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Twitter's API is down?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Twitter's API is down?

#231

Post by Mindwipe »

mrtksn wrote: post #190
samwillis wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's quite possible to build an app that way, using scraping. The danger is that users of that app will get suspended from Twitter (users have explicitly agreed not to scrape), once thats happened to a couple of users, thats the end of your app. Obviously you can try to obscure that you are scraping, but that is difficult to get right and there is no way back once you get it wrong.

On Apple devices that wouldn’t be an issue because you you can load the Twitter Web interface into a real Safari and get the markup from there for processing. Twitter can try things like CAPTCHA but this will degrade the experience for all Twitter users and you can simply delegate this CAPTCHA to your user to solve anyway.

Apple wouldn't permit such an app in the store so it's a moot point.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#232

Post by Mindwipe »

actualwitch wrote: post #218
black_puppydog wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That didn't stop Facebook doing it (and breaking all kinds of stuff in the process).

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#233

Post by _djo_ »

concordDance wrote: post #216
mnd999 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Twitter was that big right wing social media site, in that it was extremely useful for a large number of right wing organisations and people to amplify their messaging and get many followers. That's what made it far more attractive to those on the right than Parler, Truth Social, Gettr, and all the others.

For instance Trump owed much of his popularity to his Twitter account and the way it allowed him to communicate much more effectively in a completely unfiltered way with both his existing supporters and undecided potentials. The same pattern has repeated with right wing politicians in other countries.

Those who were banned or otherwise de-amplified tended to be very fringe or extreme, and were never a significant chunk of the right wing. That's one reason why the alternatives never took off, as the kinds of people they attracted were those that few people really wanted to deal with or associate with.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#234

Post by mrtksn »

Mindwipe wrote: post #231
mrtksn wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Apple devices that wouldn’t be an issue because you you can load the Twitter Web interface into a real Safari and get the markup from there for processing. Twitter can try things like CAPTCHA but this will degrade the experience for all Twitter users and you can simply delegate this CAPTCHA to your user to solve anyway.

Apple wouldn't permit such an app in the store so it's a moot point.

Why do you think that Apple wouldn't permit it on AppStore?

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#235

Post by jsjohnst »

onion2k wrote: post #217
nigamanth wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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

Elon fired the Tesla PR team and yet announcements still are made, usually as Tweets from him. It sucks, but a comms team isn’t necessary assuming you are ok with substandard communication.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#236

Post by rsynnott »

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?

I mean, I think there are going to be a lot of people who _don't_ care about Saint Car's antics, but do care about Saint Car making the site unusable. And killing third party clients will make it unusable for many people.

Personally, my last straw was the journalists, but if I hadn't cared about that or other ridiculous Musk behaviours, _this_ would still drive me away; I haven't really used Twitter by any means besides Tweetbot in about a decade.

They're essentially different issues. The journalists, and the Fauci stuff, and the unbanning of various Nazis, are all, essentially, content/moderation issues, whereas this is a usability issue.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#237

Post by misnome »

satvikpendem wrote: post #203
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…

That is why companies should always stay vigilant about platform risk. In general, own your platform, don't built your business on someone else's platform, it is too easy for them to deplatform you on their whim.

It's worked for them for the past 12 years

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#238

Post by tsimionescu »

mrtksn wrote: post #168
black_puppydog wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then just OCR the rendered output. It's cheap and easy these days.

Good luck OCR-ing images and videos, though. Twitter isn't just text.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#239

Post by pwdisswordfisha »

JdeBP wrote: post #226
mlindner wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

A lot less than you think. There's no such thing as "on Mastodon" and I picked https://tapbots.social quite carefully, as it's the instance where discussions about TweetBot are most likely to be replicated, given that it's the instance run by Tapbots. One has to pick the right communities, in the FediVerse. https://know.me.uk/tags/tweetbot is a very different story, to pick an example. It's another Mastodon WWW serve…

If we're being so pedantic, you have misspelt 'Fediverse'.

Re: Twitter's API is down?

#240

Post by rsynnott »

It's worth noting that we've been here before; back in 2012 Twitter attempted to curtail third party clients (albeit in a far more organised, less haphazard way): https://thenextweb.com/news/twitter-4

Eventually, they stepped back from the brink, presumably after realising that it was a phenomenally stupid idea (while the fraction of Twitter users using third party clients is likely small, anyone who's anyone uses a third party client; this will vastly disproportionately hit influential users). We'll see if new leadership learns the same lesson.

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