The Huffington Post: "What are you thinking, oh, what are you thinking?"

[foresthouse]

D'you ever have one of those mornings where you just wake up and go, "I've had a spectacular idea! It came to me in a dream, festooned with pomegranates and tigers and needles and a naked woman!" (Thank you, Dali.) "I shall implement this immediately without thinking about it further!"

...Yeah, I think that's pretty much what some people over at

Comments

[cutebutpsycho99]

You know, I agree with every word you said. But I'm also not surprised that HuffPo tried this. I have a very long rant against them and what they stand for and how they treat their freelancers (in a nutshell -- PAGEVIEWS DOES NOT EQUAL GETTING PAID). I get the sense that they overrreached in this case and thought they could do it and get away with it.

I know it's in the TOS with Twitter, but this smells like terrible customer service if they just did this without thinking it through. I have a locked feed. I would like to keep that private. HuffPo doesn't need my thoughts. If they did, THEY COULD PAY ME FOR THEM.

I hope this makes people actually take a hard look at how news and creative content is produced. Some of us would eventually like to make a living from this and when the big players basically take stuff and don't pay people, it makes me stabby.

[foresthouse]

Oh, this has totally made me dislike HuffPo. I didn't really respect them much before, but now I just plain dislike them. Not just for trying this, but for then posting their little confusing blurb, with no real explanation, and stating that they are still going ahead with their project. LAME.

Some of us would eventually like to make a living from this

Yep. And there are people who can/could do it, now or later, either through publishing the actual tweets or through building their readership on Twitter which would then spill over into people reading them in other media. It's very dicey for HuffPo to be trying to steal content like this.

[foresthouse]

Oh, and you raise a good point re: locked threads that I hadn't even thought of. Were locked posts re-posted as well? I don't know, but if so, that's even more invasive.

[cutebutpsycho99]

Some people reported their locked threads were posted. When I checked mine, I didn't see anything, but that was mid-way through the mess.

[queenanthai]

My question is, what's Twitter HQ's response to all of this?

[foresthouse]

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, how did HuffPo get such broad access to the feeds? Possibly by collaborating with Twitter? In which case, what was TWITTER thinking, too?

[maudelynn]

I signed up for thoughts to be on Twitter, which does not have ads or a political stance, I did not sign up for my thoughts to be on HPost. Full stop. Bottom line.

[foresthouse]

RIGHT ON. I know, it's just wrong on so many levels for them to do this without first getting permission from the posters. With permission? Fine. Without? NOT COOL.

(Kick-ass Iron Man - so appropriate!)

[kahlan_amnell]

I agree that what Huffington Post did does not seem right.

Things like this are why anything I post online that has value to me is locked.

[kittenscurious]

Thanks for pointing me toward thaumatrope! I find it to be unbearably cool.

[foresthouse]

Yeah, I think it's nifty! :)