James of O’Keefe of Project Veritas has released yet another video featuring more high-level Twitter engineers openly admitting, and almost bragging, about their ability to store and subsequently sell all their user’s most private data.
Not only has Project Veritas revealed that Twitter stores all direct messages, sometimes referred to as private messages, on their servers and can then use that data against their own users. In fact, Direct Messaging Engineer Panay Singh brags about how Twitter has all of their user’s intimate pictures, especially those including nudity.
“Everything you send is stored on my server. You can’t [delete it], it’s already on my server now,” declared Direct Messaging Engineer Panay Singh. “So all your sex messages and your, like, d-ck pics are on my server now. All your illegitimate wives, and, like, all the girls you’ve been f-cking around with, they are on my server now.”
Based on Singh’s comments, I can only imagine the massive server room that Twitter must have dedicated completely to storing user’s d-ck pics and nude images. A large portion of their bandwidth and budget must be dedicated to storing these pictures, considering the massive amount that are likely sent on a daily basis.
Not only does Twitter stores your most personal of pictures, but their employee suggests that they could use them to blackmail you, such as revealing to your wife during a divorce that you have been cheating on her, Which your wife could then use against you during court proceedings.
“I’m going to send it to your wife, she’s gonna use it in your divorce,” he joked. “So what happens is, like, when you write stuff or when you post pictures online, they never go away. Like, they’re always on there… Even after you send them, people are, like, analyzing them, to see what you’re interested in, to see what you’re talking about, and they sell that data… Everything. Anything you post online.”
The most shocking statement from Panay Singh isn’t that Twitter collects your private data and stores it forever, but rather that Twitter sells your data to marketing companies for a hefty profit. If you thought Twitter only made their money off selling advertising space on their platform, it appears that’s not the case. In fact, that’s not even how they make the majority of their money, according to Twitter Software Engineer Mihai Florea.
Mihai Florea, a software engineer at the company, corroborated Singh’s claims.
“That’s how we make most of our money,” he explained. “You’re basically paying for the right to use our website with your data basically, and it’s the same on every free website.”
In many of the comments regarding these undercover Twitter videos, readers have expressed their shock not that this sort of unhanded spying is taking place, but rather that Twitter users did not expect it in the first place. However, the average Internet and social media user, especially those just starting out using these platforms, would have no reason to believe that their private pictures or messages are being stored and sold by Twitter. Only those users who have been intimately following non-mainstream news or are already involved in the tech industry would has reason to suspect their personal data is being abused by Twitter, along with other major social media platforms.
Collecting data on consumers in America for the purposes of marketing targeted advertisements towards them is nothing new, as massive data collection companies have long sought more efficient ways of collecting intimate information on Americans. What better way to formulate an accurate picture of an American consumer than to use the very information and messages they type to each other every day? Although the vast majority of Twitter users are unlikely to have thought their data was being abused in such a way, Twitter appears to have profited from selling this data for quite some time.
In fact, according to the Project Veritas videos, a software engineer at Twitter, Mihai Florea, openly admits that Twitter makes the majority of their money off selling their user’s intimate data.
At least Project Veritas managed to find one former Twitter engineer, Conrado Miranda, who admits that Twitter’s access and abuse of your private data is “creepy”.
Former engineer Conrado Miranda also revealed to Project Veritas’ secret cameras that the company “already has a lot of information about you,” even before you join Twitter, adding “there is no way” to protect users if the information falls into the wrong hands.
Senior Network Security Engineer Clay Haynes also told O’Keefe that he had personal access to user DMs, expressing, “It is creepy Big Brother.”
“I mean it’s like a level… I don’t want to say it freaks me out, but it disturbs me,” he continued.
No, Conrado, there is a way to protect your users and prevent their personal information from falling in to the wrong hands, as perhaps Twitter could stop storing that data on their servers forever and just maybe stop SELLING it to marketing firms. Perhaps that would go a long way towards protecting your user’s privacy.
However, according to other Twitter employees, the price of someone utilizing their platform is sacrificing any expectation of privacy.
In other words, if you are a regular Twitter user and don’t want your personal data to be sold to marketing firms or have your intimate pictures perhaps used against you in the future, then it’s best to keep such items to yourself and off of the Internet.