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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#301

Post by Nextgrid »

kennydude wrote: post #263
jmann99999 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Tell a non-techie "@johnsreallycoolpodcast" and there's a good chance they'll figure out it's a Twitter or Instagram username.

Tell a non-techie "john@reallycoolpodcast.co.uk" and they'll think it's an email address or at best infer the website URL from that.

Tell a non-techie there's a social media platform called "Mastodon" and they'll look at you funny, and after the initial awkwardness they'll dismiss it because they don't understand (nor care!) about the whole decentralisation aspect of it and how to navigate its inherent downsides.

Having Mastodon use email-like identifiers is a cute technical detail but is not only completely irrelevant for non-techies but actually hurts adoption as it's less recognisable than an "@username".

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#302

Post by shinratdr »

politician wrote: post #94
breput wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say I totally saw this coming, but when Elon started talking about the WeChat/Everything App/X, the writing was on the all for 3rd party clients. Still, a very shortsighted move.

The writing has been on the wall for 3rd party clients since Twitter restricted API access the first dozen times pre-Elon.

Except not really, because they reversed course on that, added a bunch of new features, and continued to maintain and update it.

It never had feature parity with the site, but it did get better over time.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#303

Post by pornel »

jdminhbg wrote: post #32
jdoss wrote: post #6

The question I have with this move is why didn't Twitter just force advertising as part of their API for third party clients? Just change the TOS for using the API so if they didn't show advertising they would be cut off. What am I missing?

Twitter had a decade to implement something simple like this and didn't. I assume that there are technical reasons that it's hard to do with their codebase and it's simply not worth the time and money to do so.

Ads come with tracking, so there's probably an issue of trusting all the data that apps would have to send back. Twitter would have to document just how much tracking their ads require, and 3rd party developers could balk at it and cause a stink. OTOH the first party app can track as much as it wants and it'll fly under the radar.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#304

Post by prvc »

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.

Youtube to this day allows uploaders to disable automatic captions for some reason.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#305

Post by Nextgrid »

MrOwnPut wrote: post #261
notwhereyouare wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Which you can control by just returning the ads as part of the API response for the feed, which I'm sure how the official client does it. Making the client classify NSFW content and hide ads based on that seems like a stupid idea.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#306

Post by hk__2 »

moneywoes wrote: post #231
dom96 wrote: post #124

Shameless plug: I created a browser extension to help transition to Mastodon[0]. If you don't yet feel like you can leave twitter.com, but want to explore alternatives it's a great way to get started. Essentially it injects Mastodon posts into your Twitter timeline, so you can retain your existing Twitter following while getting exposed to Mastodon. [0] - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-chirper/l..…

Your extension looks fantastic. Is it cool if i sent you some questions?

Why you don’t post your questions directly, rather than asking if you can ask?

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#307

Post by pornel »

prvc wrote: post #285

>we are proud to introduce Ivory for Mastodon On the bright side for them, now that they are starting a new "app", they can double dip on those purchase fees.

As a long-time customer I'm happy to pay for the new app. Mastodon has its own API, and own features and conventions, so it's not just a name change.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#308

Post by LastTrain »

MBCook wrote: post #19
jdoss wrote: post #6

The question I have with this move is why didn't Twitter just force advertising as part of their API for third party clients? Just change the TOS for using the API so if they didn't show advertising they would be cut off. What am I missing?

“Starting Feb 1st using a third part client will require Twitter Blue.” That’s all it would have taken. Probably would have made a huge increase in subscribers too. This is 100% a control move. He wants full control over how everyone experiences Twitter (not sure why). So this was pulled. Of course you can NEVER go back from this move.

As has been pointed out many times, Twitter Blue will never be able to replace Twitter ad revenue, which was at > 1B per quarter at the time of the acquisition. I think this move is a reflection of someone at Twitter realizing that.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#309

Post by lanstin »

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…

Twitter writers are sharper in their wit. Funnier or at least more pointed. There is more verbose sincerity on Mastodon. Maybe that is good but even now, where I only check twitter surreptitiously, I laugh more on twitter.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#310

Post by hk__2 »

peanuty1 wrote: post #180
yamtaddle wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed some of that and it was especially funny that he had just been defending Musk and posting some "well he's a super-genius—you know, like all us rich SV types—so we should give him the benefit of the doubt" sort of stuff, right before that happened. The whole thing was truly beautiful. Overall, Musk's acquisition has provided some excellent entertainment.

"It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX." - Paul Graham https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1592852796185128961

Twitter is not just a tech company; it’s a social network.
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