Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#261

Post by MrOwnPut » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:53 PM UTC

notwhereyouare wrote: post #193

nomel wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> filled with ads and irrelevant clutter. I always assumed the third party clients just provided a better interface. I didn't realize they circumvented the income stream. If the third party clients were removing the means of monetization, for a company who struggles to profit, then it seems obvious that requiring paid access on its way, regardless of the owner. Twitter can't go forever at a loss. The "surprise" is su…

I think it's more that the API didn't return the ads to the client. If they required 3rd party clients to include the ad's in the feed and grounds for termination of the API key if they weren't that would be a different story

What service does this? There are very strict rules in showing ads.

Making sure you're not showing them by nsfw content, etc. or your advertisers will pull out.

I can't think of a single service that provides ads for 3rd party clients to use.

Most are hostile to 3rd party clients due to threatened ad revenue, that's why there's invidious, nitter, etc. whackamole.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#262

Post by WorldMaker » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:53 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #184

eddieroger wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm test-driving Mammoth right now, and spent a couple weeks in MetaText (which is I think not maintained anymore, but it worked fine).

I remember a few years back when those positions were reversed. Mastodon iOS app devs are mostly doing it out of love or passion and so seem prone to interesting hiatuses. Though Mastodon is usually "stable" enough and "feature complete" enough and not generally a fast-changing target outside of big migratory transitions like this recent one, so those devs I think are generally more than welcome to whatever hiatuses they need.

For what it is worth, in my own iOS usage, I used Mammoth for a few months (and still follow its developer) and then eventually settled on Toot! Toot!'s developer was on hiatus just before Mastodon 4 (and the Twitter meltdown) so it got mentioned as "no longer maintained" or ignored/overlooked entirely by a lot of suggestions lists for people coming fresh to Mastodon. But it was rock solid and feature complete with Mastodon 3.x and the developer had earned a hiatus for a job well done. The developer also came back and worked to quickly catch up on Mastodon 4 changes (none of which had been truly a show stopper, mind you), though I think a slight bit late for so many newcomers from Twitter seem to have overlooked Toot!. Anyway, Toot! is great if you need a recommendation from a random HN user who has been Mastodon since a previous era. (I started getting serious about Mastodon round about 2016, myself.)

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#263

Post by kennydude » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:54 PM UTC

jmann99999 wrote: post #163

abm53 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a specific reason you think it won’t be Mastodon?

Hi ABM. Good question. Here is my perspective (I could always be wrong). I listen to a number of news podcasts and they still tell people where to find the hosts on Twitter. I have yet to hear someone tell people how to find the author on Mastodon. Never. News personalities are the bread and butter of Twitter. They are normies (compared to most of us). Mastodon had its five minutes of fame when Elon started making ch…

> I have yet to hear someone tell people how to find the author on Mastodon. Never.

How does a host say an email address? They might say john@reallycoolpodcast.co.uk

How does a host say how to find them on Mastodon (or ANY ActivityPub based platform)? They might say john@reallycoolpodcast.co.uk

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#264

Post by b800h » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:55 PM UTC

aurelius83 wrote: post #249

Does anyone know if Twitter was losing money for letting these third party clients have access to the firehouse? Are these third party clients paying for the API or sharing revenue with twitter?

The third party apps didn't serve ads.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#265

Post by darnfish » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:55 PM UTC

aurelius83 wrote: post #249

Does anyone know if Twitter was losing money for letting these third party clients have access to the firehouse? Are these third party clients paying for the API or sharing revenue with twitter?

API access is free and the Twitter API does not expose any type of ads

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#266

Post by wpietri » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:55 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #177

wpietri wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it was partly my faith in money that made me comfortable with Twitter as a public company. They (gradually and often reluctantly) learned that if they wanted to be a viable business, they had to provide a reasonably safe place for a lot of people. For purely pecuniary reasons, they also thought they needed to be a good partner to people building things related to Twitter. All that has gone by the wayside, o…

They didn't learn much of anything, though. Twitter lost money when they played nice, and they lose less money when they play mean and lean. Either way Twitter was bloated and overvalued, but anything bought with wealth leveraged against Tesla shares can't be worth much in the first place.

No, they really did learn things. For example, consider the racist mobbing of Leslie Jones in 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jul/18/leslie-jones...

Twitter learned that they really had to take harm reduction more seriously if they didn't want to be known for things like that. I believe that their improvements there were part of what set them on the path to their later profits: https://www.netcials.com/financial-net-profit-year-quarter-u...

And as far as losing money goes, their "lean and mean" approach isn't doing so well. Ad revenues are reportedly down ~40% as the same time Musk is going to have to come up with billion-dollar interest payments.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#267

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:55 PM UTC

aurelius83 wrote: post #249

Does anyone know if Twitter was losing money for letting these third party clients have access to the firehouse? Are these third party clients paying for the API or sharing revenue with twitter?

Third party clients didn’t show ads and there was no revenue sharing

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#268

Post by nhtsamera » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:58 PM UTC

NavinF wrote: post #135

wstuartcl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Elon has disbanded the accessibility team at twitter probably already leads them into hot water related to this (It is not uncommon for orgs like twitter to be bound by multiple long term settlements related to accessibility suits that each have obligations of certain deliverables in this area. If your friend truly does have issues navigating the site perhaps she may want to look to a legal remedy -- fr…

Has a social media site ever been forced to accommodate blind people? Serious question.

Not really social media, but Netflix lost (settled) an ADA suit because they weren't providing subtitles consistently:

https://dredf.org/legal-advocacy/nad-v-netflix/

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#269

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:58 PM UTC

NavinF wrote: post #135

wstuartcl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that Elon has disbanded the accessibility team at twitter probably already leads them into hot water related to this (It is not uncommon for orgs like twitter to be bound by multiple long term settlements related to accessibility suits that each have obligations of certain deliverables in this area. If your friend truly does have issues navigating the site perhaps she may want to look to a legal remedy -- fr…

Has a social media site ever been forced to accommodate blind people? Serious question.

Has a social media site ever been forced to accommodate blind people?

Social media? Not to my knowledge.

But not having a website that's usable by the blind cost Target $6 million: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/target-settl...

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#270

Post by japhyr » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 8:58 PM UTC

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…

It's funny to focus on the length of a post on a platform, but then it is central to the medium.

I was on twitter when it was 140 characters, and appreciated the increase to 280. I've always agreed it shouldn't get too long, or you lose the character of the platform. But even with 280, I'm always wordsmithing my posts just to squeeze in enough context to avoid conflict and misinterpretation.

On Mastodon, I haven't once had to reword what I'm trying to say, and I have never felt that others' posts are verbose. The Mastodon post length limit seems to hit the sweet spot for this kind of platform.