Blog #5

I've never willingly read the terms and conditions of a social media company after creating an account. I say "willingly" because last semester I had to read the privacy policy and terms and conditions of Facebook for a class. Although the Cambridge Analytica scandal played a huge role in this assignment, reading Facebook's terms and conditions was easily the most boring thing that I've ever had to read for class, but I did end up learning a lot about their privacy policies and what they do with user data.

Typically, I don't read the terms and conditions because honestly no one has the time to read through it all. In my eyes, it simply states how to act like a decent human being online, which I don't think is hard to do, but as always, common sense isn't that common.

For this assignment, I decided to read the terms and conditions of a similar social media site- Twitter. I chose Twitter because it was the first social media platform that I signed up for on my own, and I don't think I had to lie about my age to make an account. (You guys know exactly what I'm talking about). Also, Twitter is what I use when I'm bored and want to catch up on entertainment or news.

Honestly, it wasn't too hard to find the Terms of Service, but it wasn't the easiest thing to find either because you had to go through multiple tabs to actually find it. However, I can see how it could be difficult for some users to find the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy since you have to go through multiple tabs on your account to find them.

To start off, Twitter has separate Terms of Services depending on if you live outside the European Union. I thought that this was very odd since it's typically just a universal document, but I'm sure this is also the case for other social media platforms due to different regulations on privacy. The first thing that Twitter's Terms of Service states is that you have to be 13 years old to have a Twitter account. This follows many other age restrictions that other social media platforms have, but because Twitter is partners with Periscope, a live-streaming service similar to Instagram Live, you have to be 16 years old to use it. I thought it was a little odd that there was a difference in age restrictions between the two, but I guess because they're two separate apps, rather than a feature built into Twitter itself, they have differing privacy policies when it comes to age restrictions.

One thing that I found interesting while reading the Terms of Services was that Twitter actually warns it's users about being exposed to offensive and harmful content. Twitter also claims that they cannot take responsibility for offensive and harmful content. This makes sense since technically Twitter did not post the content, the user did. However, this made me think about the role of digital drama on the platform. Digital drama can be described as negative online behaviors, which includes cyber-bullying, abuse, and sexting. (Scheinbaum, 2018). 

Although Twitter claims this, it really makes me question the role that Twitter could potentially play in legal investigations. Does this mean that Twitter gets questioned because they allowed a user to post harmful content? Does Twitter get any slack for it or does it only go toward the user? What happens when the user deletes everything?

One big takeaway that I got from reading Twitter's Terms of Service is the way in which they handle Terms of Service violations. Under the Using the Services section, it states that Twitter has the ability to suspend or terminate accounts at any time for any or no reason at all. This seems very vague and makes me feel uneasy about the app. Also, it really surprised me. I completely understand if a user violates the Terms of Service, but why not just tell them that's why they got their account suspended/terminated? Why would a platform just randomly suspend/terminate an account for no reason at all?

One positive (or negative, depending on your level of embarrassment) that I found in the document was that you're allowed to request an archive of your Twitter account. This means that you can pull up old tweets from your account even if you changed your handle. I think this is just an interesting feature that's offered and I've never really heard anyone talk about it. Personally, I've tried to download my Twitter archive and view it, but it didn't really work because Twitter has changed a lot since I first got my account.

Much like other social media platforms, Twitter gives your data to third parties and reserves the right to disclose your personal information...but without notifying you. This creates a huge issue with user privacy, and even user trust. Most of the time, these third parties fail to secure users' information in a secure way, so when a breach happens, user information is up for grabs. There have been data breaches that include Twitter user information being accessed. The most recent breach happened in November 2019 and mainly affected Android users who gave a photo app access to their information.  Even though user data was breached, nothing has compared to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that happened with Facebook.

Twitter is a platform that I use whenever I'm bored or whenever I need a laugh. I've had a Twitter account since I was 13, so it's hard to believe that I've had an account for almost 8 years. Even though I've had an account for so long, like many other users, I never paid attention to the Terms of Services because they're so long. I actually learned a lot from reading Twitter's Terms of Service in regard to user protection and user information. It kind of changed the way that I view other platforms' terms and conditions. Maybe the next time I sign up for an account I'll actually read (or skim) the important sections of the terms and conditions and the privacy policy.

References:

Scheinbaum, A. (2018). A framework for the dark side of social media. New York, New York, USA: Routledge