Infuriating Twitter issue

  • Resolved Ate Up With Motor

    (@ate-up-with-motor)


    3 years, 5 months ago

    A little while ago, I belatedly noticed that all three of my sites had taken it upon themselves to automatically add my WordPress username as the Twitter handle in each user profile. It took me a bit to determine that Yoast SEO was responsible, but as soon as I disabled the plugin, the Twitter box on the profile page completely disappeared. Once I enable the plugin, it restores the Twitter box and refuses to let me leave it blank — if I delete the contents of that field, it’s automatically reset to my WordPress username.

    This is infuriating for four reasons:
    1) Only one of my websites has an associated Twitter account; the other two do not.
    2) The Twitter account for the site that has one is the domain name, NOT my admin username.
    3) I absolutely do not want my admin usernames to be exposed in this way. (I don’t use my domain name or the word “admin” for my administrative user IDs for a reason!)
    4) Yoast attempting to enforce a Twitter association — which in all three cases was wholly incorrect — is absolutely unacceptable.

    The only way I have determined to stop the incorrect association is to add a Twitter handle to the profile. I can’t do this on two of the three sites because they don’t have Twitter handles to use, and Yoast SEO refuses to let me leave those fields blank. For the site that DOES have an associated Twitter handle, Yoast SEO will let me add the correct handle to the user profile, but it still won’t let me leave it blank. In all cases, it does not give me the option to leave the field blank in the profile, which I would strongly prefer.

    So, my questions are:
    1) How can I prevent the plugin from adding spurious Twitter associations, short of entering an actual Twitter handle?
    2) When are you going to change this ridiculous and confusing feature, whose behavior stands a good chance of misrepresenting the social media profiles of people who actually have social media profiles, and suggests spurious associations for people who do not? (This is likely a violation of the Twitter Terms of Service, which seems like bad practice.)

    I am extremely annoyed. This is just not acceptable, and it might be the last straw with this increasingly bloated and frustrating plugin.

    • This topic was modified 3 years, 5 months ago by Ate Up With Motor. Reason: realized the behavior I thought I'd fixed was not
Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Plugin Support Michael Ti?a

    (@mikes41720)

    Hi @ate-up-with-motor

    We’re sorry to hear about this issue and we want to try and understand this further in order to help resolve it.

    Can you confirm you are using the latest version of WordPress 5.7.2 and Yoast SEO 16.5 on where this issue occurs?

    Just to clarify, the issue is, if we’re understanding it correctly, that the Yoast SEO plugin auto-populates the Twitter username (without @) in the contact info for the user profile, is this correct? And that even if you remove it, it goes back to populating the WordPress username and it is a required field?

    While we do know that the Yoast SEO plugin generates this field (https://snipboard.io/I2GSB8.jpg), it shouldn’t be auto-populating any fields that you don’t want to input. It also shouldn’t be a required field in order to save or update the changes in the profile.

    We tested this on a default site with WP 5.7.2, a default WP theme, and only Yoast SEO as the plugin enabled. By default, nothing was populated in the Twitter username field in the user profile. We were able to add a test value and save the changes, and it was retained. We then removed it and then saved the changes, and the field was also blank upon reloading, so we were unable to reproduce this issue.

    Often, we see problems occur in combination with another plugin or theme. The fastest way to rule out any conflict, is to deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme like Twenty Twenty.

    Please test this on your development or staging site, if you have one. If not, we recommend using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin. This plugin has a troubleshooting mode, which does not affect normal visitors to your site.

    If you’re unfamiliar with checking for conflicts, we’d like to point you to a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process: How to check for plugin conflicts

    Could you check if another plugin could be causing the issue on your website?

    Thread Starter Ate Up With Motor

    (@ate-up-with-motor)

    Can you confirm you are using the latest version of WordPress 5.7.2 and Yoast SEO 16.5 on where this issue occurs?

    I have WordPress 5.7.2. At the time I noticed this issue, I had Yoast SEO 16.4; I was only just offered the update since making my initial post.

    Just to clarify, the issue is, if we’re understanding it correctly, that the Yoast SEO plugin auto-populates the Twitter username (without @) in the contact info for the user profile, is this correct? And that even if you remove it, it goes back to populating the WordPress username and it is a required field?

    That is correct.

    I checked again just now, and the auto-populated field remained while running Yoast SEO 16.4. After installing the 16.5 update a few moments ago, the Twitter handle fields initially appeared to be blank.

    However, after doing some other maintenance chores, I checked again, and those fields were again auto-populating.

    Thread Starter Ate Up With Motor

    (@ate-up-with-motor)

    I switched to the Twenty Twenty-One default theme and deactivated every plugin except Yoast SEO 16.5. The problem persists in the way I initially described even in that state: The Contact Info section of the user profile treats Twitter username (without @) as a required field, and if no value is entered, it auto-populates with the WordPress username.

    Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    We are sorry that the issue persists after updating to Yoast SEO 16.5. Though we are still unable to replicate this, we recommend reporting this. We’re actively using the bug tracking on our GitHub repository. Please create a new issue for our developers at https://github.com/Yoast/wordpress-seo/issues/new. You will need an account to create a new issue.

    If this is your first bug report, please check out: https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-to-write-a-good-bug-report/. Don’t forget to include the URL to this conversation in your bug report.

    Thread Starter Ate Up With Motor

    (@ate-up-with-motor)

    I do not have (and do not wish to create) a GitHub account, so I will not be doing that, and I’m frustrated that you expect that I should to report this ongoing and annoying issue.

    Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    Hello,

    Could it be that your browser’s auto-complete for that site login could be causing this? Or perhaps, an auto-fill for a password manager? You can test this by temporarily disabling all browser extensions.

    Thanks

    Plugin Support devnihil

    (@devnihil)

    We are going ahead and marking this issue as resolved due to inactivity. If you require any further assistance please create a new issue.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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