Data Protection: This Tweet Will Self-Destruct In…

The permanence of social media such as tweets presents an important challenge for data protection and privacy. This is particularly true when social media is used to communicate during crises. Indeed, social media users tend to volunteer personal identifying information during disasters that they otherwise would not share, such as phone numbers and home addresses. They typically share this sensitive information to offer help or seek assistance. What if we could limit the visibility of these messages after their initial use?

Enter TwitterSpirit and Efemr, which enable users to schedule their tweets for automatic deletion after a specified period of time using hashtags like #1m, #2h or #3d. According to Wired, using these services will (in some cases) also delete retweets. That said, tweets with #time hashtags can always be copied manually in any number of ways, so the self-destruction is not total. Nevertheless, their visibility can still be reduced by using TwitterSpirit and Efemr. Lastly, the use of these hashtags also sends a social signal that these tweets are intended to have limited temporal use.

Note: My fellow PopTech and Rockefeller Foundation Fellows and I have been thinking of related solutions, which we plan to blog about shortly. Hence my interest in Spirit & Efemr, which I stumbled upon by chance just now.