Frequently Asked Questions
Why are you doing this?
TweetForger is an artistic exploration into people's reactions and responses to information on the Internet. We are interested in how information is perceived, disseminated, and validated online. In the digital age, people often immediately accept as true information that they see online, be it an article about a scientific subject in an encyclopedia or a personal blog post about a business practice. The truly democratic nature of the Internet is such that anyone can immediately publish to the Web anything that he or she wants for the entire world to see, with absolutely NO fact checking or corroboration of ANY kind, and chances are that people who read it will accept it as true.
Our artistic intent is to cause people to realize and think about just how subconsciously willing they are to suspend belief. If I get a tweet from a celebrity addressed to me, referring to something that only my friends know, do I immediately realize that it's a joke, or do I even for a minute actually think that this celebrity is actually tweeting me? If I do, does that say something about me or does it say something about the world in which we all live? We are using Twitter "tweets" as an example of the kind of Internet communication that people tend to accept as fact, but the cultural phenomenon on which we are commenting could just as easily happen with Wikipedia, Facebook, or any other site on which people rely for information.
What is this?
TweetForger is what its name suggests: an application that you can use to create and send out a communication that looks like, but in fact is not, a Twitter® "tweet" from someone else.
Will this appear in anyone's Twitter® stream?
No. The only way a forged tweet can appear in a Twitter® stream is if you decide to share the unique URL via your own screen name.
What happens to a forged tweet I create?
When you forge a tweet, you are creating a page with a unique URL on the TweetForger server. You are NOT entering anything into anyone's Twitter stream, even your own. You can share your unique TweetForger URL with friends, or choose to do nothing with it. Even if you choose to do nothing, the page will still exist on the TweetForger server and could potentially be viewed by other people. Forged tweets that are marked as inappropriate by viewers will be removed and will no longer be viewable by anyone.
Could I get in trouble for doing this?
As with any public forum, there are things that you can get in trouble for saying – or pretending to have other people say. So don't say them. Also, some people may not take kindly to having their names forged no matter what you say. We don't preview any forged tweets before they are published, so you and you alone are responsible for what you write on TweetForger. TweetForger is not intended for malicious use. For more information about what you can and can’t say, and what it means to be "solely responsible" for your forged tweets, please see our Terms of Use.
What if I don't want to be forged?
You can add your name to our whitelist here. Once you do, users will no longer be able to forge your tweets or see any tweets by your name that have been forged in the past.
Is TweetForger affiliated with Twitter®?
No. TweetForger is not associated in any way with Twitter® and it is not endorsed by Twitter, Inc., the awesome company that owns and provides Twitter®.
How do you make money from the site?
We don't. See the first question on this list.