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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#321

Post by smoldesu »

wpietri wrote: post #266
smoldesu wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ad revenue can be down 40% if your overall paid workforce was reduced by ~85%. It wasn't working out for Twitter either way, if they wanted to be profitable then something had to change.

As an impartial non-Twitter user, I think it's safe to say that neither version of Twitter was healthy for it's platform or users.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#322

Post by lanstin »

dawnerd wrote: post #33
iameli wrote: post #10

And so ends my daily use of Twitter. I still haven't been able to get into Mastodon in the same way, but if Ivory is as good as Tweetbot was it might bring me around.

Honestly some days I forget I'm not using twitter. Same with the normal Mastodon web interface. Once you get into it properly it all kinda blurs away. Way more interactions on there than I had before too.

Lot more interactions but also less biting wit that makes me laugh. But no Elon so net win.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#323

Post by geoelectric »

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.

I think a recent court decision in CA determined that unless the website is a front for a brick & mortar real world place, they're not subject to the CA version of those laws (Unruh). How that would play with the ADA rules, I don't know, but this article mentions both. I'm not sure this issue is at all settled nationwide, but my take is bringing that lawsuit in CA won't get you very far.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/california-court-appeal...

Kind of a shame, because it was my first thought too--losing the accessibility team and then removing all the accessible clients definitely won't make Musk many friends among disability advocates.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#324

Post by Kye »

alixanderwang wrote: post #197

Why are they having the funeral less than 2 weeks after a "suspension" of the API, after 10+ years of work? Twitter under the new management is making rash decisions but also has been reversing many. I still have Tweetbot app on my phone in hopes that it's temporary. Has there been anything definitive to say that won't be the case?

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. This was likely the last straw after years of worsening API restrictions. They might have hoped things would improve under Elon. This is evidence things will only get worse.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#325

Post by zimpenfish »

ihuman wrote: post #293
zimpenfish wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

They just added GoToSocial support [0], and they are adding support for more instance types [1] [0] https://github.com/Dimillian/IceCubesApp/pull/135 [1] https://github.com/Dimillian/IceCubesApp/issues/16

Good stuff!

(I wish the FediActivityPub people had spec'd up an API to avoid this kind of multi-implementation-who-supports-what shambles.)

EDIT: Amusingly, I fixed the "cannot login to Pleroma" problem for `madon` this week - Pleroma/Akkoma require form data in the body, not the URL, for POST requests (which is fair since the HTML spec suggests this is the Right Way.)

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#326

Post by yborg »

_justinfunk wrote: post #104

> On January 12th, 2023, without warning, Elon Musk ordered his employees at Twitter to suspend access to 3rd party clients which instantly locked out hundreds of thousands of users from accessing Twitter from their favorite clients. Is the claim that 'Elon ordered his employees" in evidence? I haven't seen Elon say he made the decision or try to explain it. I'm not defending Elon, just can't find the source.

Who else do you think could make such a decision at Twitter now without Musk's approval? Employee empowerment isn't exactly a thing with Elon. When you are the smartest man in any room, anyone else in there making any kind of a decision is by definition someone dumber than you trying to think for you.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#327

Post by robryan »

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.

Enforce it on clients over a certain number of users where they are big enough to manage following a bunch of rules around the ads. Then they can be audited to make sure they get doing it correctly.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#328

Post by jupp0r »

gfodor wrote: post #101
MBCook wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

I think that is right. A public API radically slows down product iteration since each feature needs to be considered in terms of its blast radius to third party clients. It probably burned the bridge for good this time, but killing the API to speed up product velocity isn’t an insane move if you value that more than the existing 3rd party ecosystem.

The public API is still there and not going anywhere. Twitter is getting the worst of both worlds.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#330

Post by wpietri »

smoldesu wrote: post #321
wpietri wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ad revenue can be down 40% if your overall paid workforce was reduced by ~85%. It wasn't working out for Twitter either way, if they wanted to be profitable then something had to change. As an impartial non-Twitter user, I think it's safe to say that neither version of Twitter was healthy for it's platform or users.

Twitter has been profitable in the recent past and could be again. Drama was not necessary.

I think your claim on profitability is flat out wrong. If you think that's the case, what are the exact numbers you are imagining that would make Twitter profitable?

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