Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 577 posts

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#51

Post by est »

scuff3d wrote: post #43
input_sh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this would even make it into top 10 good reasons to stop using Twitter.

A crazy ass billionaire trying to develop an "everything" app seems like a pretty damn good reason to run the other direction. I wouldn't want anyone controlling an app like that, much less Elon fucking Musk.

the same story applies to Wechat. Pony Ma was crazy rich for QQ and games already, he created another Wechat. Lots of ppl tried to boycott it, but network effect forced everyone to use it.

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#52

Post by lysp »

stillatit wrote: post #49
gcr wrote: post #48

Does this mean an attacker can turn any impression into any GET request?

Not sure how much of an attack that is. FWIW the preloading is nice as a user.

Is the request coming from the user's IP or via a Twitter proxy?

As a plain webview would mean that you can grab everyone's details.

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#54

Post by estimator7292 »

teiferer wrote: post #31
davedx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. You used to be able to read Twitter fine without being logged in

When was that? Already pre-Elon it was terrible.

Sorry, are you actually five years old? Until just a few years ago Twitter was entirely open. You could view any and all public tweets, replies, threads. All exactly like you were logged in. Their APIs were open and you could literally plug the entire stream of all tweets from all users on the actual planet in real time into your own application.

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#55

Post by CaptWillard »

scuff3d wrote: post #24
est wrote: post #12

That's precisely what Wechat is doing. Most chinese "mega apps" do this. Elon absolutely on his track to copy this important feature [1] The webview works as a traffic faucet. Elon can turn it on or off for every third-party site, you know, for "Internet safety". My take: Next step is X.com proprietary APIs inside the Webview, like payment and everything. The ultimate goal is a "mini-app" framework that use PWA-like…

If there was ever a good reason to stop using Twitter, this is it.

I'm fascinated with the number of users of this site who seem disproportionately invested in getting people to stop using Twitter.

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#56

Post by T3RMINATED »

davedx wrote: post #29
teiferer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always been like that. Twitter, Instagram, ... None of those platforms have usable UX if you're not logged in.

False. You used to be able to read Twitter fine without being logged in

[dead]

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#57

Post by paxys »

CaptWillard wrote: post #55
scuff3d wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there was ever a good reason to stop using Twitter, this is it.

I'm fascinated with the number of users of this site who seem disproportionately invested in getting people to stop using Twitter.

Yeah it's so fascinating that people want an open internet rather than a small group of billionaires and big tech companies controlling everything. Truly bizarre.

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#58

Post by callamdelaney »

estimator7292 wrote: post #54
teiferer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was that? Already pre-Elon it was terrible.

Sorry, are you actually five years old? Until just a few years ago Twitter was entirely open. You could view any and all public tweets, replies, threads. All exactly like you were logged in. Their APIs were open and you could literally plug the entire stream of all tweets from all users on the actual planet in real time into your own application.

Actually, you definitely could not plug the entire stream of all tweets from all users in real time into your own application (without huge cost). You only would ever see a subset of tweets via twitters API's and search results, if you wanted the full thing you had to pay for 'the firehose' which was very expensive.

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#59

Post by labrador »

On a related topic, I've been following with some amusement the outrage on Reddit/r/Grok because Grok will no longer make porn. Apparently Grok was trained on all the NSFW material on X and Twitter before it intentionally so Grok could have a "spicy" mode. And spicy it was. Some of the stuff it made was really good and people loved it. But (allegedly) Musk changed his mind to go after enterprise and government accounts so spicy mode was killed and now there a lot of angry users complaining on Reddit.

My interest is this: It appears that it's not possible to over-ride the training effectively since NSFW material bleeds into normal image requests. Musk had this problem before trying to over-ride Grok's training, so at one point said he would have to retrain Grok. It's interesting to me that LLMs can't be steered effectively, which makes me wonder if they can ever really be aligned ("safe")

Re: Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

#60

Post by netsharc »

gcr wrote: post #48

Does this mean an attacker can turn any impression into any GET request?

It'd be an interesting way to count how many impressions your tweets get: add a URL to every tweet, put a tracking "pixel" in the webpage (assuming the webview loads all assets; if not, then just add the "pixel' URL to the tweet..
Post reply on HN