Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#781

Post by hiepph »

gverrilla wrote: post #621
optymizer wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet I loved was full of random forums and text websites. If anything, I'm rejoicing and hoping this will mean less centralized forums. Y'all realize you can just not use reddit and Twitter right? You can host your own forum on the Internet

What is the easiest and cheapest way for me to host my own forum online and invite people I know to talk? Consider I know very little about hosting, web dev, php, etc. I'm actually interested in doing this! Thanks.

Definitely join a Fediverse (e.g. Lemmy, Mastodon)! You can host an instance, but still "linked" to other instances and communities so you won't feel isolated.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#782

Post by mnky9800n »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #770
realusername wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like Twitter is compensating tweet authors either. For using art the debate is still opened in my opinion even if I'm personally not in favor of it but I don't see how those platforms built on user made content (even more of a clear cut than AI) can have a say on this

People are happy to put their content on social networks. Maybe they get some value in return such as sales, exposure, signalling or simple enjoyment. Many people who aren’t that privacy conscious would however object to lots of companies, big and small, sucking their content into their databases for their own uses, then republishing after it’s passed through a few AI models.

Yes. AI is becoming the content launderer. I mean what's the difference? You could ask an AI to make not star wars. And what's the difference between that and all the not star wars movies made in the 80s? It's that it was automated this time around?

I think this points out that AIs clearly do not work like human brains. Human brains do not need all of the content of humanity to produce a replica of art station mediocre.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#783

Post by phito »

3cats-in-a-coat wrote: post #720
dang wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn't next. We hate change. (More precisely: we're acutely aware that users hate change, and since we do too, it's kind of an easy call.) Also, the value of HN to YC consists of the community and keeping the community happy is therefore a must. (Did I say happy? More precisely: as happy as possible under the circumstances)

The choice is not between no change and drastic change, but selecting a rate of change that is appropriate. Things which do not change, die, as the only thing that is constant is change. Change or be changed.

Sharks haven't changed in about 450 million years. There are designs that just work and don't need to change unless the environment changes drastically.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#785

Post by larodi »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #683
kakakiki wrote: post #599

From Elon's twitter ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674942336583757825?s=20 ) "This will be unlocked shortly. Per my earlier post, drastic & immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping. Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data. It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an…

Elon has a good point there. Much of the current AI hotness is predicated on stealing peoples content and exploiting the infrastructure that other people have built. I don’t think it’s acceptable. The licenses, compensation models, law, technical solutions, attribution, security and privacy all need time to catch up. Regulation has a role to play as its a bit of a free for all right now. The irony of Elon mentioning…

Elon is making a point and a reminder for everyone that what you share on social nets like Twitter is basically not owned by you, but the service.

Actually I’m surprised this took so long to do, and in the light of doing so shows that perhaps Twitter was sold for its existing content rather than existing or active user base.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#786

Post by oefrha »

guax wrote: post #730
oefrha wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think companies massively scraping right now would respect API rate limit?

API rate limits are more easily enforceable. If they keep scraping there are methods to detect and thwart behaviour. I don't think twitter has the appropriate talent and work environment to allow proper solutions to be implemented. It's all knee jerk reaction to whatever Elon decides.

It's more easily enforced, except when you don't give them enough they just go back to scraping. Or create a million fake developer accounts and pool the free quota if that's possible. These are not hypotheticals, loads of companies have done both against all kinds of APIs over the years, Twitter included.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#787

Post by epidemian »

larodi wrote: post #785
benjaminwootton wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon has a good point there. Much of the current AI hotness is predicated on stealing peoples content and exploiting the infrastructure that other people have built. I don’t think it’s acceptable. The licenses, compensation models, law, technical solutions, attribution, security and privacy all need time to catch up. Regulation has a role to play as its a bit of a free for all right now. The irony of Elon mentioning…

Elon is making a point and a reminder for everyone that what you share on social nets like Twitter is basically not owned by you, but the service. Actually I’m surprised this took so long to do, and in the light of doing so shows that perhaps Twitter was sold for its existing content rather than existing or active user base.

> [...] perhaps Twitter was sold for its existing content rather than existing or active user base.

Not a very significant distinction: if active users stopped posting, scrappers wouldn't have much of a reason to keep scrapping.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#788

Post by smcl »

kakakiki wrote: post #599

From Elon's twitter ( https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674942336583757825?s=20 ) "This will be unlocked shortly. Per my earlier post, drastic & immediate action was necessary due to EXTREME levels of data scraping. Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data. It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an…

Sorry I don’t buy it. Hundreds of millions of people use Twitter, and we are to understand that there are an enough people scraping to the extent that they had to suddenly take drastic action by shuttering unauthenticated access? Any dev would have told him that those supposedly scraping could simply setup Selenium or some other headless browser to login before scraping.

This smells of another failed Musk experiment at twiddling with the knobs to increase engagement, to me.

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#789

Post by smcl »

worrycue wrote: post #635
zerd wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they killed the API, what did they think would happen? It's easier to control access and rate limit with a proper API.

I despise Musk as much as anyone else and charging for API access has hurt a lot of valuable use cases like improving accessibility but … how about not massive scraping a site that doesn’t want you to?

You might want to think twice about taking him at face value then. He says it’s about scraping but who knows anymore

Re: Twitter now requires an account to view tweets

#790

Post by fauigerzigerk »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #770
realusername wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like Twitter is compensating tweet authors either. For using art the debate is still opened in my opinion even if I'm personally not in favor of it but I don't see how those platforms built on user made content (even more of a clear cut than AI) can have a say on this

People are happy to put their content on social networks. Maybe they get some value in return such as sales, exposure, signalling or simple enjoyment. Many people who aren’t that privacy conscious would however object to lots of companies, big and small, sucking their content into their databases for their own uses, then republishing after it’s passed through a few AI models.

>People are happy to put their content on social networks.

Do they have a choice? A handful of corporations have captured all the network effects. If you need to reach an audience to do your job or find your "friends", what other choice do you have but to give your data to them?

Post reply on HN