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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

#91

Post by elvis70 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> 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.

Try old.reddit.com (or i.reddit.com on mobile).

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

#92

Post by kaashif »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #63
jevoten wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 eno…

> Instead they were user-friendly at first, Twitter’s experience for users today is the same as it was at the start. The word “user” is key, though. The experience has only changed for people who aren’t yet users (with logged in user accounts) of Twitter. > A bait and switch, tricking people into relying on them, This doesn’t really make sense. If you rely on Twitter, you make an account. You can’t really rely on Twi…

I am confused.

It seems like there are two definitions of "user" here: someone that uses something, and someone that has an account. It's possible to use Twitter without an account (reading tweets seems like the primary use case of Twitter), and it's possible to have an account that you never use. People in the second case are counted as "inactive users" or, in other words, users that don't use Twitter.

When people talk about the UX or UI of a website, they usually aren't talking about whether you have an account or not. It's possible for a website's UX to be bad before you even make an account, e.g. if the sign up page is bad.

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

#93

Post by NikolaeVarius »

l72 wrote: post #61
delecti wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not want an account on a website you rely on? It's one thing to complain that your occasional visits to twitter are more inconvenient now. But if you would go so far as to say that people rely on them, then it seems like a silly hill to die on for those people to resist creating an account.

Because I don't want to give a phone number to facebook or twitter just to have an account to read some content.

Then don't use it

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

#94

Post by ahelwer »

djakaitis wrote: post #57
goodpoint wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think any company is obligated to provide unlimited access for free without an account No no no, companies should not be allowed to this kind of bait and switch: 1) provide a free service 2) gain market dominance, push out competitors, and turn into a necessity for millions of users 3) create lock-in and exploit the userbase Essential public utilities are regulated (properly, in many countries) to avoid thi…

What’s exploitative about offering a free account?

A bit taken aback this still needs to be explained, but the point of having an account is so they can use your email address and phone number to correlate you & your actions across the entire internet to better surveil you & serve you behavior-modifying content.

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

#95

Post by j4yav »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> 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.…

I actually love the new Reddit non-logged in experience. It self-limits how much value you can get out of it, and I get through the first page or whatever it lets me do and just put it away.

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

#96

Post by duffyjp »

ostenning wrote: post #74
nickysielicki wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company even comes close to the transition that Reddit did that took them from a {clean,simple,dense,power-user friendly} interface to a horrible user-hostile shit show that it is now. The average Reddit user has to reach for a custom third party app on their phone or a browser plug-in that hacks a redirect to the old or third party interface. Quora doesn’t hold a candle.

What I dont understand is why these companies are debasing their products integrity to scrape in more users. What Reddit doesn’t seem to realise is that right now there is a primed opportunity for a competitor to take its market share.

If reddit ever dropped the old.reddit option, that would be the last time I ever use the site. They must know the new (several years old now, I suppose) layout is awful. I can't understand the rational. Maybe it cost a fortune to build and it's sunk-cost fallacy thing.

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

#97

Post by daniel-cussen »

jevoten wrote: post #29
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> 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 eno…

Yeah besides the whole idea is it's a broadcast. Like radio, you don't have to install an app to listen to a radio station (FM or AM, satellite radio does want you to install an app).

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

#98

Post by bmarquez »

f00zz wrote: post #58
KayL wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I tried to create an annoymous account ,they asked for tel verification. (not exactly when you sign it up but after a few day)

Same. It allowed me to create an account with just an e-mail address, but soon after the account was suspended for "unusual activity" and the only way to unlock it was with a phone number. At this point I gave up.

Had that exact same problem, I emailed customer service via their webform asking what went wrong and a few days later Twitter replied, removing the "suspension"

I think they're just fishing for mobile numbers for targeted advertising identifiers.

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

#99

Post by AltruisticGapHN »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #5

> 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.…

To be fair creating a random account takes a second on Reddit , after which you can turn off a bunch of things, and also browse from https://old.reddit.com to remove all the junk.
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