Twitter now requires an account to view tweets • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#671

Post by bandyaboot » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #274

seanthemon wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried it but I just can't get into the flow of things, it doesn't feel like a lot happens during the day, but maybe i'm on the wrong server? I just want to expel my bowels and doom scroll bad funny memes

> it doesn't feel like a lot happens during the day, but maybe i'm on the wrong server? We are oriented to think that way after ~15 years of the algorithmic engagement-maxi world of Twitter. It always looks like there's a lot happening all the time but look deeper and it's a bunch of people offering their weak takes on hot topics to build their brand. What was the last thing you remember being must-see sfuff on Twitt…

> What was the last thing you remember being must-see sfuff on Twitter?

The Russia circus last weekend made for some pretty good near real-time intrigue. That being said, I don’t care what crazy thing is happening…I’m not creating an account to hear what’s being said on “The Global Town Square ™”

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#672

Post by disillusioned » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #650

nunez wrote: post #110

This killed nitter. Fuck. I guess I'm done with Twitter. Reddit is in Eternal September. Twitter is login-walled. If HN is next, I'll probably be mostly done with the Internet. This version of the Internet is starting to suck. :(

HN isn't next. We hate change. (More precisely: we're acutely aware that users hate change, and since we do too, it's kind of an easy call.) Also, the value of HN to YC consists of the community and keeping the community happy is therefore a must. (Did I say happy? More precisely: as happy as possible under the circumstances)

This attitude that: if it ain't broke, don't destroy it, is something I'm finding myself valuing increasingly. I use Stylish to make HN look a bit more readable and prettier, and beyond that, it functions exactly how I want it to and I'm glad to see that the institutional momentum here is a core value.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#673

Post by pmlnr » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #668

worrycue wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise Musk as much as anyone else and charging for API access has hurt a lot of valuable use cases like improving accessibility but … how about not massive scraping a site that doesn’t want you to?

Scraping isn’t illegal, and to be honest, I’m not even sure it’s unethical. I’m assuming you think it so — if so, why? I’m not disagreeing, but haven’t given it much thought.

> I’m not even sure it’s unethical.

If it doesn't respect robots.txt, it is unethical.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#674

Post by brabel » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:13 AM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #644

kakakiki wrote: post #599

From Elon's twitter ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674942336583757825?s=20 ) "This will be unlocked shortly. Per my earlier post, drastic & immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping. Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data. It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an…

Isn't Musk a major investor in OpenAI? If he said "my data feeds chatgpt, not its competitors", that would make sense, right?

No, he sold all (I think) of his shares long time ago apparently because of conflict of interest with Tesla.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#675

Post by wahnfrieden » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:17 AM UTC

zeven7 wrote: post #654

HWR_14 wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Musk a major investor in OpenAI? If he said "my data feeds chatgpt, not its competitors", that would make sense, right?

He's been somewhat critical of OpenAI. Specifically the part about it pivoting to a for-profit business. > I’m still confused as to how a non-profit to which I donated ~$100M somehow became a $30B market cap for-profit. If this is legal, why doesn’t everyone do it? https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1636047019893481474 > I donated the first $100M to OpenAI when it was a non-profit, but have no ownership or control h…

You’re sharing lies. He donated $10 mil and talks it up 10x.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#676

Post by sangnoir » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:17 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #462

robot_no_421 wrote: post #395

Anybody feel like this is ironically going to accelerate the decline of twitter? I'm never, EVER making a twitter account. However publishers still communicate with me via tweets I could see. Now that I need an account to view tweets, publishers just have a smaller audience. I'll just see the screenshots on reddit anyway :)

> Anybody feel like this is ironically going to accelerate the decline of twitter? If Musks claim today is true ("This platform hit another all-time high in user-seconds last week"), then it is very much not in decline...

That's a fancy way to say it's infested by scraping bots, which makes sense since its been weeks since the API was dropped

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#677

Post by MisterBastahrd » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:17 AM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #154

nunez wrote: post #110

This killed nitter. Fuck. I guess I'm done with Twitter. Reddit is in Eternal September. Twitter is login-walled. If HN is next, I'll probably be mostly done with the Internet. This version of the Internet is starting to suck. :(

> This version of the Internet is starting to suck. :( The internet is fine. The highly centralized businesses that built themselves on the technology are meeting their inevitable end.

Wait until you realize that highly centralized businesses are a feature, not a bug.

We've BEEN through federated platforms before. We've even been through PROTOCOLS before. They're all horrible. The successor to any platform that currently exists will have slight improvements to what already exists, and that's IF they're able to do so.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I do have over 30 years of being around social media platforms on the internet.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#678

Post by ipsum2 » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:19 AM UTC

kakakiki wrote: post #599

From Elon's twitter ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674942336583757825?s=20 ) "This will be unlocked shortly. Per my earlier post, drastic & immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping. Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data. It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an…

This makes no logical sense. Why would the scraping not restart after its unlocked? More realistically, he got a lot of backlash from users and website owners where embedded tweets suddenly stopped showing up.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#679

Post by brabel » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:20 AM UTC

esalman wrote: post #619

darknavi wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely rough around the edges but getting into fediverse content (mastodon, kbin, lemmy, etc) has been extremely rewarding to me. It's like twitter and reddit but 15 years ago (and by that I mostly mean it's janky and full of bugs. Just like the web was 15 years ago!)

This. Twitter is doing what they can to drive people to mastodon. I've held off closing my Twitter account but I need to get better familiar with mastodon. I was wondering if there are accounts like NWS (weather updates) over there, or so they plan to have some soon. Also from brief exposure, servers like mastodon social reads like left wing echo chambers which is also cringe.

What kind of annoyances have you had on Twitter, as a user, that makes you want to leave?

I have been using Twitter more often lately as I really don't care about what they do to their APIs or whatever, and it's honestly improving lately.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#680

Post by wiseowise » Sat, Jul 01, 2023, 6:21 AM UTC

9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #668

worrycue wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I despise Musk as much as anyone else and charging for API access has hurt a lot of valuable use cases like improving accessibility but … how about not massive scraping a site that doesn’t want you to?

Scraping isn’t illegal, and to be honest, I’m not even sure it’s unethical. I’m assuming you think it so — if so, why? I’m not disagreeing, but haven’t given it much thought.

It’s ethical when your average Joe does it on a small scale to scrap their favorite favorite YouTuber or to buy something when it becomes available.

When you have financial incentive to build your business on someone’s data and you scrap literally millions if not billions of pages - it’s unethical.