Link shorteners are commonly used on Twitter to make the most of a tweet’s 140-character limit, though Twitter removed the character constraint on direct messages last month.
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But Raney says the company doesn’t disclose that it also uses a link-shortener for direct messages. The change is due to a Twitter algorithm that allegedly benefits Twitter by demonstrating to the New York Times or other sites where the source of traffic comes from, which the lawsuit alleges allows Twitter to charge better advertising rates.
At the heart of the issue is Twitter’s system of replacing hyperlinks in people’s messages with its own shortlinks that use its t.co domain address.
“Before Twitter delivers the message to the intended recipient, Twitter intercepts and accesses the contents of the message”.
“Should a user write a Direct Message and include a hyperlink …”
“Contrary to Twitter’s representations, Direct Messages are not private”, says lead plaintiff Wilford Raney in the complaint.
The lawsuit has been filed as a violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California’s privacy law.
The lawsuit is seeking class action status.
Unsurprisingly, Twitter denies the claims.
Twitter has made it clear that it feels it has done nothing wrong and according to an email from the company, “We believe these claims are meritless and we intend to fight them”.
As to the likelihood of success, there is already precedent in a similar lawsuit brought against Google for “reading” Gmail messages. It’s similar to a lawsuit filed in San Jose federal court against Google’s Gmail service for improperly scanning emails to serve ads to its users. The Federal Trade Commission had taken the case and put forth that the company had several “misrepresentations to consumers about its product” that went against “how the app actually worked”, the press release read. One section pulls from the description from a support page on Twitter, titled “About Direct Messages”.
Twitter represents its direct message feature as a private alternative to tweets, saying that “With Direct Messages on Twitter, [users] can communicate privately” and “Direct message can only be seen between the people included”. No, there’s no humans directly involved, and it’s not about the text, but computer algorithms do indeed alter the links sent via direct messages.
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Snapchat, the popular disappearing photo- and video- messaging app, faced a suit in 2014 for its marketing of privacy to users, as well.
