>\n

Whether or not Twitter actually saw private conversations, it\u2019s bad optics for the company to take over a user\u2019s account for a lark then joke about violating users\u2019 privacy at a time when tech giants like Facebook<\/a> and Google<\/a> are under threat<\/a> of increased regulations<\/a> for not taking care of users\u2019 private data.<\/p>\n

Twitter did not provide a comment, but confirmed it logged into Navarra\u2019s account for a few hours for the takeover in the hopes of starting fun conversations with his followers.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/D1mSAXvSPZo\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At a time when tech giants have come under fire for failing to protect the private data of their users, Twitter took over one of its user\u2019s accounts for fun <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-14567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t