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Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

tapbots.com

401–410 of 427 posts

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, but if I delete my account, and someone takes my username, people who have known me over the past 15 years will probably think that's me (and whoever takes the username can very easily exploit that fact). Username reuse enables impersonation.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#402
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.

Following an account discovered via WebFinger on your domain doesn’t provide account portability (https://www.jwz.org/blog/2022/11/using-your-own-domain-as-a-...).

You can always host a lightweight ActivityPub server like honk (https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk).

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#403
As somebody who tinkered a lot with Twitter's and Facebook's APIs, I'm inviting all my fellow developers to entirely give up these efforts and let those platforms (and their users) rot in their own shit.

By building products against these platforms, we're playing the game of someone whose interest is clearly not that of creating a vibrant developer community or having a vast selection of 3rd-party apps and alternative clients.

Once users start using a 3rd-party app, they stop using the big platform's official app. The app loses visibility on what the user does, therefore it loses money, because surveillance, data collection, data resale and slamming ads in front of your eyes is the only viable way that these degenerate businesses have found to make money (and they have never been incentivised, for the past two decades, to seek for alternative business models).

So, as developers, we're playing a game that we're doomed to lose. We'll have to catch up with whatever unannounced update to the APIs or the T&Cs the platform's company decides to impose. We'll have to walk around all the obstacles that they put on our path. And, most of all, we are always exposed to the risk of the platform suddenly pulling the plug from their own APIs, therefore flushing months or years of hard work from our side down the toilet with a single decision.

I've seen Facebook fight against my scrapers for a long time. I've seen Twitter restricting their APIs again and again, forcing me to adapt my bridges every time. I've seen WhatsApp block my phone number in the past because I was using it to reverse engineer their API. I've seen Instagram go after anyone trying to build a 3rd-party client, or an even remotely potential competitor (Biblogram being the last one, and going after Pixelfed for the names of their filters is another recent one).

Now I'm done with these motherfuckers. If they don't want our efforts, if they don't respect our work, then they deserve to rot in hell. And their users deserve to use only the proprietary spyware/crapware that is thrown at them, if they don't listen to our calls for using alternatives.

If you want a flexible and developer-friendly social network with plenty of APIs, well-documented protocols, plenty of choice when it comes to clients, and even RSS support, use any Fediverse product.

If you want a messaging app that you can easily program and extend, and it's even compatible via bridges with virtually any protocol out there, use Matrix.

We have open solutions based on open protocols today, which aren't subject to the whims of a random billionaire who likes to enter the server room and unplug whichever machine he finds within reach. Let's just use them, instead of complaining of platforms that aren't aligned with our values and keep shutting down our efforts. Competition is what these companies deserve to make sure that they keep building stuff that people like, and you don't compete with someone by trying to improve their own environment. You compete by building a better product and stealing their user base one unit at the time

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#404
post #292

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.

From your description I’m not sure you understand Mastodon. People who don’t know about it and read your description will get the wrong impression, at least. You can follow someone on any Mastodon server from your account on any server. It’s not siloed like Discord (which, ironically, actually is a centralized service!) - it’s much more like Twitter than Discord in real use. There may be no official ‘core experience’…

Maybe I don’t.

So what happens when a server gets deleted? Isn’t your account bound to that server?

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Tell a non-techie there's a social media platform called "Mastodon" and they'll look at you funny,

They would look at you funny before Twitter was a thing too.

Or Instagram. Or Facebook.

People will figure it out. It becomes popular. It's not unknown.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#406
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your description I’m not sure you understand Mastodon. People who don’t know about it and read your description will get the wrong impression, at least. You can follow someone on any Mastodon server from your account on any server. It’s not siloed like Discord (which, ironically, actually is a centralized service!) - it’s much more like Twitter than Discord in real use. There may be no official ‘core experience’…

Maybe I don’t. So what happens when a server gets deleted? Isn’t your account bound to that server?

Somewhere in the middle.

There’s a way to migrate your account to another server, including keeping follower relationships intact (so people don’t need to follow you again - they’ll automatically follow the new account). Past posts don’t get migrated though. If the old server is still running your past posts remain there.

If the server just suddenly shuts down with no notice, though, there’s nothing you can do.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#407
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…

Does Ivory implement searching?

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I would submit that was is a load-bearing word in that sentence. Twitter as it exists now effectively is run by a single random individual who can read your DMs and kick you off the server if you write anything he does not agree with. Bans have gotten weirder, stupider, and more mercurial since Musk's takeover (the Tweetbot/Twitterrific bans arg…

>Twitter as it exists now effectively is run by a single random individual who can read your DMs and kick you off the server if you write anything he does not agree with.

I wouldn't count it as a benefit for Mastodon that its servers basically have the same form of management as Elon Musk Twitter.

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At over a billion a year in interest payments to just service the debt is going to be hard. Twitter, before Elon, was already losing a couple hundred million a year. It has to be worse now. I do agree that Morgan Stanley and the other financiers are going to be the kids without a chair when the music stops.

> Twitter, before Elon, was already losing a couple hundred million a year Twitter's business was making a profit in 2018 and 2019, but then 2020 happened (because 2020), and in 2021 they had a $800 million class action settlement to pay (without that it would have been $600m profit), and then in 2022 Elon tanked the company in the 4th quarter. The core business was (just about) profitable before Elon. It was just fa…

>in 2022 Elon tanked the company in the 4th quarter

Didn't Elon basically ruin almost the entire 2022 since the buyout offer was in April and caused uncertainty throughout the year?

Re: Tweetbot. April 2011 – January 2023

#410
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Every website accessible to the public has some responsibility to accommodate the disabled. https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/ There are a lot of opportunistic/good hearted compassionate lawyers making a good business of shaking down smaller website operators for ADA compliance.

Damn patent trolls are missing out on this good lord.
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