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“It works better in the app”

shkspr.mobi

491–496 of 496 posts

Re: “It works better in the app”

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are there any respectable originations that still wish to be associated with the cesspool Xitter has become? Yes, that was the biggest topic under discussion in the threads about the Nitter C&D. And most of sports is apparently still on there, to the point I hear people talking about how they only use it for sports news. Honestly, the belief that Twitter has suddenly become a cesspool and everyone left is a (vocal)…

People saying that "The MechaHitler App" is a cesspool are the out of touch ones? The vast majority of users rely on the algorithm that suppressed posts that Musk doesn't like and promotes insane white supremacist propaganda. You say that you can avoid that, and I agree. You can use other apps. There are other ways to get the information you're interested in, there are other ways to disseminate information. You don't…

> People saying that "The MechaHitler App" is a cesspool are the out of touch ones?

No, I chose my words carefully. Thinking it suddenly became a cesspool makes you out of touch. Twitter, like all big social media, was a cesspool before Musk bought it, and that hasn't meaningfully changed since. And also like all big social media, it's basically fine and not a cesspool if you put a little effort into curating it. Twitter is actually better than some of the others, even, in my experience (though maybe I've just been more diligent in my curation of it).

There was a minor inflection point where a lot of very politically vocal people left, but for the majority, especially institutions, not much changed.

(And yeah, I'm not denying that Elon puts his hand on the scales of the algorithm. Some of what it pushes is disgusting and obnoxious. But I see disgusting/obnoxious stuff on other platforms too -- and that includes bluesky/mastodon)

Re: “It works better in the app”

#492
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit might be worse, actually, given their app is mediocre at best and they killed 3rd-party apps.

In the last couple months if you go to their site in a mobile browser (e.g. from search results), after a short scroll down they have this popup demanding you install their app and it completely takes over the screen. I take it as a reminder never to install their app.

Also they disabled old.reddit without login pretty recently. Which sucks, so I guess no more reddit boards for my debugging.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. I've been looking to do this setup. Would you share a few details of which tools you've used?

My setup is similar: A server at home runs Unbound for recursive DNS, filtered by Hagezi's blacklists. The phone (running GrapheneOS) consumes the DNS service through a Wireguard tunnel. This is 100% self-hosted and does not rely on Tailscale or a third-party DNS service. All the mobile carrier or WiFi hotspot used sees is a single encrypted connection to the server.

I absolutely love this. I thought Tailscale was necessary to establish that kind of wireguard tunnel. Would you have a link to a tutorial or write-up on how you got this set up?

Re: “It works better in the app”

#494
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a mobile dev and know the iOS ecosystem quite well, i can assure you that iOS APIs are locked and developers can access very little user data without user consent. What an iOS user is vulnerable to is fingerprinting (not too different than what happens on web tbh) and 0days. But given how valuable iOS 0days are it's unlikely they are used inside large scale generic apps and not for targeted attacks. Also it's unl…

Actually there are a lot of information that an app can do by default without asking for any permissions. You can check this opensource iOS app: https://github.com/mysk-research/loupe For instance: check if some apps are installed or not, and a lot of small informations about your device that can fingerprint your phone with 100% accuracy (like the exact time where the phone was setup).

I know Loupe, very cool project. Yes, as I said fingerprinting is the biggest risk, but personal data, photos, location, microphones, camera access are locked (which is what concerns most people).

Fingerprinting I would argue it's a problem on all platforms though, web included.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#495

As a user, I don't want to install an app if I can do it on the web. Most "apps" these days are just web sites wrapped in an app. What's more, they're usually 100% dependent on REST APIs so there's little advantage to having the app anyway. As a developer and (web) app vendor, I understand that many users still want apps. I just had a user ask when we'd be releasing our app for iOS. I explained that we did have an ap…

> Apple and Google hate the open web so they make it excessively difficult to "install" PWAs On iOS, is it not just a matter of tapping the "send" button and tapping [+] Add to Home Screen?

On my iPhone it's just 5 easy clicks:

Kebab Menu > Share > View More > Add to Home screen > Add

Android - Firefox: It's 4 clicks Android - Chrome: 3 clicks (Menu > Install App > Ok)

Re: “It works better in the app”

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> X remains a large, influential real-time news and conversation platform (~half a billion combined MAUs) Not news from anyone I want to hear about, not people I want to have a conversation with.

Considering the number of users, even official government departments, it still has, you would have to be very myopic and have very few interests for this to be true. The fact you're posting on Hacker News at all invalidates it; a huge portion of the type of people who hit the front page here are on Twitter.

Yes, I don't follow anyone on Twitter directly but often the primary/authorative source for something that gets posted elsewhere is still an post on X.com.
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