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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

#21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> need to become a user of the website Why? You can show people the same advertising either way so signifying up with a junk e-mail address and forcing a login is really kind of a pointless hoop.

It will make their metrics look better

That might help some middle managers at Twitter but it’s irrelevant to the company. If anything adding such pop up’s just costs them views and thus revenue.

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

#22

> 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.…

> Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account

Sure, but then it should be banned from use by politicians for public announcements made in official fashion.

Would there be anyone left on Twitter?

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

#23

> 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.…

> Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me.

Reddit's unusable with an account too. So annoying when I just want to read a thread and it want's to draw my attention every which way. Notifications and the reply text never work on Firefox and using old is getting more and more inconvenient.

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

#24
Note that a huge issue I see is that Twitter is used by a lot of governments for official announcements.

Back when Twitter was open, using it for goverment communication was OK, like it is OK for governments to make public announcements on public TV.

But imagine an important announcement is only made on a private TV channel!

Even if that private TV channel were free, but you have to accept FAANG ToS, it’s still wrong and probably must be unconstitutional in some way.

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

#25

> 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.…

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 telling me to get the reddit app. I close it. I have to click 'read more' to load the rest of the main content. When I scroll to the comments, the first one or two are visible, and then I get a popup telling me reddit is better in an app. If the information about shovels was rated as adult content, I have already seen the content, but then at the comments, I get a popup that tells me to go to the main reddit page, or an option to install the reddit app.

I click back. The third hit on google was also reddit. I repeat the above.

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

#26

> 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.…

>If you’re trying to scroll deep into conversations or someone’s Tweets, it’s reasonable to expect that you’d need to become a user of the website. You can't just make throwaway accounts on Twitter though, they ban them after a few hours if you don't verify by phone number. So really it's forcing you to hand over a lot of personal information just to read what is essentially a few forum posts.

We surely don’t expect that a business should have its value proposition make sense for everyone.

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

#28

> 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.…

> Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. Reddit's unusable with an account too. So annoying when I just want to read a thread and it want's to draw my attention every which way. Notifications and the reply text never work on Firefox and using old is getting more and more inconvenient.

Reddit is much more usable with the "old" version of the site, which you can set as the default in your preferences.

Frankly, I'm continually amazed that they haven't killed it off yet, but for now it's a big improvement.

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

#29

> 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.…

> Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account. If you’re trying to scroll deep into conversations or someone’s Tweets, it’s reasonable to expect that you’d need to become a user of the website.

Oh of course. But then it should have been that way from the start. Instead they were user-friendly at first, and only once they'd grown enough so they could rely on network effects for dominance, did they turn hostile. A bait and switch, tricking people into relying on them, and then turning evil once switching to a different platform becomes too difficult.

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

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t forget Reddit. Reddit’s login pop-ups are more aggressive than Twitter’s for me. Reddit's unusable with an account too. So annoying when I just want to read a thread and it want's to draw my attention every which way. Notifications and the reply text never work on Firefox and using old is getting more and more inconvenient.

Reddit is much more usable with the "old" version of the site, which you can set as the default in your preferences. Frankly, I'm continually amazed that they haven't killed it off yet, but for now it's a big improvement.

Even if they do kill it off, you could use an alternate front end that goes through the Reddit APIs. I know I've seen https://teddit.net/ posted here on HN before as one option.
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