The privacy tradeoff is not Twitter's to make. The content was copied - while still available - and placed on another website. Twitter's responsibility is to serve or not serve content. If it cannot serve the content requested, for instance because that content was deleted, then they should not continue to alter the non-Twitter webpage.
Of course, the real problem is that the site administrator is allowing Twitter to run arbitrary code on their website. I have much to say on that topic, alas, it is the choir reading HN and they don't need me to preach.
Say if someone envokes a right to be forgotten on Twitter and it complies by deleting all tweets by said person (I’m imagining this is how it works) is it twitters responsibility or the website that embedded twitter’s tweet to ensure that it’s deleted? In my mind it’s Twitter since it comes from them no ?
Consider it from the context of a "right to be forgotten" though. Setting aside whether that should be a legal right, there's certainly some kind of argument that if the right-to-be-forgotten is at some level a moral good, then technologies that assist in enforcing that right have at least some level of moral justification in doing so. Does that override the rights of a website operator to expect that their tools will not erase their content? Perhaps, perhaps not - but it is indeed a tradeoff.
Even if the right to be forgotten is a moral good, it is not (and should not be) an absolute right trumping other rights such as freedom of expression (also a moral good). Twitter can decide to stop hosting the content you published on there, either at your request or at their discretion (e.g. banning your account), but forcefully removing content from another operator's website is overreaching, it is simply not their call to make.
I think we need to look at this more like grading on a curve.
If I were still actively using Twitter and posting something that I later delete - OK. I can see the argument from a 'right to be forgotten' point of view. If the president of the US does so to beautify the public record, not so much.
In Germany we have the concept of a person of public interest. People who are publicly visible due to their position in politics, media, entertainment or because they try to have their face seen by any camera lens available, need to "endure" more public/media scrutiny than Jane Doe from next door.
The problem is, that this can only be decided (in a conflict) by due process in a court of law.
So Twitter deciding to use privacy as an argument to enable a few reported on whales to beautify their record (because let's be fair, who embedded a tweet from Jane Doe?) seems at least questionable.
> So Twitter deciding to use privacy as an argument to enable a few reported on whales to beautify their record (because let's be fair, who embedded a tweet from Jane Doe?) seems at least questionable.
It's not just a few whales. Imagine you're being arrested, someone films that arrest while the cops are speaking your PII (name, address) into their radios, and the video of the arrest ends up on Twitter.
Under "right to be forgotten", you could (and can) demand removal of that video - but your data would still be floating around the net.
Is it still just your website if you rely on Twitter integration to style certain portions of it and populate it with content (or at very least add metadata of said content)? Seems more of a collaborative effort.
