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Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

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81–90 of 158 posts

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#81

This reminds me of how I hacked twitter 10+ years ago to get free SMS delivery for a web app I built. Before Twilio, custom SMS notification delivery was hard and expensive. At the time, twitter allowed you to receive SMS notifications of tweets posted to a followed account. I created a private account and used twitter's API to post tweets to with the notification content I wanted to send. I then had "dummy" accounts…

I did a similar thing with Google Calendar! Sadly they shut down their SMS notifications in November 2018.

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#82
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol I may or may not currently be using a Twitter account and cron to broadcast any changes to my (non-static) home ip address, encrypted, so I can ssh into my workstation when I'm on vacation.

Are dynamic DNS services no longer a thing?

It looks like they are, thanks! This is just what I could hack together before I went on Christmas break a couple years back lol.

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#83
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol I may or may not currently be using a Twitter account and cron to broadcast any changes to my (non-static) home ip address, encrypted, so I can ssh into my workstation when I'm on vacation.

Are dynamic DNS services no longer a thing?

Yep, free dynamic DNS still exists, for example NoIP https://www.noip.com/ However, you have to refresh it each month by filling out a "I'm still using it" web form they email you. So, you can't just set it & forget it.

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#84

I mean, Twitter over SMS made perfect and necessary sense back in the first decade of its life. But honestly the time has long since passed where it still makes sense to support. Smartphone notifications with the app are far superior in every way. (And if you don't want to install the app? I mean, just don't use Twitter then.) And the only people who don't have smartphones these days are the kind of people who have m…

> the only people who don't have smartphones these days are the kind of people who have made an intentional choice to reduce their always-on digital connection This needs to be qualified: with respect to Twitter's target audience . It's empirically not true that smartphone penetration is universal. Only ~350 million smartphones exist in India for 1 billion people, for example (source: McKinsey Global Institute's "Dig…

Totally agreed. I'm wondering if Twitter still supports SMS in India, but unfortunately can't locate any page that lists the countries they're still supporting.

Bizarrely, the relevant link in their help center is broken:

https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/supported-mobile-c...

It used to work:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200420041309/https://help.twit...

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#85

There's some irony in that Twitter have moved on from the 140 character limit, and now cutting off SMS. Both were core features of the platform when initially launched, so that it coupled nicely with mobile/cell phones (obviously in the pre smartphone era).

On the flip side, the experience is remarkably similar now to what it was a decade ago. It’s materially the same, which is rare for unicorns of this time.

10 years ago, did you have to tap "no" through 2 separate alerts to view a tweet in your web browser rather than the app?

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are dynamic DNS services no longer a thing?

Yep, free dynamic DNS still exists, for example NoIP https://www.noip.com/ However, you have to refresh it each month by filling out a "I'm still using it" web form they email you. So, you can't just set it & forget it.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#87
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are dynamic DNS services no longer a thing?

It looks like they are, thanks! This is just what I could hack together before I went on Christmas break a couple years back lol.

They've been around for well over a decade.

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#88
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reddit experience is pretty similar to a decade ago.

Only if you use the "old" layout, who knows how long that'll last.

It will be a very sad day (for me, at least) when that happens.

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#89
post #79

This reminds me of how I hacked twitter 10+ years ago to get free SMS delivery for a web app I built. Before Twilio, custom SMS notification delivery was hard and expensive. At the time, twitter allowed you to receive SMS notifications of tweets posted to a followed account. I created a private account and used twitter's API to post tweets to with the notification content I wanted to send. I then had "dummy" accounts…

Lol I may or may not currently be using a Twitter account and cron to broadcast any changes to my (non-static) home ip address, encrypted, so I can ssh into my workstation when I'm on vacation.

Seems like a strange way to achieve this. Why not just have it send you an email? Or update a DNS record through an API?

Re: Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries

#90
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, everything is political. Take LGBT people, especially trans people. Their entire right to existence is a hotly debated topic. Same for abortions. Religions. Sport events. Porn preferences. Sex work. Even such utterly mundane things as lipstick. Take that out and you'd be left with essentially a feed of cute animals and still get fights between people arguing if dogs or cats are cuter.

> The thing is, everything is political... That's true, but even more so than your list suggests. It's not just socio-cultural controversies that are political, but even basic elements of the economic status quo. Why do I have health insurance but not my Uber driver? Is my labor worth more than his? Is it OK that Pat Bowlen owns the Denver Broncos, or should the city of Denver own it instead (a la the Green Bay Packe…

Sure, my list was focused on things that at least on the first glance don't appear "political". Your items definitely cross that threshold ;)
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