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Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

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Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#61

Post by l72 »

delecti wrote: post #55
jevoten wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account. If you’re trying to scroll deep into conversations or someone’s Tweets, it’s reasonable to expect that you’d need to become a user of the website. Oh of course. But then it should have been that way from the start . Instead they were user-friendly at first, and only once they'd grown eno…

Why would you not want an account on a website you rely on? It's one thing to complain that your occasional visits to twitter are more inconvenient now. But if you would go so far as to say that people rely on them, then it seems like a silly hill to die on for those people to resist creating an account.

Because I don't want to give a phone number to facebook or twitter just to have an account to read some content.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#62

Post by dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp »

beardedetim wrote: post #6

I see this as a feature and not a bug now that I no longer have an account on Twitter. If I absolutely want to read a tweet, I can. But the barrier to entry is a _good_ thing to me.

Twitter also requires you to a have a cell phone to sign up for an account. I have a work cell and a land line, neither of which can be used for creating a personal twitter account. This barrier to entry is good for me too.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#63

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jevoten wrote: post #29
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> Unfortunately twitter is going the direction of quora, pinterest, facebook, and medium Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. > Now you can perhaps read ten tweets or replies to a linked tweet without an account before the same thing occurs Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account.…

> Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account. If you’re trying to scroll deep into conversations or someone’s Tweets, it’s reasonable to expect that you’d need to become a user of the website. Oh of course. But then it should have been that way from the start . Instead they were user-friendly at first, and only once they'd grown eno…

> Instead they were user-friendly at first,

Twitter’s experience for users today is the same as it was at the start.

The word “user” is key, though. The experience has only changed for people who aren’t yet users (with logged in user accounts) of Twitter.

> A bait and switch, tricking people into relying on them,

This doesn’t really make sense. If you rely on Twitter, you make an account. You can’t really rely on Twitter or even be a user without having an account.

I don’t really expect community platforms to cater to non-users of the community.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#64

Post by PenguinCoder »

codegeek wrote: post #45
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> Unfortunately twitter is going the direction of quora, pinterest, facebook, and medium Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. > Now you can perhaps read ten tweets or replies to a linked tweet without an account before the same thing occurs Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account.…

And let's not forget the idiotic "This site works better in App" crap that we get on our phones when browsing sites like Linkedin or reddit. No, I don't want to install yet another shitty app. Just let me browse the "net' on my phone directly.

This pisses me off. I don't need or want a specific APP for your website. I ALREADY HAVE an app that views websites. It's called damn web browser, and it's my choice of which one I use or install (currently). I don't want your shit designed, spyware filled app.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#65

Post by monkeybutton »

eCa wrote: post #36
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> Unfortunately twitter is going the direction of quora, pinterest, facebook, and medium Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. > Now you can perhaps read ten tweets or replies to a linked tweet without an account before the same thing occurs Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account.…

> If you’re trying to scroll deep into conversations or someone’s Tweets, it’s reasonable to expect that you’d need to become a user of the website. This change happened during last summer. Funilly enough it was just ad I considered getting an account to share a bike trip live, but: 1. I didn’t want my new account to help their A/B-testing. 2. I didn’t want family and friends to have to sign up to follow my trip. End…

>2. I didn’t want family and friends to have to sign up to follow my trip.

That's exactly what they want though. Their real user growth has slowed down and they're trying to juke the numbers by coercing the hold outs to sign up.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#66

Post by bambax »

I recently quit Twitter (almost[0]) and have been much happier ever since.

It seems (to me) that the way Twitter increases "engagement" is to show you the tweets that will upset you the most, so that you can either reply with an angry thing of your own, or furiously "like" other angry responses.

I tried to unfollow a lot of people who tend to post about controversial topics but Twitter keeps showing me their tweets or similar ones from other people. It also insists on showing me things that are popular but that don't concern me (such as sports).

There doesn't seem to be a way to see only the tweets of the people you follow. And even if there was... random thoughts and bits from people I don't know are seldom interesting, and very unnecessary.

At some point I thought I was addicted to Twitter; but it turned out it's the easiest addiction to get rid of.

[0] "Almost": I didn't delete the account: I just logged out and stopped using Twitter completely.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#67

Post by pbhjpbhj »

axiosgunnar wrote: post #22
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> Unfortunately twitter is going the direction of quora, pinterest, facebook, and medium Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. > Now you can perhaps read ten tweets or replies to a linked tweet without an account before the same thing occurs Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account.…

> Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account Sure, but then it should be banned from use by politicians for public announcements made in official fashion. Would there be anyone left on Twitter?

It's an abomination that is - if it's a government announcement put it on gov.tld/announcements. For sure, mirror that content anywhere you want to.

If it's a party announcement put it first on your party's page.

Mind you, this whole thing of presidents/premieres/PMs making announcements as if they are making up the policies ... if they are then everyone is screwed (and their advisors and party should stop that immediately), if they're doing it right and the policy has gone through party committees, government departments, experts, then the head of that group should be announcing it. Why the heck do we need everything filtered through some ignorant dickhead; whither democracy.

The cult of celebrity is ruin for humanity. Urgh.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#68

Post by PragmaticPulp »

l72 wrote: post #61
delecti wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not want an account on a website you rely on? It's one thing to complain that your occasional visits to twitter are more inconvenient now. But if you would go so far as to say that people rely on them, then it seems like a silly hill to die on for those people to resist creating an account.

Because I don't want to give a phone number to facebook or twitter just to have an account to read some content.

It slows down (but doesn’t completely prevent) the creation of spam and grief accounts. It’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#69

Post by PenguinCoder »

commoner wrote: post #8
mattrighetti wrote: post #4

I've noticed this too, but that's also the reason why I use Nitter [0]. I'm also a bit lazy so I've also setup a redirector plugin to automatically redirect every twitter link to Nitter, been happy since then. [0] https://nitter.nl

Nitter is great. The Privacy Redirect extension can automatically redirect your Twitter page loads to Nitter: https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect If you are on Android, you can also use the free and open source Fritter client to view tweets and browse Twitter without an account: https://fritter.cc

Thanks for linking to that extension.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#70

Post by TomGullen »

AutumnCurtain wrote: post #34
digitalsushi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a cell phone, I can type "best driveway shovel" on my phone, and it will take me to google. Google will have an overlay that tells me searching for the best driveway shovels is better in an app. I close that overlay. The first hit is twitter. The second is reddit. I skip twitter. I get an overlay telling me to install a reddit app, or continue in the website. I click continue in website. There is an overlay tellin…

Old.reddit.com is the only remotely usable form of the website and seems to have none of the obnoxious popups.

The normal Reddit is completely usable - this is complete hyperbole
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