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Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

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Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#771

Post by throw2022110401 »

KronisLV wrote: post #710
disillusioned wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If it ain't broke, don't destroy it. That's actually a nice way of putting it! Better than the "fix" version, because this is clear on the consequences. I feel like it might be applied to everything from OS UI design (Windows 11), web platform redesigns (Google's icons) to whatever is going on with social media (the silly enshittification term describes this) and many other things.

Yeah, it really is "destroy".

Let's say that you are the proud owner of a goose that lays golden eggs. "fixing" would be switching it to a different feed that might make it more productive, or it might make it sick. But this year the trend is to give it a few good kicks to see if that helps.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#772

Post by miramba »

Many public or semipublic institutions like local and federal government, police, public transport made regular announcements there and sometimes only there. Hopefully this practice will change now that they see that it can become non-public in an instant. Citizens shouldn‘t be required to subscribe to large, private, foreign media companies to see announcements of their own government.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#773

Post by croes »

pavlov wrote: post #753

Hopefully this marks the end of posting direct tweet links to HN. I’ve been avoiding clicking Twitter links, and it’s frustrating to see them on the HN front page but then having to infer the content from comments. Maybe HN could even have a “Submit a microblog link” feature for that kind of content? When submitting a microblog link, there would be a small text box where you could copy the content of the tweet/whatev…

Could be problem if the original source get deleted because of legal reasons.

And I prefer the original source even if I don't like it.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#774

Post by kogepathic »

meepmorp wrote: post #507
threeseed wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is in charge of Product and Technology so this is his decision. She is much more akin to a CEO at Large running around closing ad deals.

Imagine trying to do your job closing ad deals and the owner decides to block public access without prior notice. Nothing says "we're a trustworthy partner who won't damage your brand," like major changes made seemingly at random.

> Nothing says "we're a trustworthy partner who won't damage your brand," like major changes made seemingly at random.

This has been Twitter's Modus operandi from well before Musk acquired them.

They announced new features through Tweets (remember Fleets?) with glaring issues at launch (no authentication required to view a Fleet) and without any corresponding API documentation. The GraphQL that backs their website has more features and bug fixes than their paid API!

They also famously do not have a staging environment, which frequently caused issues when new features were deployed or tested with a subset of users.

Twitter has never been a trustworthy or reliable partner. They are just more of an obvious dumpster fire since the Musk acquisition.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#775

Post by wruza »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #720
dang wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

The choice is not between no change and drastic change, but selecting a rate of change that is appropriate. Things which do not change, die, as the only thing that is constant is change. Change or be changed.

I visit a few sites that never changed (or at least changed things only few were even aware of) and they live long enough to lose count of hordes of change-praisers appear and die.

I believe this eternal loop of change is a trap that impatient people force themselves in. Instead of accustoming and learning the current state, they rush into another one with a change that has unclear implications. As a result, they never get where they are and lose any track of where they were or where they’re heading at. Their only comfort can be found in a constant change.

These few sites are like home to me. One of them I visit with years-long pauses and every time I return it’s the same user experience. That’s invaluable.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#776

Post by neop1x »

hedora wrote: post #151

Uggh. I only use twitter to follow critical (life-and-death) emergency broadcasts from our local fire department. Is there a viable alternative for them to use now that twitter is going to block most of our county’s residents?

They can host their Mastodon instance maybe?

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#777

Post by ricardobayes »

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)

It's ambiguous what GP refers to as "next", but if it's the Eternal September part, I believe HN unfortunately already suffers a lot from it. In my subjective opinion, comment quality took a nosedive in the past 2-3 months or so. That said, I have no idea how to fix it, if it needs fixing at all.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#778

Post by peter_retief »

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…

I was about to say that, I read the same post, I also agree somewhat.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#779

Post by hiepph »

incompatible wrote: post #470
teddyh wrote: post #76

Paul Graham famously started to use Mastodon (but has not written anything there since last year). But the HN Status emergency “is HN down” channel is still only on Twitter. It used to be publicly readable at https://twitter.com/HNStatus >. But now, if HN was to go down, only logged-in Twitter users would be able to see why.

If HN is down, I'll just try again in a few hours, or maybe tomorrow. Maybe I'd start getting interested about what happened it was down for a week or so. Would HN being down count as an emergency for anybody else?

Well, I read HN daily at breakfast so having it down feels annoying. But yeah, if it'down, I won't consider it an emergency.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#780

Post by okeuro49 »

worrycue wrote: post #635
zerd wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they killed the API, what did they think would happen? It's easier to control access and rate limit with a proper API.

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?

> I despise Musk as much as anyone else

I don't despise Musk at all. Don't agree with him on everything, but he is a genuine and interesting person.

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