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The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

annoying.technology

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Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#181

Post by cloutchaser »

goldtownjac wrote: post #169

Lots of people in this thread complaining about user hostility and bad UX. I wholeheartedly agree. Twitter does not have your best interests at heart, and this ever-worsening dark pattern shows that very clearly. Why, then, do you subject yourself to it? I simply can't understand why someone would go through the trouble of using nitter, constantly clearing cookies, or using browser extensions _just to use a service t…

I don’t think this is understanding the strength of network effects. For people who are actually using Twitter for communication, networking, or being an influencer they can’t leave.

Gettr really drove this point home for me. Here’s a right wing Twitter alternative that’s actually not bad UX wise, it’s been recommended by big names including Joe rogan, yet what’s happened? Most conservative influencers have stayed on Twitter and complain on Twitter about Twitter censorship. They mirror their posts on gettr with some tool but that’s it, Twitter is still primary.

If you can’t even get these people to leave Twitter, that means something.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#182

Post by ls15 »

goldtownjac wrote: post #169

Lots of people in this thread complaining about user hostility and bad UX. I wholeheartedly agree. Twitter does not have your best interests at heart, and this ever-worsening dark pattern shows that very clearly. Why, then, do you subject yourself to it? I simply can't understand why someone would go through the trouble of using nitter, constantly clearing cookies, or using browser extensions _just to use a service t…

> Why, then, do you subject yourself to it? I simply can't understand why someone would go through the trouble of using nitter, constantly clearing cookies, or using browser extensions _just to use a service that is hostile to them_. Especially because you and I both know that these workarounds aren't going to work forever, and soon enough you'll be scrambling for another hole in the wall.

Network effects are real.

I only use Twitter to read posts that someone linked to. I would prefer these posts to be hosted elsewhere, but I have no control over that, just like I cannot control the messenger apps that others are using. I currently have three options for communicating online:

1) use the platform/protocol that someone else picked, directly or through some other tool

2) convince them to use the platform/protocol that I prefer

3) stop sharing content with that person

I think the only way out of this is regulation that breaks up walled gardens. Companies have no incentive to open up their gardens to competitors, so we may have to apply some force.

> Cut the cord. You don't need twitter. You don't need reddit, which has been employing similar patterns recently. The internet exists beyond these walled gardens. Take some time to reflect on your relationship to this technology and the people/ideas whose presence in your life/mind is dependent on it.

The cost for that for many people is losing connections to friends, family and other contacts, unless their peers migrate at the same time. That Signal moment was a bit like that when many people moved from Whatsapp to Signal. My wife was finally able to get rid of Whatsapp without losing contacts.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#183

Post by Mindwipe »

xg15 wrote: post #17
dmart wrote: post #5

The sub-rant about every app having its own browser really rang true for me. I never gave it much thought until now, but wow, what a horrible experience. Frequently I click a link to a private GitHub repo (404!) or a news article (paywall!) inside an app and then have to clunkily "Open in Safari" to actually apply my session cookie. To non-developers this must be even more confusing ("why am I only logged in some of…

I agree so much! I was puzzled when Google introduced that feature to android and even advised it as the recommended way for apps to open links. Can someone explain to me the reasoning behind that feature? I mean, I can sort-of understand that individual apps want me to stay inside the app as long as possible. But why would the platform vendor actively support or even push that pattern?

I imagine it was that apps were doing it anyway, and it was better to use the system browser that might actually be up to date security wise than have the apps bundle their own which was was based on nine month old code and horribly insecure more often than not.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#184

Post by grumbel »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #174
goldtownjac wrote: post #169

Lots of people in this thread complaining about user hostility and bad UX. I wholeheartedly agree. Twitter does not have your best interests at heart, and this ever-worsening dark pattern shows that very clearly. Why, then, do you subject yourself to it? I simply can't understand why someone would go through the trouble of using nitter, constantly clearing cookies, or using browser extensions _just to use a service t…

More importantly, don't let this happen again. How many times does someone have to fall for the same scam before they deserve some of the blame? Only support services that aren't blatantly trying to buy their way into becoming a monopoly and abusing their locked in customers.

> Only support services that aren't blatantly trying to buy their way into becoming a monopoly and abusing their locked in customers.

