Web service 'memory.lol' that can check the change history of Twitter user name

You can set a user name starting with '@' such as '@gigazine' and a display name such as 'GIGAZINE' on Twitter, and both names can be changed from the setting screen. For this reason, it is possible to change both the user name and display name and behave as a separate account, and there are also situations where an account that has repeatedly posted malicious posts behaves like another account and continues to harass. .. As a countermeasure against such user name changes, programmer Travis Brown has developed a user name change history search service ' memory.lol '.

GitHub --travisbrown/memory.lol: memory.lol
https://github.com/travisbrown/memory.lol

Two types of names, user name and display name, can be set for Twitter. For example, the user name of GIGAZINE's Twitter account is '@gigazine' and the display name is 'GIGAZINE'. However, you can change the username and display name at any time, and if you change both and delete the post, you can behave as a completely different account.

However, in reality, each Twitter account is assigned an immutable 'user ID'. The user ID can be confirmed by browsing the source code of the page or using the ID checker service ' idtwi '. For example, the user ID of GIGAZINE is '9334242', and you can access the account page of GIGAZINE by accessing ' https://twitter.com/intent/user?user_id=9334242 '.

memory.lol is a service that searches the user name change history from the 'user ID associated with the user name' using the Twitter data archive ' Twitter Stream Grab ' provided by the Internet Archive . If you use memory.lol, the history of the user name will be output in JSON format by accessing the URL in the format of 'https://memory.lol/tw/username'. Below is the user name history search result for the user ' @libsoftiktok ' that Mr. Brown gave as an example. You can see that it was active with a user name such as 'shaya_ray' or 'shaya69830552' before 'libsoftiktok'.
[code] {
'accounts': [
{
'id': 1326229737551912960,
'screen-names': {
'chayaraichik': null,
'cuomomustgo': null,
'houseplantpotus': null,
'shaya69830552': [
'2020-11-10'
],,
'shaya_ray': [
'2020-11-27',
'2020-12-17'
],,
'libsoftiktok': [
'2021-08-18',
'2022-06-16'
]
}
}
]
} [/ code]

Brown says using memory.lol can help researchers and journalists identify what to look for. In addition, in order to use memory.lol, it is necessary to prepare a GitHub account, set the account linkage setting on the login page of memory.lol, and obtain the approval of Mr. Brown.