Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter's API is down?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 431 posts

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#211

Post by Nextgrid »

wpietri wrote: post #170
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at FB's staff from back when they had comparable revenue and way more users. I believe that 2013-14 FB was comparable in terms of revenue and users, and they had approximately half the staff.

So? WhatsApp had 35 developers and 350 million users. By that measure, every other company is grossly overstaffed. Personally, I could argue that every social network is grossly understaffed by the measure of how lax they are about what they are supporting. E.g., in 2017, that company you say is more appropriately staffed contributed to a genocide that left tens of thousands dead: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne…

> By that measure, every other company is grossly overstaffed.

Recent layoffs across a big chunk of the tech industry suggest this argument may have at least some truth in it.

> that company you say is more appropriately staffed contributed to a genocide that left tens of thousands dead

Contributing to a genocide has nothing to do with staffing levels and all to do with unhealthy incentives - the company makes its money on "engagement", and it turns out polarizing/divisive/violent/outrageous content generates a lot more of it than friends/family/cat pictures, so effectively moderating toxic content is actually against their bottom line and is only needed in extreme cases where the toxic content's negative PR impact outweighs what it will bring in "engagement".

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#212

Post by philliphaydon »

highwaylights wrote: post #148
philliphaydon wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since this time last year he’s said that both Twitter and SpaceX are likely months from bankruptcy, and Tesla has been flat out told FSD, the feature they’ve been selling all their cars based on (which he has said himself the company is worthless without), just isn’t happening. As much as I hope Elon loses everthing. This isn't even related to downtime of Twitter. Volentarly shutting down twitter due to it being ba…

This is a fair comment, I'll clarify why I mentioned that. Bringing up Tesla and SpaceX was only to point out that he doesn't really have any way to bail out bad Twitter decisions despite it being a (relatively) smaller company. There's nowhere to pull extra finances from to bail this out, and it's known he already went into debt to make the purchase. I really don't want him to lose anything . I'd like him to go back…

In that case I agree.

I can assume one of the primary reasons for cutting staff and offices is to reduce costs and hopefully get cash flow positive asap even if it’s $1 positive. That puts him in a better position to stop incurring debt.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#213

Post by concordDance »

esperent wrote: post #105
sho wrote: post #18

This might be the last straw. I flat out refuse to use their horrible app with its nonsense algorithmic timeline. Give it a few hours to see if it's permanent but if it is, I expect a huge wave of new mastodon users..

Let's be real, if your "last straw" moment wasn't several weeks ago it's unlikely this is gonna be it. But if it is, shame on you. All the silencing of journalists, banning accounts for saying "mastodon", or saying anything negative about Tesla, or criticizing Musk in any way, that didn't do it. But now you have been mildly inconvenienced and it's the last straw. Really?

> All the silencing of journalists, banning accounts for saying "mastodon", or saying anything negative about Tesla, or criticizing Musk in any way, that didn't do it.

Not all of this is accurate. Sure, hating on Musk for banning linking to Mastadon is legit, but there isn't a ban on criticising Musk, there are countless accounts with tens of thousands of followers happily ranting about how evil Musk is. Similarly Tesla.

Also, if you're talking about the Thursday Massacre aren't they all reinstated?

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#214

Post by is_true »

raverbashing wrote: post #145
samwillis wrote: post #67

It would not surprise me if this is the end of third party clients and the new owner has removed access. Very disappointing if he has, particularly if he's done it with zero notice too. He has been making significant noise of feature changes in the official client coming in the next couple of weeks. Removing the third party client access would align with that, along with removing the little "posted by ..." note on ea…

Nah, most likely Elon pulled the plug on one of those servers that "nobody knew what it was used for" and brought the API down (or maybe API prod was running in somebody's computer and their office got evicted - who knows)

Elon, the real life chaos monkey

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#215

Post by bratbag »

esperent wrote: post #105
sho wrote: post #18

This might be the last straw. I flat out refuse to use their horrible app with its nonsense algorithmic timeline. Give it a few hours to see if it's permanent but if it is, I expect a huge wave of new mastodon users..

Let's be real, if your "last straw" moment wasn't several weeks ago it's unlikely this is gonna be it. But if it is, shame on you. All the silencing of journalists, banning accounts for saying "mastodon", or saying anything negative about Tesla, or criticizing Musk in any way, that didn't do it. But now you have been mildly inconvenienced and it's the last straw. Really?

How dare people care about the functionality of a service. Only moral judgements are allowed.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#216

Post by concordDance »

mnd999 wrote: post #51
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that his entire [claimed] rationale is “restoring free speech in America” you can scratch countries 2-6 off that list.

The rationale is to control the narrative and align Twitter’s politics with his own. It’s just like the hundred other rich dudes who bought newspapers over the years.

Admittedly there being a big right wing social media would be an interesting change. Curious to see how it goes (from a distance as I don't use twitter).

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#217

Post by onion2k »

nigamanth wrote: post #187
samwillis wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sure, I feel incredibly sorry for small business and indi-developers who may loose their income from this. I hope they have contingency plans for this eventuality and have started to diversify. There is also a whole ecosystem of "publisher" apps like Buffer and Typefully that haven't been blocked yet , if I was them I would be very worried right now.

Twitter should've announced this, giving developers time to switch.

You can't announce anything if you've fired the comms team.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#218

Post by actualwitch »

black_puppydog wrote: post #167
mrtksn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anything stops devs from using the Web interface instead of the API? Sure it makes it a bit more challenging because parsing is involved but AFAIK it is completely legal to parse and display HTML output however you want. It's essentially like a browser add-on. I wonder if Twitter can be killed by the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy? So: 1. Make a client that combines Mastadon/Others and Twitter feeds, mak…

you get into an armsrace where twitter will obfuscate the markup to just wear out the scraper devs. which they can, because $$$

Doing this requires a fair amount of development time, especially when you can break something else with this and you previously removed all the guardrails.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#219

Post by wut42 »

thecopy wrote: post #154
wut42 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? Since when? I'm regulary reading using the chronogical timeline and I'm not seeing anything like you describe (I only see that using the "for you" algo timeline). Very concerning anyway. :(

Oh, it seems it was reset to use the algorithmic one. I for sure did not change that myself... Thx for making me double check

Ah! Yes, since they rolled out the For You/Timeline things, the apps tend sometimes to revert to For you randomly for no reason...

One of my alts gets switched everytime, while my main account does not. All using them from the same iOS app.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#220

Post by samstr »

robga wrote: post #19
lukaszkorecki wrote: post #2

Same thing is happening with Twitteriffic - I’m assuming Twitter’s API is down, or worse: the new owner has decided that 3rd party clients are not desirable anymore

Maybe Melon saw how nice Ivory is looking https://tapbots.com/ivory/ Tweetbot for Mastodon. “You’re either with us or against us”.

[dead]
Post reply on HN