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Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

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Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#141
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not want an account on a website you rely on? It's one thing to complain that your occasional visits to twitter are more inconvenient now. But if you would go so far as to say that people rely on them, then it seems like a silly hill to die on for those people to resist creating an account.

For me, it’s because I’m on my work machine. I don’t move my personal credentials to my work machine. (In fact, I moved over to my phone to write this comment.) We could discuss that aspect—sharing accounts on computers that don’t belong to me—but that’s why I’m often thwarted from reading content. I have the account, just not on me.

Juste create a new account every time

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#142

> Unfortunately twitter is going the direction of quora, pinterest, facebook, and medium Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. > Now you can perhaps read ten tweets or replies to a linked tweet without an account before the same thing occurs Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account.…

> I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account No no no, companies should not be allowed to this kind of bait and switch: 1) provide a free service 2) gain market dominance, push out competitors, and turn into a necessity for millions of users 3) create lock-in and exploit the userbase Essential public utilities are regulated (properly, in many countries) to avoid thi…

If Reddit or Twitter seems a necessity to you then you have problems and you should start working on them before you go around telling what someone should be allowed to do.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#144

> Unfortunately twitter is going the direction of quora, pinterest, facebook, and medium Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. > Now you can perhaps read ten tweets or replies to a linked tweet without an account before the same thing occurs Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account.…

No company even comes close to the transition that Reddit did that took them from a {clean,simple,dense,power-user friendly} interface to a horrible user-hostile shit show that it is now. The average Reddit user has to reach for a custom third party app on their phone or a browser plug-in that hacks a redirect to the old or third party interface. Quora doesn’t hold a candle.

Reddit is on a complete different level of abhorrent filth. The mobile experience is so obnoxious that it's fair to call it "evil".

And I'm only describing the technical aspect of it. The culture it encourages of people screaming divisive hate at each other, makes it possibly the worst corporation to have ever existed.

Notice that it's almost impossible to find people on HackerNews admitting they work there.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#145

Honestly, this seems like the most entitled thing ever. You want to use someone else's stuff for free but you get annoyed that they want you to have an account.

To be honest, once a company reaches the level of notoriety and dominance that Twitter has, "just don't use it" starts to sound like a pretty disingenuous argument. You can practically see the troll face appended to it.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#146

I see this as a feature and not a bug now that I no longer have an account on Twitter. If I absolutely want to read a tweet, I can. But the barrier to entry is a _good_ thing to me.

Yeah, same here. Especially with Instagram. ;-) Make me save so much time.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#147

> Unfortunately twitter is going the direction of quora, pinterest, facebook, and medium Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. > Now you can perhaps read ten tweets or replies to a linked tweet without an account before the same thing occurs Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account.…

I disagree. When Reddit, Quora, Medium, Twitter started, they have posed themselves as privately owned public spaces, much like Wikipedia. This was the 'social' contract they presented to users. They built their monopolies on top of the goodwill of users. I'm pretty sure that subject matter experts who wrote extremely long-winded and well-researched articles on Roman battle tactics, did not do so with the intent, tha…

remember when twitter provided rss feeds for user accounts man the internet used to be cool

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a cell phone, I can type "best driveway shovel" on my phone, and it will take me to google. Google will have an overlay that tells me searching for the best driveway shovels is better in an app. I close that overlay. The first hit is twitter. The second is reddit. I skip twitter. I get an overlay telling me to install a reddit app, or continue in the website. I click continue in website. There is an overlay tellin…

Old.reddit.com is the only remotely usable form of the website and seems to have none of the obnoxious popups.

I feel anxious every time I see old.reddit mentioned. If it gains traction, they may want to "improve" it.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#149
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Also called "growth engineering" and pretty much the basic mode of operation of silicon valley companies.

Yeah. And when they design the site to be addictive like a drug, it's "engagement engineering". When they spam us with noise, it's "advertising".

Doubleplusgood, this one.

Re: Tell HN: Twitter is growing increasingly unusable without an account

#150

> Unfortunately twitter is going the direction of quora, pinterest, facebook, and medium Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. > Now you can perhaps read ten tweets or replies to a linked tweet without an account before the same thing occurs Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account.…

Reddit is trying its best to beat Twitter here. A recent option has turned on posts from subreddits you are not subscribed to with a tag "because you visited here previously".

I'm not sure if this is desperation or simply callous disregard for users intelligence.

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