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

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

#531
Since this got so much attention, I feel the need to add that the CEO of Substack is now saying that even accounting for fake views, their traffic from X has gone up substantially.

Tweet with graph: https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916

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

#532
post #507
post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

counter point: x active usage is down. the “ragey mob” were engaged users who have since left, along with the user growth and MAU.

Depending on the metric (e.g. MAU, DAU, web impressions etc) X is generally down about 3-20% since Elon's takeover. Seems fair to say X is a 'break even' investment at best . It will be extremely interesting to re-visit this thread in 10 years. X is currently a gateway for promoting Grok (with 11-figure DAU potential), and X is acquiring financial licences in US states, with a view to becoming an 'everything app' (so…

How exciting…

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

#533
post #523

This link is all you need to know about the lack of free-speech Twitter has. https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-s...

That's incredibly damning. The throttling of Substack writers is so cruel, especially considering how much these writers have contributed to Twitter.

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

#534

Nobody wants a damn web view. If I'm clicking off to a link, I may want to click to another app and back in and still be where it was... If it's in a webview that's gone as soon as I click out. Yes, you can open in Chrome or whatever, open in a browser, but that's a pain in the ass to do an the time. I hate web views, in all forms.

>Nobody wants a damn web view. OP here. This might be a classic Hacker News sentiment that's not shared by normal users. Being able to instantly return to where you were without having to navigate apps is probably appreciated by a lot of people. (As would be preloading in this instance). FWIW when I first started browsing HN a common complaint was websites being mobile sized. The sentiment here was they should be ren…

Something I see relatives do sometimes is they get a link to a facebook event over meta's messenger, and then they click the link and it opens in messenger's web view, which inexplicably isn't signed into facebook, so they can't view the event, and they don't understand why, as they are signed into facebook in their web browser.

They're also often very confused why they can't find links they've opened in web views in their browser's tabs or history.

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

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government has been posting a lot of information (weather alerts, road works, etc.) on their own, dedicated Mastodon instance. They don't really advertise it, but it's good they have a platform to publish live information to in case the Americans continue to get weirder.

Do you have any examples of this? I'd love to point this out to my local government.

https://social.overheid.nl/directory has a list of government services, municipalities, and other stuff.

https://social.overheid.nl/@RWSverkeersinfo is for traffic conditions

https://social.overheid.nl/@knmi is the royal national weather service

Some services have shut down their Mastodon presence because their social media team found too little interaction and they don't want to use simple forward bots that nobody responds to, unfortunately.

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

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're either unwilling or incapable of understanding other people's perspectives it is indeed very difficult. Try this: steelman the argument that what Musk did all those months ago wasn't a "literal Hitler salute". If you can do that, I suspect you'll find it a lot easier to have nuanced discussions about that topic (and possibly others) going forward.

Or we could look at everything else he does, like advocate for the AFD in Germany.

And Reform UK in Great-Britain...

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

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you supposed to have a "nuanced discussion" about a guy doing literal Hitler salutes in public?

When you're either unwilling or incapable of understanding other people's perspectives it is indeed very difficult. Try this: steelman the argument that what Musk did all those months ago wasn't a "literal Hitler salute". If you can do that, I suspect you'll find it a lot easier to have nuanced discussions about that topic (and possibly others) going forward.

Looool is that all your argument? "Everyone hates this one simple trick against nazi: try to forget that they do nazi things, and boom!, you're no longer scared of actual nazis"

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

#538

Nobody wants a damn web view. If I'm clicking off to a link, I may want to click to another app and back in and still be where it was... If it's in a webview that's gone as soon as I click out. Yes, you can open in Chrome or whatever, open in a browser, but that's a pain in the ass to do an the time. I hate web views, in all forms.

>Nobody wants a damn web view. OP here. This might be a classic Hacker News sentiment that's not shared by normal users. Being able to instantly return to where you were without having to navigate apps is probably appreciated by a lot of people. (As would be preloading in this instance). FWIW when I first started browsing HN a common complaint was websites being mobile sized. The sentiment here was they should be ren…

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

#539
post #70

Again, anyone still using Twitter should know they are contributing to the richest man in the world actively pushing to disrupt the core fabric of our society.

I fully agree with your stance on Elon but I simply find Twitter too useful for too many things to quit. I've tried Bluesky and although I am very left-leaning on sociocultural topics I just find them too... annoying over there. (I'm closer to neoliberal on economic topics and that's also a bit of an issue there. And I like AI and they pretty much all deeply hate AI.)

It might be a 'cold start' problem that I had on Twitter a while ago as well. It takes a bit of time for communities to form, or for you do start interacting with people who are interesting and in the same circles, but also sharing cool stuff.

It is a journey, I still miss so many people from Twitter and it took me/us years of building a specific community, which is now mostly gone, but I do see signs of that appearing on Bluesky.

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

#540

Since we're doing PSAs, isn't it also now just a completely broken platform on mobile for everyone who isn't logged in? > Something went wrong, but don't fret - let's give it another shot. This is all I've seen for literally years now. No real error, does not even say to login or install an app, just blames it on my privacy extensions (I don't actually have any) and offers a button to pointlessly try again. No big lo…

I set up a URL redirect rule in Edge/Brave/Chrome with the extension URL Auto Redirector (previously used Redirector but it was removed, there are other alternatives available for Firefox I'm sure). I also found a similar front end for Instagram but just added a rule yesterday so haven't tested it extensively yet. I avoid most Twitter/X content after I deleted my account but it's helpful when it gets linked in HN. So…

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