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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

#31

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

xg15 wrote: post #12

Meanwhile Twitter just straight-up put up a loginwall. Whenever I scroll down more than a few tweets, I get an undismissable popup prompting me to login.

Delete all Twitter cookies. If you’re not logged in you don’t need them. The wall disappears for awhile.

Up until the Ukraine war started, this worked for a few days and then I’d get the login wall. Delete cookies again, buy a few more days. Since the war started though they seem to be acknowledging a lot of non-logged-in people need to see tweets and I haven’t seen the login wall since.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#32

Post by thewebcount »

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?

OMG, Yes! I can't understand anything about it's interface. Sometimes there's a moderately straightforward discussion, other times, random, completely unrelated things show up looking like replies, but obviously aren't. Still other times the thing being linked to is a reply to something I can't see. It makes zero sense and I avoid going to Twitter if at all possible.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#33

Post by mikestew »

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?

I think it's a variation of Stockholm Syndrome at this point. I've used Twitter since early days, and the only reason I even keep an account is to keep the user name. But I quit regularly viewing Twitter going on probably close to ten years ago, and open it in some form maybe once a week to look at a specific post (not just browse).

So, as one who doesn't use the interface very often: it's a fucking dumpster fire. If one were one of today's 10K, seeing Twitter for the first time, imagine explaining how to read a thread (no, you are not allowed to direct the n00b to a 3rd-party tool such as Nitter). It would appear to me, a not-regular user, that Twitter tries to do threaded conversations and fails miserably. As with parent comment, finding the context quickly turns into actual work. Someone must get value out of Twitter if they put up with all this, but that someone is not me. At the end of the day, I find Twitter to just not be worth the trouble anymore.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#34

Post by woodruffw »

redmen wrote: post #24
woodruffw wrote: post #23

Twitter seems to be slowly asphyxiating itself in a number of ways: login walls, artificially curated timelines, and turning a blind eye to spam (it seems to be okay as long as it's terrible autogenerated NFT "art"?) all make it a thoroughly unpleasant service to use. I'm at the point where I'd rather not have it, but it's effectively the LinkedIn of my professional sphere.

Interestingly, I think login walls are to stop spam. It interests me how many design decisions by youtube, for example, were to stop spam and getting rid of fake views and likes. Not directly for the user's experience.

I'd believe that! It's entirely possible and even likely that they're well intentioned. But they just don't work, because the spam is coming from inside the house.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#35

Post by exfascist »

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?

It probably has to do with the (lack of) window management on mobile platforms and the coupling of which window is foreground to the (often also lack of) behavior of the application.

Man I don't miss owning a smartphone, this stuff is really pants on head retarded.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#37

Post by rado »

smegsicle wrote: post #15
rado wrote: post #8

The rampant tracking is a ticking time bomb.

how would you expect it to go off?

There will be a huge scandal when somebody's personal info leak leads to irreparable damage: exposed political affiliation, health issues, sexual orientation etc.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#39

Post by topspin »

mostlysimilar wrote: post #2

This drives me insane. Does nobody develop software for actual humans anymore?

This is developed for humans. Certain humans want you to submit to their 'engagement' regime, and these humans have tailored their platform to pressure you accordingly.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine led me to seek alternatives, and I now use nitter for those few Twitter accounts that I care to follow. It's no panacea, but it's better than being punished by Twitter for not logging in.

Re: The ever-increasing walled-gardeness of Twitter

#40

Post by aeturnum »

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?

First: you are not alone, that's normal.

Second: I think they are leaning into the surprising and sometimes pleasing juxtaposition of conversations that can be happening "close" to each other. Like, I'll click into a tweet, and generally the first "thread" is the one where the OP replies to themselves - but that's not always the case! Sometimes another reply is more popular and they will swap it.

I think they are trying to give you a sense of how the conversation has gone - when they break the thread they are showing you that, based on activity, other people are ignoring the thread and paying attention to this other thread. It messes you up if all you want to do is see what the OP said, but if you are there to see "why people care about this tweet" (also common) it's important to understand where things fell apart.

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