Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023 • Hacker News Board

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#381

Post by geoelectric » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 12:43 AM UTC

geoelectric wrote: post #323

NavinF wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

I do wonder, as a late afterthought, though, whether the legal principle behind making your accessibility worse via negligence or deprioritization (the internal team) or lack of due diligence (these apps) could be different than whether the government could require you to include it in the first place.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#382

Post by amatecha » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 12:51 AM UTC

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.

I believe the same thing! It's rare to see someone hold this view. I got quite a lot of pushback when I argued the same concept a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33016155 On the upside it spawned a ton of discussion with lots of people other than myself, which was nice to see.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#383

Post by manderley » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 1:03 AM UTC

lucaslee wrote: post #243

Maybe part of the efforts to fight spam. The spam issue does get better TBH.

"The spam issue" demonstrably didn't get better, what are you talking about.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#384

Post by Nextgrid » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 1:05 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #370

Nextgrid wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But a "network" of hundreds of thousands or millions of tiny instances, maybe paradoxically, doesn't have this same spam/trolling problem, any more than RSS did when we were all using Google Reader. RSS/Google Reader was mostly a "pull" medium. Creators create content while consumers passively consume it but can't write back. This works but is fundamentally different from Twitter and the modern concept of social me…

Why do I need to care about "pull" or "push"? That's a thing the server instance does for me.

But the concept of instances raises a lot of issues as I’ve described. Google Reader/RSS works for its purposes because there is no instances and most of the work is delegated to the client.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#385

Post by jackvalentine » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 1:05 AM UTC

pkulak wrote: post #363

I really like how they have their own Mastadon instance. That's better than any "blue checkmark" ever could be. Wondering if @ivory@tapbots.social is the real Ivory app account? Well... the domain is company domain! A cool business idea would be to host a Mastadon instance for celebrities, where everyone is verified, and there's no open registration at all. It's more of a branding company than a tech company, but the…

It'd also make it really easy to defederate the 'celebrity' instance, or block the whole domain as an individual user.

A win for users by giving them the ability to limit their exposure to celebrity culture but I don't see a huge upside for clients of the 'celebrity instance' if they want to promote themselves.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#386

Post by jamiek88 » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 1:10 AM UTC

PStamatiou wrote: post #333

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…

100%. I definitely found my usage increase when I found a more delightful and well-built client with Ivory. For those new to Mastodon, I wrote a huge 8K word post about it recently, from my POV as someone who worked at Twitter for 9 years: https://paulstamatiou.com/mastodon/ I go over some of the constraints that the federated model brings that might be particularly interesting.

Oh wow thank you for this.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#387

Post by abraham » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #377

Klonoar wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't parse what you wrote - shutting down any API relieves some maintenence burden.

No APIs have been shut down. Specific apps competing with the Twitter mobile apps have had their access banned.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#388

Post by tptacek » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 1:40 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #384

tptacek wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I need to care about "pull" or "push"? That's a thing the server instance does for me.

But the concept of instances raises a lot of issues as I’ve described. Google Reader/RSS works for its purposes because there is no instances and most of the work is delegated to the client.

And why won't that be the configuration ActivityPub converges to? Why will people be signing up for random group instances rather than just pushing a button to get their own? That's what happened with blogs. Why won't it happen here?

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#389

Post by maxfurman » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 1:48 AM UTC

WoodenChair wrote: post #360

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.

How many people use third-party Reddit clients versus using third-party Twitter clients as a percentage of total users on each site? (I don't know—not a rhetorical)

3rd party clients were the only usable mobile clients for quite a while. Reddit acquired one of them and has been pushing it but AFAICT as a Reddit Sync user nothing has changed. I imagine they are still pretty popular.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#390

Post by Sunspark » Sat, Jan 21, 2023, 1:59 AM UTC

amatecha wrote: post #376

Sunspark wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

probably because my username is my first initial and my last name, and I don't really want someone impersonating me on a platform that I've used as a key social media presence since 2007?

If it's a key social media presence for you then that means you're logging into it and using it, so there is nothing to worry about.