So this represents a fun set of assumptions.

1. You do all your reading based on things you click on Twitter

2. Twitter tracks every single article you click on and records the full URL against your profile.

3. Retweeting unread links is very common https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1270783537667551233

It's particularly interesting b/c by pushing you to click through Twitter will likely be expanding its detailed data on users. & b/c the last time I did a data export from Twitter (Aug 2018) there was no list of links that I clicked on, a thing we can assume Twitter stores now.

So either Twitter has started storing click through data on profiles at a specific level it previously avoided or its exports exclude it? I'm running another data export now to see if I get every link I clicked on via Twitter.

And it isn't for lack of space either. The Twitter export almost hit 2.5 gigs.

https://twitter.com/Maghielse/status/1270799281973334016

So I ran an export of my data from Twitter and guess what! There's a new file that wasn't there in 2018 'user-link-clicks.js' which logs links I clicked on, what tweets they were in, the url those links resolve to & the time stamp of when I clicked, starting 05-13-2020.

So that answers my question:

yes, instead of storing metadata about links you click now Twitter stores a log that explicitly contains everything you've ever clicked, the tweet you got a link from, & precise timestamp of that click (great for deanonymizing cross site activity!)

(Precise timestamps are super useful for deanonymizing users b/c if say you run a site where a piece of code--like a script to make a Twitter button show up--exists on the other side of the click you can join data about a user on another site with your site, based on the timing)

So now Twitter has a great way to deanonymize users and track them, potentially even if they right click a link to open in a incognito window, all in the name of nagging you about if you read a link you retweeted.

Also: if you're a journalist who sends links to people on Twitter... say your sources via DM, & Twitter were to obey a subpoena on you & your suspected sources, to deliver your data, including link resolution, law enforcement could potentially join 2 user accounts together also.

Also who knows how twitter generates short links, they could potentially do so in a way that is personalized to you, thus making any link you copy paste from Twitter off of it (even if you don't click it inside of Twitter) susceptible to being used for de-anonymization.

If you don't want to worry about that I guess....

don't send links on Twitter a thing we mostly use to send links.

wheeeeee

The vast apparatus of ad tech and user tracking turns everything on the web that scales into nightmare fuel because that's the world we live in.

lol def not ever going to get verified now.

I've been thinking about it more, wondering if this is Twitter doing

1. a dumb thing with good intent or
2. a nefarious thing with good intent as a cover

and my main question is:

if all Twitter wanted was to make you read things... why log precise timestamps?

Twitter does not appear to have noted anywhere that they started the data collection to support this feature around a month ago. https://twitter.com/JaneLytv/status/1270802944594784259?s=19

WIRED's @sidneyfussell has more details! - https://www.wired.com/story/twitters-newest-trick-relies-tracking-your-clicks/

For some reason this thread has been popping lately, so I'm adding in Twitter's response more explicitly than relying on people to scroll down and see it: https://twitter.com/Damokieran/status/1271538936460881920?s=19

Worth noting that "should Twitter be collecting every link I click on and saving it in a database for unspecified reasons" is still an open question that should likely creep you out, but good on them for ponying up the data as part of the export process.

The answer to 'why' is almost certainly still ad targeting. Presumably they crawl clicked links for data to add to a user's targeting profile at the very least? Though... I feel like their targeting should be waaaaay better than it currently is, if that's the case.