Twitter has started deleting tweets that steal other people's jokes

Twitter has started taking down tweets that copy the same joke that somebody else has already shared, The Verge reports.

Olga Lexell, a freelance writer from Los Angeles, spotted that one of her Twitter jokes was being reposted by other accounts without her permission. They didn't retweet her, instead they just copied and pasted her joke. Lexell decided to ask Twitter to take down the tweets, as they were her intellectual property.

Sure enough, Twitter responded by deleting the jokes. 

It's unclear whether Twitter would have deleted the joke tweets if they weren't ripping off a writer who makes a living through the site. But if you want to ask Twitter to take down a tweet that rips off one of your jokes, here's the link to do so.

Here, via The Verge, is what Lexell said about her decision to ask Twitter to take down the tweets:

I simply explained to Twitter that as a freelance writer I make my living writing jokes (and I use some of my tweets to test out jokes in my other writing). I then explained that as such, the jokes are my intellectual property, and that the users in question did not have my permission to repost them without giving me credit.

If the social network does launch a crackdown on copied tweets then that could be bad news for the hundreds of accounts that repost tweets found on other accounts.