Privacy Measure Causes Temporary Deletion Of Old Twitter Cross-Posts From Facebook

Earlier this week, many Facebook users were confused and angered to discover that the old content they cross-posted from Twitter had been deleted without an explanation. At first, it was believed the mass deletion occurred because of Facebook’s recent move to restrict developers’ API access and protect user privacy. And that was sort of the case — Twitter removed its app from Facebook because the social media giant had prevented users from automatically publishing their tweets.

Facebook has since restored the content, but not before it received a torrent of criticism for the sudden action and lack of a heads-up to users. “This is a breach of trust from a company that’s in the process of trying to repair a broken trust with its users across a number of fronts, including data misuse,” TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez wrote. “Regardless of whatever new policy is in effect around apps and how they can post to Facebook, no one would have ever expected that Facebook would actually remove their old posts without warning.”

It’s interesting that users reacted so negatively to this incident despite the fact it happened because of Facebook’s strengthened privacy settings. When it comes to data and privacy issues, Facebook has put itself in a position where, no matter what it company does, it often can’t win.