[HN Gopher] The Shit Show ___________________________________________________________________ The Shit Show Author : chazeon Score : 344 points Date : 2023-01-15 21:14 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (furbo.org) (TXT) w3m dump (furbo.org) | iLoveOncall wrote: | I guess everyone griefs differently, but I find making a parallel | between the death of your mother and your website being shutdown | particularly distasteful. | samwillis wrote: | This is a moving post, I wish Craig and everyone else effected by | these events the best, onwards and upwards! | | If these people _who pioneered the use of Twitter_ and | fundamentally steered how it developed through their community | contributions turn their experience to Mastodon and the | Fediverse, big things will come. | | From the ashes of one thing can be built the future. | MonkeyMalarky wrote: | It should be liberating, no more working under ever worsening | constraints, someone just ripped off the band-aid and made the | hard choice for them. Didn't want to let go? Not sure of how | much effort and support to continue putting in? Problem solved! | The answer is zero. Zilch. Nada. Enjoy the free time! | paxys wrote: | Loss of the product itself, however hard, can be dealt with. | It's the loss of the community that really stings. | [deleted] | geerlingguy wrote: | I'm still waiting to hear any kind of official word, but it looks | pretty bleak. | | Without Tweetbot, Twitter is almost impossible to use. Checking | in on https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/, the alternate UI, it's | almost usable, but still missing like 8 of the most important | features that made Twitter useful to me. | | I have been posting sometimes on Mastodon but still primarily on | Twitter, waiting to see how things turned out. But if Tweetbot at | least isn't restored, I will switch roles and will likely try out | Mastodon for a while, posting just a little on Twitter. | | The problem is, most of the "Fediverse" right now is a big echo | chamber (kind of like Voat was when Reddit had its weird issues a | few years back, or more charitably like a community like HN is... | it's not always bad as long as people are aware of it). So it's | not the same kind of community as Twitter had. | thejohnconway wrote: | Twitter was never one community though, of course. The amount | of interaction I had outside my bubble was really minimal. I | could see other people shouting at each other if I wanted to, | but of course I could do that without having an account. | nerdchum wrote: | I remember Voat! It started off with great intentions, just to | be a more free speech version of reddit and at the end was just | posts about Michelle Obama being a man and Qanon. | | It was an interesting case study in how free speech can decline | to a lowest common denominator type situation. | kitsunesoba wrote: | I've been using Mastodon for the past couple of months for most | of the people I follow, but prior to that I had been using | Twitterific for Twitter because it was so much better for how I | used it. | | Up until a couple of days ago I was still using Twitterific to | keep up with those who hadn't yet made the jump (mostly non- | tech-adjacent people/communities), but with the iOS version now | being dead my usage has seen a nosedive. For now I still check | every so often with the Mac version since it's still | functional, and if that dies then I'm going to try to figure | out alternatives for aforementioned communities (probably | Discord, but we'll see) and drop Twitter altogether. I have no | interest in the stock client/site whatsoever. | smitty1e wrote: | We have standards, sir. The show was upgraded to a "Crap | Cabaret". | thih9 wrote: | The brand is losing so much credibility among developers, I guess | we'll see even fewer products with Twitter API as a core feature. | | I know this has been a trend for the last couple of years but | this kind of lack of communication seems like a milestone. | ArmandGrillet wrote: | Well-written and touching post. To switch off this API used by so | many long-time users on the same day "For You" appears as the | default option on Twitter triggers me. The "For You" timeline is | only for Elon: it will drive engagement, extremism, and all the | things social networks have been accused of driving for years now | in order to make more $. | | Some folks here have been comparing the crypto/Web3 and | ActivityPub craze recently but I see a massive difference. A | billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I | thought was my social backyard. Crypto and NFTs did not impact | how I use my bank accounts, Elon ruined in a quarter a very | special place I had crafted over a decade. | | Mastodon is not great right now, the UX needs to vastly improve, | but all for-profit social networks have always disappointed in | the long run. Looking back, few technologies have kept the same | degree of greatness over the past 15 years: emails, torrents, RSS | feeds... only tools no corporation fully controls. I hope | ActivityPub can join that list fairly soon. | postmeta wrote: | I think he reached peak ad hominem: "a prick" "Space Karen" | "King Shithead" "shitty person" "arrogant bastard" "billionaire | bozo" "a clown" | Ensorceled wrote: | Insulting people who've done you harm is not an "ad hominem"; | he's not debating Musk here. | tptacek wrote: | None of these are ad hominem arguments. | DonHopkins wrote: | A billionaire attacking somebody else as "Pedo Guy" was peak | hominem plus outrageous power imbalance, and the post you're | replying to doesn't hold a candle to that. Plus Musk really | is "a prick" "Space Karen" "King Shithead" "shitty person" | "arrogant bastard" "billionaire bozo" "a clown". Truth is the | best defense against libel. