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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

#71

Post by pbhjpbhj »

MereInterest wrote: post #51

It gets worse. If you make a twitter account, then sign out, it will refuse to show you anything until you either sign back in or clear your cookies. I made a quick account to test out the API, then found that I'd need to give them a phone number actually generate an API key. Suddenly, every publicly-visible URL started stating that I must be logged in to view the content.

Thank you, I was wondering why they never even show me a tweet but people report that Twitter does allow that. I have a couple of accounts used to duplicate content to other streams, must be cookies lying around.

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

#72

Post by spicybright »

guerrilla wrote: post #46
AutumnCurtain wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It gives a cookie popup on mobile telling you to go to the new website to accept the cookie popup. Insanity.

Not to justify how completely terrible it is, but you can click the accept once and never see it again.

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

#74

Post by ostenning »

nickysielicki wrote: post #48
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.…

No company even comes close to the transition that Reddit did that took them from a {clean,simple,dense,power-user friendly} interface to a horrible user-hostile shit show that it is now. The average Reddit user has to reach for a custom third party app on their phone or a browser plug-in that hacks a redirect to the old or third party interface. Quora doesn’t hold a candle.

What I dont understand is why these companies are debasing their products integrity to scrape in more users.

What Reddit doesn’t seem to realise is that right now there is a primed opportunity for a competitor to take its market share.

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

#75

Post by jerf »

threatofrain wrote: post #26
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. You can't just make throwaway accounts on Twitter though, they ban them after a few hours if you don't verify by phone number. So really it's forcing you to hand over a lot of personal information just to read what is essentially a few forum posts.

We surely don’t expect that a business should have its value proposition make sense for everyone.

These SV companies would have a lot less power over us if we all judged and acted as if the personal information whywhywhywhy is complaining about having to give away as being more important than reading some forum post, or watching some video stream, or some other transient dopamine hit gone in literally seconds vs. the near-permanent and very difficult to remove little tentacle the company gets to stick into your life now. Each one individually is no big deal, but the whole is.

Adopt an abundance mentality. Our world is awash in transient dopamine hits. Why do you need this one, when there's so many you can have for truly free, or for small amounts of money, or via any other mechanism that isn't trading such a transient personal value for some quasi-permanent cost?

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

#76

Post by ajvs »

NoGravitas wrote: post #40
AutumnCurtain wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you don't need to comment, libreddit is significantly better, especially on mobile, than old.reddit.com.

Also teddit.net, which I find even faster and lightweight without JS.

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

#77

Post by sseagull »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #68
l72 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the user is not interested in posting (or they would have an account already). They are only creating an account because twitter is making them.

Twitter doesn't seem to have an option of a read-only account, where a phone number is only required to post.

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

#79

Post by dyeje »

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.…

Twitter doesn't even let you click links to other Twitter pages, it redirects you back to the original link you followed.

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

#80

Post by slightwinder »

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…

> But then it should have been that way from the start.

Twitter is 15 years old. You can't except them to remain unchanged forever. Priorities change, people change, goals change. Didn't they change CEO some time ago? Then the latest change might be even something from the new managment.

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