Twitter no longer whitelisting researchers

So this came as sad news for me, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_recent_changes_to_twitters_terms_of_service_mi.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
I believe Twitter is a great source for sociologists, psychologists, market researchers and etc.. and I am sad to hear this.. though yes there are privacy concerns about tweets that are later removed.. see the related tweets

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@elsubliminal @realhamed Yes I thought the same this morning. It's very old stuff, last year or so...only the whitelisting thing.

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mircomusolesi Mirco Musolesi

@realhamed Also: you can still redistribute content but not in order to "substitute" Twitter. Otherwise Twitter clients should be illegal :)

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mircomusolesi Mirco Musolesi

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@realhamed They were not able to share them also before or better they had to support deletions (they had to mirror Twitter...impossible).

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elsubliminal Vijay Erramilli

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@realhamed Ok learnt from a source in Twitter - the article has tons of errors. Nothing has changed except whitelisting.

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mircomusolesi Mirco Musolesi

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@realhamed But I agree that the removal of the whitelist might be a problem for collecting large datasets...

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mircomusolesi Mirco Musolesi

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@realhamed These are not new changes. They were made last year as far as I know. Not major changes anyway - dev.twitter.com/pages/api_terms

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Suksant Suksant Sae Lor

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@realhamed well, we're using twitter to complain about twitter's policy lol sorry twitter, but ur data can be very useful!

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Suksant Suksant Sae Lor

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@realhamed and will MPI comply? Just curious...

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Suksant Suksant Sae Lor

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@realhamed thank you Hamed : ) this is ashamed since the crawled data is so useful... I'm sure they will make it into business somehow : (

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tnhh Tristan Henderson

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@realhamed Rubbish! Just because I am willing to make data public for one purpose doesn't mean you can use them. See @zephoria's WWW talk.

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Suksant Suksant Sae Lor

@realhamed I'm referring to the change of twitter policy that prevent crawling... Thank you : )

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Suksant Suksant Sae Lor

@realhamed could u pls kindly give me a link to the source? I couldn't find it... Thank you Hamed.

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guppiefish guppiefish

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@realhamed Guess we need a Tweet federation protocol (even if Twitter resist :)

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tnhh Tristan Henderson

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@realhamed identi.ca? I still maintain that crawling the OSNs without users' consent is on dodgy ethical ground though.

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guppiefish guppiefish

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@realhamed http://www.opensourcetweet.com/

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elsubliminal Vijay Erramilli

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@realhamed Worse is prohibiting data already crawled.. This is problematic indeed..

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realhamed hamed haddadi

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@mircomusolesi so now we have a few institutions who have the data for few years, but they cant share it! it is a difficult situation

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realhamed hamed haddadi

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@Suksant not sure what the source is.. though Twitter has also emailed MPI asking them not to share the data we previously collected !

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realhamed hamed haddadi

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@tnhh @zephoria maybe! I still go 4 open model :) twitter is not doing this 4public sake anyway I guess. prob 4 prevention of legal battles.

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realhamed hamed haddadi

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@tnhh I think facebook maybe, but twitter.. if u r publicly & globally announcing something. u shoudl be prepared 4 it 2 stay with u forever

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realhamed hamed haddadi

@guppiefish ah.. genius.. why hasn't this taken off yet then!.. maybe the uncool name? why didn't they drop the "source" from the name!

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realhamed hamed haddadi

so.. seems like we need an open version of twitter.. opentweet..., like wikipedia.. no ads, decentralized and publicly accessible..

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realhamed hamed haddadi

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@elsubliminal yeah i wonder if they'll ask MPI/KAIST to remove the datasets.. we already actually have 1-2 papers under review too

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realhamed hamed haddadi

WOW.. Twitetr changes policy and no longer allows crawls .. what a shame for social science research