Deleted Tweets Come Back to Haunt Twitter Users
Many users assume that deleting content from their computer or the internet will remove it forever. Unfortunately, this is not the case online. Once you post something, it is there forever, and removing it won’t necessarily delete the content entirely. Unfortunately, for many Twitter users, this fact has become all too apparent, as they have found their deleted tweets have reappeared.
In 2022, a backup brought back 34k deleted tweets, causing discomfort among many users. Such issues are common across internet services, and the best approach is to wait until the company fixes the problem. In this case, the problem appears to have arisen from Twitter’s backup servers, which should have been updated without issue.
Twitter Works to Address the Problem
According to developer, Richard Morrell, around 38k tweets were deleted, and then another tool Redact was used to delete likes, media and retweets. As a result, everything was wiped clean. However, recently, after the backup servers were moved, many of these tweets began to reappear on users’ feeds.
The issue is not specific to Morrell, with as many as 400 affected users in total. Fortunately, Twitter has been quick to address the problem and is currently working to find a fix. Although restoring deleted content is a concern, Twitter is a popular and widely-used platform. It’s a reminder to be cautious about what users post, as they cannot remove it entirely from the internet.
