Fleets: Bug means Twitter’s new ‘disappearing posts’ are not completely disappearing

A Twitter bug meant that fleets – the company’s Stories clone – could still be seen on the site after they should have expired.

Fleets, like Stories on Snapchat and Instagram, allow users to post images, videos, and text that then disappears after 24 hours.

However, a bug meant that fleets were not expiring after one day – and meant that anyone could download a user’s fleets without a notification telling the uploader that their fleet had been read.

This is achieved by using an app that interacts with Twitter’s API (application programming interface), which is software that third-party programmers can use to allow their applications to communicate with Twitter, Techcrunch reports.

Using the API to scrape fleets from public accounts, a user could potentially receive a list of fleets from Twitter’s server. Each fleet would have its own URL that would direct to the fleet, and after 24 hours that URL would still reportedly be active.

“We’re aware of a bug accessible through a technical workaround where some Fleets media URLs may be accessible after 24 hours”, Twitter said in a statement.

“We are working on a fix that should be rolled out shortly.”

On Twitter, an official account from the company elaborated on its statement, and said it was updating its systems to “require an authenticated session before requesting Fleets metadata” so that fleets could not be seen without logging into Twitter.

“We heard concerns that people can see Fleets without showing up in the “Seen by” list. Our goal is to show a list of people who've seen your Fleet, but we don’t guarantee completeness for technical and experience reasons. For example, we cap the list when it gets long”, Twitter said.

“The edge cases that can result in a mismatch between the ‘Seen by’ list and the actual people who saw your Fleet are uncommon, but we realize that this may not have aligned with expectations. We’re taking this feedback seriously and considering how we can improve.”

While fleets are only available on the Twitter app for 24 hours, Twitter keeps the fleet on its server for at least 30 days, dependent on whether the fleet violates the company’s codes of conduct and requires moderation or enforcement.

This is not the only issue regarding fleets Twitter has had to deal with. The company has had to stop its rollout of the feature after one day because it was crashing the main app.

“We’re slowing down the rollout of Fleets to fix some performance and stability problems," the social media company said in a statement.

“If you don’t have the feature yet, you may not get it for a few more days. We love that so many people are using Fleets and want to ensure we’re providing the best experience for everyone.”

Fleets was introduced with a notable lack of security features. Users are not informed when someone screenshots a fleet, as they are when someone takes similar action on other apps, and users are able to tag accounts that have blocked them without notifying the user. This was despite the feature being tested in Brazil since March 2020.

Twitter declined to comment on the record when asked about its testing methods by The Independent.

The company introduced fleets - a take on the term fleeting moments – to help users participate on the platform in a "lower pressure way" without the need to worry about retweets and likes.

"We've learned that some people feel more comfortable joining conversations on Twitter with this ephemeral format, so what they're saying lives just for a moment in time," said Twitter's Joshua Harris, director of design, and Sam Haveson, product manager, in a blog post.