Oct 12, 2013 22:13
So.
People on the internet are complaining that their Twitters were 'hacked' by NYCC and made them tweet things without their knowledge.
What actually happened was people agreed that the NYCC application could be linked to their Twitter account and be allowed certain permissions, one of which was that it could have permission to tweet on their behalf.
If you don't want something to tweet for you? Don't allow it to have that permission in the first place!
Yeah, what NYCC did was sketchy in having the tweets in question read like they were genuine tweets rather than app-generated tweets. But still. You don't want to be surprised by finding you've tweeted something you actually didn't? Then don't approve apps which ask to do that!
I dunno, it bothers me. The story isn't that NYCC tweeted on the behalf of those who opted it, the story is the *way* it tweeted on behalf of those who opted in. Yet everyone, but everyone is writing about the story as if it were the former.
Edit: or, to put it another way; there is absolutely a story here. But everyone, instead of burying an open goal, is blazing it over the bar instead. And not only that, they're blazing it over the bar with such conviction that people forget they're watching football and think they're watching rugby instead.
(There ain't no metaphor like a convoluted metaphor, gonna show you how.)