Tweets "not private" shock!

The Press Complaints Commission has ruled that Tweets are not private publications and can be used by newspapers. Although the Guardian are trying a bit to make this look like a big deal, it isn't. The woman who brought the case claimed that she had a "reasonable expectation" that her tweets would only be read by her followers, but sadly (for her) this isn't how social media works, especially Twitter. For a start, a public Twitter account has no control over who follows, so the distinction between followers and people who look at your stream is almost meaningless - being a follower simply automates the process, and the Tweeter has to actively monitor and kick off anyone she or he doesn't want following them. As the PCC points out, retweeting is a feature of Twitter, and a public tweeter has no control over who retweets their tweets.The PCC are correct on this one.

If you want a tweet to be private, make your twitter account private. Although it doesn't say so explicitly, the PCC ruling does sort of imply that it only applies to public twitter accounts so presumably would not apply to private twitter accounts. We'll only know for sure when a newspaper publishes something that appeared on a private account, but this still raises some issues.

1) If a journalist is an approved follower on a private twitter account, can they re-publish a tweet? If so, there are a couple of people I need to kick off my twitter account, which would be a shame.

2) If somebody retweets, or quotes a tweet from a private account, does that make it public? In this case, the original tweeter has a stronger case for saying that they had taken steps to keep their tweets private.

I would hope that the PCC would recognise that a private Twitter account is intended to stay that way, but we won't know until somebody brings a case. I'm slightly disappointed that neither the Guardian write up nor the PCC rulings explicitly says that Twitter can easily be made private, although its an all-or-nothing setting. 

I'm also interested in this because the Methodist Church social media guidelines were based in part on the Civil Service guidelines.

The bottom line: don't complain about your job online unless you have taken reasonable steps to keep it private. Otherwise your boss - and even the Daily Mail - will find out eventually.