Lot of Musk bashing in the comments but I'd love to have more technical insight behind this decision. For instance, what rate limiting policy is reasonable for such a service. What was the policy before this decision?
Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
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Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you use Twitter? Even at the best of times, you learn to flip though fairly quickly skimming over the nonsense, and since the ascension of naughty ol’ mr car bluetick replies get promoted to the front of the queue, so you have to scroll past a sea of bullshit to get to the real replies. Twitter with 600 tweets a day is clearly unusable. That’s one large thread, and you’ll scroll past most of it anyway.
By your logic, everyone with a paid subscription constitutes "a sea of bullshit" and the "real replies" are at the back of the line? That's the most hipster-esque description of Twitter I've ever heard. Underground Twitter, it's where the cool kids hang out and vape behind the gymnasium. This sounds more like unresolved personal grudges rather than an issue with the platform itself and the masses that use it. If you…
In general, yes. Those who have to pay for attention are very rarely worth paying attention to, and the bluetick option doesn’t get you much other than artificial attention.
This isn’t theoretical; look at any high-traffic tweet (well, you can’t now; it’s broken. But if it comes back.) The top replies these days are virtually guaranteed to be nonsense.
Again I must ask, have you actually used the bloody website? It’s hard to imagine a regular user not being aware of this; it’s hard to miss.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#353How can that genius make such decision?
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not really sure what she thought was going to happen. There is no way that Musk was going to stop making decisions, especially about content moderation, which is really the main concern of advertisers. If he wants it to be his kind of speech over the concerns of advertisers, that's what it's going to be, and she has no path to success. I've heard Elon really seems like he's listening and that he's actually going…
> not really sure what she thought was going to happen Fat severance package, a post-termination book deal and international name recognition?
Maybe she gets a horse.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They could even ultimately challenge Reddit. Frankly I feel Google would be more motivated to challenge Reddit. Since so many of Google’s search results go to Reddit, they might as well try to take over that part of the web rather than leaving it in the hands of mercurial leadership of Reddit. The only problem is possible retaliation from Reddit and potential antitrust problems if other similar sites feel threatene…
Except Google seems completely incompetent at creating new products (though maybe YT shorts is the exception that proves the point) and very bad at handling community
YT shorts isn't a new product. It's a feature of an existing product, which happens to be the second biggest website.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#356Update from Elon: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675214274627530754 > Rate limits increasing soon to 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified lolwut. Quoting a post from Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@maxkennerly/110640373859329500 > LOL this is not how you deal with "data scraping," this is how you deal with a catastrophic loss of system capacity. > You limit data scraping by blocking th…
Turning a big dial that says "rate limit" on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on The Price Is Right
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#357It 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?
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…
> we were putting everything on a credit card and not worrying about the bill that eventually had to be paid
We (consumers) didn't put anything on a CC. VCs did.
And I count that for the blessing it was. I ordered tons of subsidized food on DoorDash, cheap rides on Uber, etc.
Now that golden era is over, and I will not be ordering any more of that stuff at the now exorbitant prices.
Thank you based VCs, for comping a bunch of stuff for me the last 10 years.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#358Because twitter is no longer publicly visibly can HN stop accepting submissions pointing to it?
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#359If there really are excessive scrapers i wonder if they will actually attempt to fan out across a bunch of accounts immediately or play chicken with Twitter here. How long does Twitter have to play chicken with them to get them to pay?
Does anyone have any ideas as to how they would approach this differently trying to achieve what twitter is? It seems like a proof of work captcha cost, balanced to the api fee, in the background or past a threshold of post views could drive scrapers into paying for the api. But that still requires playing cat and mouse well at the new accounts gate.
Re: Tell HN: Twitter switched temporarily to rate limited mode
#360This is hilarious. It appears that Twitter is DDOSing itself. The Twitter home feed's been down for most of this morning. Even though nothing loads, the Twitter website never stops trying and trying. In the first video, notice the error message that I'm being rate limited. Then notice the jiggling scrollbar on the right. The second video shows why it's jiggling. Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to its…
You mean to tell me that you can't actually run a tech company with three engineers and a Mac Mini?