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Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

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Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#371

Post by BirAdam »

thomasahle wrote: post #153
KSteffensen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the hell are government agencies using Twitter/Facebook for official communication in the first place? At the very least if these sites are being used for official communication that might be critical to peoples safety some sort of privileged status or ToS should be negotiated. Can you imagine Musk banning some random non-USA government agency because he had a fit while high at 3 am? Also: https://xkcd.com/743/

> Why the hell are government agencies using Twitter/Facebook for official communication in the first place? It's the responsibility of the government to make information available where the citizens are. As the citizens moved from radio and TV to social media, the government followed.

Definitely this. The big thing now will be: where is everyone? Twitters active user numbers are fine, but for how long? Likewise with Facebook as younger people aren’t showing up there. Will the governments of the USA need to be on every single platform? Should USDS just make a new news site just for the governments to broadcast on?

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#372

Post by toyg »

MattGaiser wrote: post #357
zmmmmm wrote: post #337

It always irked me that public institutions embraced Twitter as a primary means of communication in many cases. It never seemed right that a private company was being put in between public functions and the the public which depends on them. Not to mention, since I live outside the US, a private company in another country. I even wrote complaints to one local public body to ask them to set up a communication channel t…

On the other hand, public institutions have long been criticized for not communicating where the people are. Notices posted on their own website are unlikely to read by anywhere as broad an audience. Plenty uses newspapers, but even my grandparents get stuff from Twitter before the paper now, if just from younger people sharing it with them. I agree Twitter shouldn't be the only channel, but it is where the people ar…

They should have promoted RSS.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#373

Post by z2h-a6n »

gpxyz wrote: post #353
7e wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are centralized businesses doomed to fail? It’s been the primary organizational mode for the last 10,000 years.

Genuinely curious: which centralized businesses existed in 8000 BCE?

And more to the point, what fraction of centralized businesses in the past 10,000 (or even 1,000, or even 100) years did not eventually fail?

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#375

Post by UlisesAC4 »

KSteffensen wrote: post #35
agluszak wrote: post #30

And now imagine a citizen wants to quickly check news/updates/whatever from a government agency or a city council which doesn't have a fediverse account

Why the hell are government agencies using Twitter/Facebook for official communication in the first place? At the very least if these sites are being used for official communication that might be critical to peoples safety some sort of privileged status or ToS should be negotiated. Can you imagine Musk banning some random non-USA government agency because he had a fit while high at 3 am? Also: https://xkcd.com/743/

> Why the hell

Simple, if you are not there you do not exist. Go and check how many of your contacts follow the oficial accounts of your local government.

Also, the common layman isn't anyone that suddenly gets the urge to check your official webpage, if you are lucky you are in their social media results.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#376

Post by sorenjan »

ncallaway wrote: post #158
sorenjan wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the news, images, and video originates from Telegram. Even if you don't want an account you can view channels without logging in... For example: https://t.me/s/pilotblog , but there are usually t.me watermarks on videos so you can find plenty of others.

As someone who’s been consuming a lot on Twitter and Reddit, can you recommend a decent set of telegram channels that I could follow to stay up to date?

Not really, since I try to not follow it too closely for my own sanity's sake. The channel I mentioned is Denys Davydov, a Ukrainian who also has his own Youtube channel where he posts updates.

If you want the most up to date stuff you would probably have to follow some Russian and Ukranian channels, Telegram has built in Google translate to make that slightly easier. Reddit is probably a good place to start to find some.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#377

Post by johannes1234321 »

rchaud wrote: post #296
dbg31415 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This version of the Internet is starting to suck. :( Totally! The internet was better before pay walls / auth walls. I get why we're here today, and I get that the last phase was just about acquiring an audience, and getting people hooked, and now this part of getting everyone to pay was always the plan, but this part really does suck. Just feels like all the services lined up to start shitting on users at the same…

If P2P micropayments could somehow have succeeded, then a different Internet could have been possible. Tipping content creators directly is impossible without megacorporations taking a cut, be it Apple, Paypal, Patreon etc, and their unit economics work better with recurring payments, which lands us in subscription hell. One would almost be tempted to ask for a cheque in the mail like in the old days.

flattr was an interesting idea of a micropayment approach. Asically a subscription amount and then spread around sites.

But I guess for publishers it never produced enough revenue to be worth maintaining the integration.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#379

Post by tayo42 »

Stephen304 wrote: post #335
tayo42 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can servers be ad supported? Like can I run a Google ad on my own instance?

There's nothing stopping you, the source code is freely available to edit when you start up your instance. It would probably limit the appeal of your instance to many people and maybe some very ideological smaller instances might defederate, I doubt the other major instances would care much since only those signed up at or browsing through your instance would see the ads.

I guess if I put enough effort into it I could fork it. Is it that easy though? Or not built in already

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#380

Post by square_usual »

coldpie wrote: post #175
hedora wrote: post #151

Uggh. I only use twitter to follow critical (life-and-death) emergency broadcasts from our local fire department. Is there a viable alternative for them to use now that twitter is going to block most of our county’s residents?

Not really. Blue Sky is the most promising replacement I've seen, but it's just another for profit company, so it will follow the same pattern eventually. I think an official government Mastodon or similar would work, but it really needs to be something hosted by a competent IT dept (meaning federal, in the US), with strict and well considered policies (who gets an account on it?) and with massive buy-in at all level…

nobody's going to be posting on a government-run mastodon like they do on twitter
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