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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#251

Post by 33955985 »

barnabee wrote: post #57
33955985 wrote: post #36

It was always odd to me that entire businesses relied on what was essentially the goodwill of a corporation. I think the same about things like microG in the Android world. They just… use Google’s API without paying and yet we think it’ll all work out?

Acessing APIs from 3rd party clients isn't "goodwill" and should be legally protected.

Who built the API and who pays to maintain it? These are not public goods in the traditional sense. The incentives must align or else the benefit is only maintained through benign neglect.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#252

Post by Sunspark »

themagician wrote: post #234
system16 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said the same thing even a few weeks ago, but the momentum for Mastodon is growing rapidly and it's really impressive to see, and Ivory is a very impressive client even in beta. Almost everyone I followed on Twitter is using it now, and I actually prefer the experience. It's like Twitter but without all the bots/spam/hate, at least for now.

What is "almost everyone"? Four people? Using it on what server? Mastadon is more like Discord than Twitter. There is no core server. There is no core experience. It's just an instanced message board.

I don't know why Mastodon is hyped up so much. I do not have an account on it as I have some concerns. My understanding at the current time is that a server can be run by a single random individual, they can read your DMs as they are not encrypted, and they can kick you off the server if you write anything the server operator does not agree with.

At least with Twitter, it was a corporation with rules and procedures.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#253

Post by tedivm »

Pxtl wrote: post #244
tptacek wrote: post #87

If you're not paying attention to Mastodon now, a think to know about Tapbots and Ivory, their new ActivityPub client, is that their TestFlight betas, which they release in batches of a thousand or so at a time, last for just a couple minutes before they're all snapped up; there seems to be pretty huge demand for it. With a decent client (I've bounced around a couple of them so far), even in a beta state, the experie…

Yeah, the big challenge with Mastodon is it's basically Twitter as it was like 15 years ago before they added a lot of features that define the modern Twitter experience, like trending/searching on keywords instead of just hashtags (something the leadership has said they do not want to support ever - imho a flag on the toot declaring it scrapeable would be better), an algorithmic feed that considers your follows foll…

>something the leadership has said they do not want to support ever

Since Mastodon is decentralized what the leadership wants doesn't always matter. There are several instances which have patched their code to add full search in.

This is one of the big advantages I see to the fediverse as a whole- different instances can experiment around with changes and even entirely different software stacks, and if someone doesn't like the way the mainline software is being run they can fork it (and there are several successful forks already).

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#255

Post by kennydude »

eddieroger wrote: post #122
tptacek wrote: post #87

If you're not paying attention to Mastodon now, a think to know about Tapbots and Ivory, their new ActivityPub client, is that their TestFlight betas, which they release in batches of a thousand or so at a time, last for just a couple minutes before they're all snapped up; there seems to be pretty huge demand for it. With a decent client (I've bounced around a couple of them so far), even in a beta state, the experie…

There are also lots of other interesting clients not from Tapbots. If losing Tweetbot was enough to make you look at Mastodon, keep that open mind and look at all the interesting clients out there.

Ice Cubes is another great example. Very exciting times! https://github.com/Dimillian/IceCubesApp

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#256

Post by linuxftw »

Surprised all the takes here are so negative. I suspect that the vast majority of people using Twitter won't be affected. The vanishingly small tech population that cares about these things is likely going to have no impact on Twitter's overall user base. Sports and Celebrities, news organizations, normies, they'll all continue to use Twitter and won't be up to date on any of this drama.

I don't have a twitter account. Until today, I had never heard of tweetbot. Who installs an app when you can just use the mobile site?

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#257

Post by kennydude »

teach wrote: post #14

I have an old friend who is blind. The official Twitter client is a LOT less accessible than the one she was using. This change impacts her ability to use Twitter considerably. And before you start with the "well, she's probably better off" -- she lives in a small rural town. Twitter and Facebook and the like are one of her few connections to a larger world.

I'm hoping some of the new Mastodon clients come out have great accessibility features.

At the very least, one of the core features of the platform is it (at least on web) highly encourages captions on images for accessibility :)

(I know there is the issue of where people she was following on Twitter may not move over etc, sadly)

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#258

Post by riazrizvi »

dualboot wrote: post #146
riazrizvi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like the same thing with Gawker and the HBO show Silicon Valley. It feels like people with money are shutting down, neutering, avenues where they receive criticism. Since much of the money for the buyout came from the Saudis and the Chinese, it feels like the people behind this are more concerned with subduing Twitter than turning a profit. Maybe why they had to make it private, it’s illegal to run a publi…

Agree 100% Elon has always slashed customer service and PR in the companies he runs. Twitter for all it's warts, was still a haven for public accountability when traditional customer service avenues fell short. Not surprising that following an unprecedented consolidation of wealth (2020), we see someone take that opportunity to dismantle that.

Social media has been the driver of an enormous level of democratic empowerment, an unprecedented new degree of bottom-up communication. I think society hasn't experienced such a structural shift to political power distribution since the printing press's arrival in the West. Unlike China, the West had no central authority, so what was printed and distributed could not be properly suppressed.

The counter-reaction to this, I believe, is the increased concentration of wealth and push toward monopoly and control.

If democracy prevails, I believe social media, like Youtube, Reddit etc will drive a level of cultural, scientific and technological enlightenment to equal the Renaissance.

If autocracy prevails, if the whole world falls under the dominion of a single authority, we will all end up in one single shithole country.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#259

Post by JumpCrisscross »

teach wrote: post #14

I have an old friend who is blind. The official Twitter client is a LOT less accessible than the one she was using. This change impacts her ability to use Twitter considerably. And before you start with the "well, she's probably better off" -- she lives in a small rural town. Twitter and Facebook and the like are one of her few connections to a larger world.

> official Twitter client is a LOT less accessible than the one she was using

She should submit an ADA complaint [1].

[1] https://www.ada.gov/file-a-complaint/

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#260

Post by zimpenfish »

drcongo wrote: post #82
barnabee wrote: post #47

I don't think they realise the damage this change has done. I have been on board with or ambivalent about most of the changes. I don't care if there's less moderation, I think Twitter probably did have too many employees, and I like the idea of a paid account with fewer (preferably no) ads. I'd even have happily paid Twitter to continue using Tweetbot. But this has destroyed the trust and the user experience of many…

There's a truly excellent, open-source Mastodon client called Ice Cubes which hit the App Store yesterday. The very first thing I did was donate the maximum possible IAP.

Annoyingly, seems to be Mastodon-specific - can't OAuth to GotoSocial and flat-out refuses to even consider an Akkoma instance. Let's hope they sort that out soon (since both of them support enough of the MastoAPI that other clients work fine.)
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