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Delete Tweets! No Halloween Haunts

Updated: Feb 22, 2023

Should I be concerned and delete tweets from my Twitter Feed?  

We suggest you delete tweets that are older than 12 months. There are constant headlines in the news about old Tweets and old twitter feeds coming back to haunt people. It happened again, just this June with protests and upset in Minneapolis. Amid the unrest, a major story broke about Twitter Feeds. An old Twitter feed haunts someone in Minneapolis.  In June, Lianne Wadi has lost her position with her family run business and her father’s business has lost its lease because of racist, xenophobic, hateful tweets she sent before she was even employed as a catering manager. Read the full story here:  https://twincities.eater.com/2020/6/5/21280870/holy-land-deli-daughter-racist-tweets-boycott-minneapolis

Delete Tweets

Should she have deleted tweets before she was the centerpiece of a media frenzy?

Absolutely! People grow, change, and evolve, and she said time and time again that she is so deeply sorry for having ever said those mean and hateful things, but they are a part of her history. A history she could not take time to delete. It is just wise to go back and erase some things that you have grown away from.  Removing tweets from your Twitter history is extremely easy.  It is easy to avoid an old twitter feed haunt; things you said in the past can be searched and found and used against you.

Another Haunt:

The WHO also had their tweet come back in full force in March.  Look at this story about another old twitter feed haunt for the WHO.  https://nypost.com/2020/03/20/who-haunted-by-old-tweet-saying-china-found-no-human-transmission-of-coronavirus/  The WHO tweets in January, and by March, the old tweet was being used against them.  Someone at the WHO whose job is to delete tweets failed to do their job.  Maybe coronavirus is an exception; maybe it happened too quickly.  It is hard to say that within two months old tweets should have been deleted, especially by an organization as large and important as the WHO.  For people though, you want to delete tweets every 12 months or less. 

Removing Tweets From Your Twitter History is Especially Important

You may be searching for a job and it calls for a background check. The company can also look at your social media history. All of it.  If you have taken the time to clear some of your history, there is less to look through, and less to judge. You do not want your 15 minutes of fame to be negative.  Sometimes things taken out of context can appear terribly negative.  You do not even want to relive the time period when some troll on Twitter was ranting and you lost your mind.  Our advice:  just go back and delete it all.  Delete your old twitter feed.  It’s easy.

It is best to delete tweets from your Twitter history today, than to be misunderstood and to have to answer for something that happened years ago.  It is easy to delete your entire Twitter history.  A simple search will reveal all.

Search History Matters for You

It happens all the time, you set your phone down, and someone picks it up and starts looking at your apps, your history, and your searches.  You do not want anyone to know what you have been searching for, reading, or basically invading your privacy.  Hold your social media footprint close.  Delete tweet history and delete your search history. 

Sometimes it is important to clear your search history.  You can also clear your search history very easily as demonstrated here:  https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-clear-twitter-search-history

This can be especially troublesome because you do not want people to know what you have searched for.  Sometimes we end up searching for something that we did not even know was controversial.

Is it Ever Good to Have Twitter History?

Is it ever good for you to have a history on Twitter?  No.  History is not often good for individuals, but ethnographers are using chunked data to look at times and situations.  If your personal data and Twitter history are lost in that search, consider your job well done.  You don’t want to be part of a movement that can come back to haunt you.  An old Twitter feed haunt is avoided when you avoid having history on Twitter.

In Conclusion

There are many points of view on what to do with your social media footprint.  We suggest every so often (12 months) going back in and deleting your Tweet history to avoid an old twitter feed haunt.  There are many times that Twitter Feeds and old Tweets can come back to haunt a person and wreak havoc in their current situations.  It is best to just avoid those possibilities and delete your history.  It is easy, and you may want to do it often, depending on how frequently you find yourself on Twitter. 

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