Twitter is Deleting Stolen Jokes for Copyright Reasons

Twitter is beset by the all-too-common joke thief. You tweet a precious 140-character joke, labored over for minutes, then you find it posted elsewhere on Twitter. It’s often a bot that copies the witticism and tweets it to its followers without attribution.

Now, it appears Twitter has had enough.

Some tweets have been deleted on copyright grounds in recent weeks for joke-stealing, the Verge reports. Five separate tweets at least have been deleted by Twitter for copying a joke by a Los Angeles freelance writer, Olga Lexell, who tweeted this joke: “Saw someone spill their high end juice cleanse all over the sidewalk and now i know god is on my side”.

When other accounts tweeted the same joke, Lexell complained to Twitter, which then deleted the copy-tweets and replaced it with the text “This Tweet has been withheld in response to a report from the copyright holder.”

[The Verge]