Scraping using a verified account (6000*30=180k tweets for 8$) seems to be cheaper than using the API (you would need 4 basic accounts (50k tweets, 100$/month) - is this pricing for real?)
Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
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Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
16 hours? If you're scrolling 100 tweets/min, you'd hit the unverified user limit within 6 minutes, and the verified user limit within an hour
I don't understand, are you actually reading 100 tweets/minute, or just endlessly scrolling through random data for thumb exercise? When you make the good faith assumption that people are actually reading through the content, the numbers start to seem a bit more rational.
Nobody consumes twitter that way.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternatively, the costs outweigh impression revenue, they are actively running out of money, and trying to stall while desperately trying to find additional cash.
That seems… implausible? They used to be profitable; clearly at that point advertising revenue must have greatly exceeded infra cost. Now, I’d buy that it’s down, but surely not by _that_ much.
But there are now big debt payments that didn't exist before, from the massively leveraged buyout.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#274Is openAI (and all new upstart model training data scrapers) really this scary to Twitter's existence? I understand that their desire to scrape all of your content for free is absolutely total bullshit, and I actually find myself sympathetic to this. So I get the rate limit idea, but can you really not detect a bot vs a user?
Twitter is a crack pipe for dopamine hits, which OpenAI has no business in. Highly doubt bots is the actual reason, since they have had that problem since forever. Now, infrastructure bills could be a real reason.
which makes me wonder what's wrong with me that i get absolutely no pleasure from twitter like that or any socials really. i see no difference in reading twitter than watching kardashians, yet everyone else clearly does making me the outlier. i spend so much time solving for edge cases that i am one
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
For 16 hours straight with no breaks? Your phone's battery would die before that was exceeded.
At 100 tweets/minute they would reach the limit in an hour, wouldn't they?
More like 6 minutes (600/100) if they're scrolling throughout. Perhaps unrealistic but even given generous allowances, a frequent user of Twitter is screwed within the hour, yes.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instagram doing a fediverse thing is a big deal, and makes me really optimistic about the future of ActivityPub. We don't have it all figured out just yet, but I do think we're going to see a decentralized future of social media, which is pretty exciting.
Instagram is also apparently building a Twitter-like app, which as much as I hate FB/IG, would probably convince me to switch into their ecosystem again.
I don’t use Facebook because of all the crimes against humanity but I’ll be honest. If the cage match happens and Zuckerberg beats the snot out of Musk, I’m a Facebook user for life. I think a lot of people would feel the same. Meta has a chance to turn everything around.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#277I knew the end of the cheap money era would cause some businesses to be exposed but wow. We are basically in the middle of watching someone flush 44 billion down the drain. I could understand if it was a 600 posting limit. But a 600 viewing limit? wow. For example, NBA free agency just started. There are types of trades & signings being talked about. Just looking at that information I'm going past the 600 limit in ab…
I've just been googling "Damian Lillard" every 5 minutes I don't know what to do with myself
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#278It really feels like we're witnessing the end of an era. Elon is doggedly piloting Twitter into the ground and Reddit seems strangely compelled to follow his lead. Reddit may recover - I'm not so sure about Twitter. What technologies will take their place? In a time where it's never been easier to stand up your own website/forum/what have you, could we possibly see a gradual return to a pre-corporate Internet?
It doesn't feel like that to me. Elon reported that Twitter hit a new all time high of "user seconds" last week. Reddit usage doesn't seem to have gone down much. In my opinion, what you are really experiencing is wishful thinking.
Elon says a lot of things, like last fall when he was crowing about how Twitter had the bot problem licked. Fast forward to today and bot spam is worse than ever before.
You can believe what you want. I choose to believe what I see with my eyes.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm always a bit surprised how few people realized how many "nice things" from the last decade plus have been heavily subsidized by VC money (which itself was created from low interest rates). Every cool startup that people loved started by burning cash. This made Uber cheap, DoorDash cheap, Youtube helpful and creative, Facebook about connecting with classmates, Twitter a free public forum, Reddit a playground for f…
Yep somewhere along the way we forgot that you can't become profitable on volume when marginal revenue is negative. This is first-year business undergrad stuff.
I don't think they forgot that, the general plan has been successive rounds of funding so you can say "valued at" at increasingly high values, then an IPO or a sneaky exit through secondary market share sales. Then some dummies who aren't you are left holding the bag.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#280I used to think tech/VC was smart…