‘Fleets’ is Twitter’s most recent launch that allows users to post ephemeral content. In the form of short stories, media files overlayed with text, this ephemeral content can be posted by any Twitter user for their followers, and it is meant to remain visible for a period of 24 hours. However, due to a bug, some users found out that they were able to see their Fleets even after 24 hours.
Another problem that was noticed was that even if the Fleet was removed from Twitter after 24 hours, its URL remained available in the back-end server. Twitter explained about this problem that the developers could save the URL of a Fleet during the 24 hours window when it was active and had not expired. Now, this URL should ideally also expire from the back-end queue when the Fleet expires, but due to a queue backlog, URLs of Fleets were still accessible even after the expiration period. However, Twitter has now taken care of this queue backlog issue.
Twitter also thinks that due to immediate and heavy usage of the Fleets feature, some other glitches and minor errors also occurred that the users reported and that Twitter has now resolved.
One such issue that some people reported was that users who were not logged in to the app were able to view Fleets. Whereas Fleets are only viewable for logged in users unless a person has not applied privacy settings and has made Fleets public. Twitter explained also that it all happens because of an action called ‘scraping’ that developers do to make the Fleets’ metadata return through API calls. Now, this is not exactly a security concern for public Fleets. However, Twitter has now tried to make its system developers use an authenticated route while making requests for Fleets metadata. This should suffice to take care of this whole issue.
Another problem that users faced was that some of them were not able to view the list of people who have seen their Fleets. Twitter says that although, it is the company’s goal to provide a ‘seen by whom’ list to the users for their Fleets, sometimes, the list may get long and that may cause some alignment issues. However, Twitter said that they have also taken this complaint very seriously and are looking into ways to fix it as soon as possible so that the ‘Seen by’ list for Fleets becomes 100% accurate.
Anyway, it is just the beginning, so let us cut some slack for Twitter and give it a chance to make Fleets better for usage.
Read next: Twitter tests several new updates including an ‘Ouch’ reaction to tweets, an Auto blocking option, and let the users choose when they want to upload high-quality images
Another problem that was noticed was that even if the Fleet was removed from Twitter after 24 hours, its URL remained available in the back-end server. Twitter explained about this problem that the developers could save the URL of a Fleet during the 24 hours window when it was active and had not expired. Now, this URL should ideally also expire from the back-end queue when the Fleet expires, but due to a queue backlog, URLs of Fleets were still accessible even after the expiration period. However, Twitter has now taken care of this queue backlog issue.
Twitter also thinks that due to immediate and heavy usage of the Fleets feature, some other glitches and minor errors also occurred that the users reported and that Twitter has now resolved.
One such issue that some people reported was that users who were not logged in to the app were able to view Fleets. Whereas Fleets are only viewable for logged in users unless a person has not applied privacy settings and has made Fleets public. Twitter explained also that it all happens because of an action called ‘scraping’ that developers do to make the Fleets’ metadata return through API calls. Now, this is not exactly a security concern for public Fleets. However, Twitter has now tried to make its system developers use an authenticated route while making requests for Fleets metadata. This should suffice to take care of this whole issue.
Another problem that users faced was that some of them were not able to view the list of people who have seen their Fleets. Twitter says that although, it is the company’s goal to provide a ‘seen by whom’ list to the users for their Fleets, sometimes, the list may get long and that may cause some alignment issues. However, Twitter said that they have also taken this complaint very seriously and are looking into ways to fix it as soon as possible so that the ‘Seen by’ list for Fleets becomes 100% accurate.
Anyway, it is just the beginning, so let us cut some slack for Twitter and give it a chance to make Fleets better for usage.
Read next: Twitter tests several new updates including an ‘Ouch’ reaction to tweets, an Auto blocking option, and let the users choose when they want to upload high-quality images
