Twitter addresses early issues with fleets, including people viewing fleets without appearing on the ‘viewed’ list



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Twitter has addressed some early concerns with its new tool similar to ‘Fleet Stories’, after some users expressed concerns about accessibility and transparency in the Fleet use process.

As we reported last week, a day after announcing the full release of Fleets, Twitter slowed down the rollout due to back-end server issues caused by the influx of Fleets usage. That surge in demand also appears to have caused a few other bugs that were noticed by users, although Twitter says the issues are now almost completely resolved, and some other reported bugs aren’t actually functional issues.

First, Twitter says that some users reported being able to view fleets beyond their 24-hour expiration period. This was a system problem, as explained Twitter:

“Fleets cannot be viewed in Twitter apps after 24 hours, however our backend system has a queue that removes media from Fleets after 24 hours. This system was delayed on Friday morning (Standard Time Pacific) due to scaling issues. That meant developers were able to save a fleet URL for the 24 hours the Fleet was active. Due to our delay in queuing, that URL may still have been accessible after the Fleet has expired. The queue is now active and we have updated our systems to reduce the likelihood of this happening again. “

As such, this shouldn’t be a recurring problem, and you can expect the fleets to disappear after 24 hours from now.

Twitter also says that there were some reports of unregistered users being able to view Fleet, which shouldn’t be possible.

“To clarify, people using Twitter apps can only see Fleets when they log in. But developers may make API calls to return Fleets metadata through a common behavior called ‘scraping.’ it’s a security or privacy issue because fleets (of accounts without the ‘protected’ setting) are public. We update our systems today to require an authenticated session before requesting fleet metadata, to add more friction to using these APIs. “

So because the only fleets that could be displayed in this way must be posted publicly, this does not violate individual user privacy settings, so while it shouldn’t be possible, there are ways that fleets can be displayed to people. who are not logged in. in users.

And finally, Twitter says some people were found to be watching Fleets without appearing on the “seen by” list of creators.

“Our goal is to display a list of people who have viewed your Fleet, but we do not guarantee that it is complete for technical and experience reasons. For example, we limit the list when it is lengthened. Extreme cases that can result in a mismatch between the “Viewed by” list and the actual people who viewed your Fleet is rare, but we realize this may not be in line with expectations. We are taking this feedback seriously and considering how we can improve. “

Again, this is possible, but only in a theoretically limited number of cases. But again, that depends on where the Twitter cap comes into play and how many viewers you have. Basically, you cannot be 100% sure that your ‘Seen By’ list in your Fleet is 100% accurate, so you should not necessarily take it as an indication of who has viewed your Fleet. At least not at this stage.

These are important clarifications for those looking to analyze their fleet interactions and get a better indicator of what they are seeing. If you’re a brand looking to maximize its fleet strategy, these tips are worth keeping in mind and taking them into account in your data considerations.

We will keep you posted if Twitter changes its focus on these fronts.



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