There are no such services. Everything that gets popular goes for abuse and lock-in and often they only start with that after they already have become wildly popular. There is nothing you can do against it.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#185

Post by nmlt »

Retric wrote: post #179
dewey wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of content that only exists in these walled gardens. It's easy to say "don't watch that movie if you don't like it" but Twitter has a lot of information that you can't find anywhere else. Just like YouTube which can be a bad place but still has a lot of documentaries and valuable content that's only there and makes it worth jumping through hoops for.

There is vastly more great content out there than you could ever consume. Avoiding Twitter and or YouTube is hardly a major sacrifice.

This is something you don’t believe until you do it. I can only recommend to take the step to cut out these platforms from your digital life.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#186

Post by helloworld11 »

It's really not hard to just..... not use twitter. I've had an account since nearly ten years ago and maybe logged in or posted 5 or 6 tweets, nearly a decade ago, then just stopped using it completely. Now, on rare occasions, I open a twitter thread, read some particularly relevant content (to me), click any links available and bug right out again until months later. Or I used to until they did one more shitty little thing in terms of making logins even to scroll a few moments obligatory. So, nitter then, if the original Twaddler link is something I absolutely think is worth checking out for a few moments. As for actually participating in that toxic, naval gazing shit show of hostile tribalism, insipid 140 character nonsense and random incoherent snark, no thanks. I can't even fathom why so many people give a damn at all.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#187

Post by thaumasiotes »

redmen wrote: post #83
anothernewdude wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think login walls are to stop spam You need a login in order to spam. What a stupid theory.

That's exactly what I said LOL. What's the need for your anger?

> That's exactly what I said LOL

Well, no, it's exactly the opposite of what you said. It's kind of concerning that you can't tell the difference.

A login requirement can't have any effect on spammers, because -- in order to be spammers -- they must already have satisfied that requirement. The only people a login requirement can exclude are, by definition, not spammers.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#188

Post by bromuro »

eminence32 wrote: post #21

One of the things that has always confused me about twitter is that it seems to be offering a threaded conversation model, yet it tries to "flatten" the conversation and render things in a linear timeline. I've always struggled to understand the full context of the tweet I'm reading (that is, where is this tweet in the full conversation?). Do others also struggle with this? Am I just Doing It Wrong?

Same here! Eg I sent a “threaded” tweet, now my timeline is full of out-of-context tweets. WTF.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#189

Post by slightwinder »

eminence32 wrote: post #21

One of the things that has always confused me about twitter is that it seems to be offering a threaded conversation model, yet it tries to "flatten" the conversation and render things in a linear timeline. I've always struggled to understand the full context of the tweet I'm reading (that is, where is this tweet in the full conversation?). Do others also struggle with this? Am I just Doing It Wrong?

> One of the things that has always confused me about twitter is that it seems to be offering a threaded conversation model, yet it tries to "flatten" the conversation and render things in a linear timeline.

They do not flatten it to a linear timeline, they "optimize" it by mixing in the important sub-threads. Generally they show only the first level of replies. and then they optimize it by also showing some replies to those replies, which can go down pretty deep. So basically they give the thread, but selectively hide the unimportant parts. I understand the reasoning here, as there popular tweets can gain many replies of which most are just noise. But the actual result is a clusterfuck of experience which only makes it worse.

And lately they even made it worse, because now they also show irrelevant tweets under the normal tweet-view, and it's hard to see where the original tweet ended.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#190

Post by derbOac »

grumbel wrote: post #173
goldtownjac wrote: post #169

Lots of people in this thread complaining about user hostility and bad UX. I wholeheartedly agree. Twitter does not have your best interests at heart, and this ever-worsening dark pattern shows that very clearly. Why, then, do you subject yourself to it? I simply can't understand why someone would go through the trouble of using nitter, constantly clearing cookies, or using browser extensions _just to use a service t…

> The internet exists beyond these walled gardens. Barely. The amount of content that is locked in Twitter, Reddit, Youtube and Co. is enormous and I have never managed to find anything that can remotely compete with them. Worse yet, most alternatives are just clones of those services, they don't really change anything fundamentally. If they would ever get successful, they would go down the very same path. See imgur,…

I agree with you about content but maybe disagree about the cure. Legislation might not hurt, but if an alternative became popular that was more or less a clone, except it was federated or decentralized, it would also be enough.

The "regular" web and email get a lot of criticism for various things, but they can be thought of as federated platforms people adopted. They're the glue that makes these other things usable.

I'm not advocating for anything in particular, but if you could get enough people to start using a federated alternative, I think it would be enough.

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