La Russa and Kanye West Fight for Twitter Privacy
Tony La Russa Lawsuit
Last month Mr. La Russa filed a lawsuit against Twitter because someone was using a false account, and pretending to be him. You would think his initial reaction would be to sue the alleged impersonator, but that was not the case. Instead, he looked to Twitter for damages, but in reality they did just about all they could do, shutting down the account immediately after the person was identified as a fake. He even claimed a few days later that Twitter had settled with him by giving money to his favorite charity, which turned out to be false. He should be careful before Twitter sues him for slander!
Kanye West Rant
Kanye found himself in the same boat, learning that someone had created an account and was pretending to be him. In fact, this person had even amassed close to an amazing 1,000,000 followers. However, instead of suing Twitter, he decided to vent via his personal blog. He explained it in a caps lock filled 10 sentence rant scorning Twitter, alleging the head executives knew he didn’t have an account and did nothing.
As for the future of Twitter privacy, this was a major victory. If La Russa had won, it would have opended the floodgates for other celebrities, such as Kayne, to sue as well. But most importantly, the La Russa lawsuit scare spawned verified accounts to protect users and celebrities in the future. Twitter must continue to work on improving authenticity, while celebrities need to either start an account or learn to relax, because this type of behavior is common on social networking websites, and will likely happen again. If executed properly, celebrities can use Twitter to reach droves of fans in a more effective, personal manner. Just ask Ashton Kutcher, who has the largest following on the network.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:07 am
La Russa and Kanye West Fight for Twitter Privacy @@Tweet_Newz http://bit.ly/SbjAH #News (via @tweet_newz)
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