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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

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Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#341

Post by zimpenfish »

blueblimp wrote: post #236
kemayo wrote: post #48

Speaking as someone who had mostly been using the first party twitter app in recent years and so wouldn't have been impacted by this even if I was still actively using twitter, this seems pretty poorly done by Musk. Shutting down third party clients? It's arguably a valid decision. They presumably want to consolidate the users into directly controlled clients, where they can be advertised to and can have premium subs…

> Hell, just announce "you must have a Twitter Blue subscription to use a third party client" and that might have actually gone well for them. I've been wondering too why they didn't do this. That would at least get them some quick revenue. Could it be that they didn't want to keep supporting the API?

The API is still up though - all my things that use the API are currently working fine[1].

[1] But none of them "replicate the Twitter experience", just bots and archivers.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#342

Post by Klonoar »

corobo wrote: post #298
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 back when Elon bought the place and everyone was talking about moving to Mastodon I was dismissive. Wasn't expecting Twitter to start switching off systems like a ship in Star Trek trying to conserve energy for life support.. Looking forward to Tapbots new client. Don't really care what's powering the backend as it turns out, it just needs to stay working. Nice work Mastodon and the rest of the federation, I'll…

As an FYI you can have the "vanity domain" if you just use the webfinger protocol with your own custom domain. Don't necessarily need to self-host it.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#343

Post by JoshuaRogers »

Sunspark wrote: post #248
joezydeco wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% concur, but don't delete your account. Don't let someone else take the username. Delete your tweets and wipe your profile, but let it sit dormant. Forever.

It won't be forever. I remember Musk saying awhile back that they were going to flush inactive accounts at some point. I agree with this. Why should a username remain reserved if it hasn't been logged into for years?

Mainly because of "Login with Twitter". There isn't a proper way to tell downstream systems who have authenticated against Twitter that "The account JohnDoe is now a different user than they were."

Basically the same principle used to hijack accounts by buying an expired domain that had email addresses associated with it.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#344

Post by wartijn_ »

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?

Twitter changed their Developer Agreement yesterday, the main change is that it now includes this:

> You will not or attempt to (and will not allow others to) ...c) use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34448524

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#345

Post by eddiegroves »

Klonoar wrote: post #342
corobo wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah back when Elon bought the place and everyone was talking about moving to Mastodon I was dismissive. Wasn't expecting Twitter to start switching off systems like a ship in Star Trek trying to conserve energy for life support.. Looking forward to Tapbots new client. Don't really care what's powering the backend as it turns out, it just needs to stay working. Nice work Mastodon and the rest of the federation, I'll…

As an FYI you can have the "vanity domain" if you just use the webfinger protocol with your own custom domain. Don't necessarily need to self-host it.

Does this method let you move instances “under the hood”?

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#346

Post by shagie »

simonw wrote: post #312
guywithahat wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on the fediverse for years and while I enjoy it, I think it's naive to think it'll replace Twitter. Fundamentally it lacks good discovery, features take too long to implement (or simply can't be implemented), and verification is impossible without setting up your own server which seems like too much overhead imo. Further it just doesn't scale, although Andrew Torba was never known for his coding ability the…

"verification is impossible without setting up your own server" I don't think that's right. You don't need to run your own server in order to add verified links to your profile - but you do need to have pages you can link to on trusted domains which can rel=me back to your Mastodon page.

There's different "levels" of trust (for me) on the verified.

There's "this random person on a random instance is who they say they are" (after clicking on their name and checking the verified part).

There is also "this person, by value of the name of the instance is who they say they are."

@mfowler@toot.thoughtworks.com - I don't even need to go click through to their name to see if they are an employee of thought works (and thus very likely Martin Fowler).

(One of the challenges with this is also finding the company sites - I'd love an old school yahoo directory of them)

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#347

Post by Klonoar »

gfodor wrote: post #246
sosodev wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really true. Many websites version their API and/or release new features without providing support (at least initially) via the API. That's the route Reddit has taken. There are several features that only work through the official app or website. It can be frustrating as a user of a third party client but it's a much better alternative to cutting everybody off.

What I said is definitely true - supporting that old version isn’t free - it needs to be maintained and all new features need to not inadvertently break it. I’m not saying this was necessarily a good move, but the upside to killing an API is you are able to cut any need to support any of it, including old versions.

The APIs for Twitter that they're cutting off aren't being cut off for other uses, though. This clearly isn't a maintenance issue.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#348

Post by ttepasse »

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.

In the last seven years Twitter already did not expose features like polls with their public API. Still, even with a less capable API many preferred the experience of 3rd party clients.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#349

Post by zimpenfish »

seydor wrote: post #111
chc4 wrote: post #90

I've been on twitter since 2009 and have 100k+ tweet. Since they've killed all third-party clients I've basically stopped using twitter, and have no intention of using the (bad) official client. Good job Elon!

to all the people who claim this, i wish there was a RemindMe! feature to check back in a few months People who have invested years of their lives writing thousands of tweets aren't giving up investments so easily. This is like real life investments or relationships, it takes a lot to break them

> People who have invested years of their lives writing thousands of tweets aren't giving up investments so easily.

I dunno, my Twitter posting rate has been dropping because there's enough people on the Fediboat now to make it interesting and I only have a certain amount of attention span to go around.

    2022-09: 326.00
    2022-10: 312.00
    2022-11: 241.00
    2022-12: 99.00
    2023-01: 64.00
Whereas my Fediboat posting has gone up.

    2022-09: 3.00
    2022-10: 55.00
    2022-11: 222.00
    2022-12: 296.00
    2023-01: 118.00

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#350

Post by rtsil »

Sunspark wrote: post #252
themagician wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

"Rules and procedures" that didn't prevent a teen from hacking them a couple of years ago. The teen tricked Twitter employees to give their credentials, and the employee credentials gave him access to actual twitter accounts.WHich shows a singular lack of process and lax permissions practices from such a big company. And I'm not sure they'll fare better now that most of their workforce has been fired...

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