14 DAY TRIAL // There is a class of people that just do not care about originality and would stoop so low as to steal tweets and pass them as their own. In case you suspect someone is doing this with your precious 140-character thoughts, David Longenecker has created a Python script that can help you uncover those diabolical thieves.
The project is called TweetThief, and is available on GitHub, but beware, some programming knowledge is needed since you'll have to run it from the Python CLI to work.
Additionally, Twitter API credentials are also needed, along with basic knowledge of how API works and what limitations it might have.
To use TweetThief, just run something like this from your command line. All options in square Brackets are optional, and only a Twitter username is needed to work. The username does not have to be your own, and you can also check if someone else's tweets have been stolen as well.
The TweetThief search is very strict, but using the [-l] (--loose-match) option, you can leave some room for error and different content in the search.
Why are people stealing tweets?
The question of why people are doing this is quite easy to answer. In most cases, it's not people, but automated bots. These are other scripts set up by "ingenious" entrepreneurs, which mimic profile activity, gather up a following, and eventually sell Twitter followers on the black market.
In most cases, the results uncovered by TweetThief should be bots, but you never know when you'll find an actual person scraping your Twitter timeline and passing it as their own.
