Twitter to Sell Two Years' Worth of Old Tweets. What's wrong with you?

epic.org writes that “Twitter recently announced a deal with the analytics firm Datasift that authorizes Datasift to sell the content of public tweets posted over the last two years.

Companies who buy the data from Datasift will be able to market to users based on the topic or location of the tweets. DataSift will be required to regularly remove tweets that users delete”.

Allowing this to happen shows that the principles enshrined in the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, are, for the moment, only pretty thoughts written down in a fancy manner.

Look, for instance, at principle number one: INDIVIDUAL CONTROL. It presupposes that “Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it”. Hence, if Twitter feels like making money out of the personal data posted by its users, at least it should ask for their consent.

Yes, you may say Twitter’s deal regards only public tweets. That has nothing to do with the user’s consent that some company would profit from his or her thoughts expressed there.

Maybe if they new their data are so valuable, they wouldn’t have made it public for free in the first place.