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | What's wrong with Mastodon's UX? It's basically Twitter from | ten years ago. The whole federated thing is a bit confusing but | you can just use the default mastodon.social instance and not | think about it. | tptacek wrote: | You cannot in fact just use mastodon.social, because they | haven't been accepting signups since the great Enmuskening. | mikenew wrote: | I admit I don't use Twitter or Mastodon very much, but | Mastodon's UX seems pretty decent these days. At least 50% of | the time when I click on a Twitter link something breaks. | Either the page doesn't load or a video won't play or whatever. | And that's to say nothing of the "SIGN UP FOR TWITTER" bullshit | that pops up whenever you click on anything. | hhh wrote: | The 'For You' is the behavior i've had for a while. I'm happy | to be able to go to the Following tab. I'm tired of seeing 'X | follow' etc. | greenie_beans wrote: | you've been able to switch for a while but it wasn't obvious, | i kinda stumbled upon it one day. | | i find the new tabs at the top of the screen take up too much | space and they scroll down when i go through my timeline. (i | browse on my laptop via firefox, no idea what the mobile | experience is like) | input_sh wrote: | You were able to switch to "latest tweets" before as well. | The control was top right next to "home" label, the icon | looked like stars. | | The only thing that truly changed is "latest tweets" got | renamed to "following" and it now takes up more vertical | space (53 pixels to be exact) completely unnecessarily for | something you're quite unlikely to click on on a regular | basis. | | Change for the sake of change. Doesn't actually have an | impact on anything. | warinukraine wrote: | > A billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I | thought was my social backyard. | | I think Elon Musk is a horrible person, but... this one is on | you, right? You thought that a company's service was your | social backyard? That's on you. | leokennis wrote: | I imagine you believe the money you keep with the company | known as your bank is yours as well right? | | Just because it's a company doesn't mean they get to behave | like assholes and then put the blame on their users for being | gullible or ignorant. | kaashif wrote: | I disagree somewhat with what that guy said but your | "counterpoint" is ridiculous. | | Bank deposits are yours! If the bank collapses and can't | give them to you, there's FDIC insurance so the government | will get you that money. | | This is nothing at all like Twitter and only weakens your | argument. | warinukraine wrote: | It's mine because the law says so. | Ensorceled wrote: | And you're defending the antics of a childish billionaire and | blaming the damage on the people he hurt. That's on you. | warinukraine wrote: | I'm defending the right to own property, which is something | really fundamental to the way we organize our society. | | ... and when you say "the people that were hurt"... If you | leave your wallet on the street, it might be stolen and you | might be hurt. I'm not blaming the victim; someone stealing | your wallet is wrong even though you left it on the street. | It's not your fault, I'm not blaming you, I blame the thief | for the theft. On the other hand there's something that you | could've done that would've avoided it - don't leave your | wallet on the street. | Ensorceled wrote: | > I'm defending the right to own property, which is | something really fundamental to the way we organize our | society. | | No one is trying to "steal" twitter in this thread, we | are saying he used his "property rights" to unnecessarily | hurt others. | | You're the one who is saying this is just peachy keen and | "that's on you". | | You're defending the harm. | aktenlage wrote: | Nah, you are defending _something that is based on_ the | right to own property (and do whatever you like with it), | but may nevertheless be shitty behavior. Just because | something is legal and the legal basis is important (in | your opinion), doesn 't necessarily mean it is ok | behavior. | | E.g., being rude isn't forbidden, the freedom of speech | is important, so is the right to express your | personality. But lecturing the affected person about | these rights may not be the best reaction when they have | been insulted by someone. | | I think the main point to discuss is not the rights, but | whether the owner of a company should act more | responsible, even if he is within his rights. And that's | also the point of the OP. | kome wrote: | > "For You" appears as the default option | | The "for you" was already the default option, if anything they | made easier to switch to the "following" that before was kinda | hidden on top and hard to find. | | p.s.: i dislike musk since it was cool to like him. | Spooky23 wrote: | I'm bullish on Mastodon with the influx of users. It's | _different_ than Twitter, but it's pretty awesome in its own | right. | | Hopefully the different model will create something new and | amazing. Twitter had amazing elements, but it's sunset has | arrived! | IngvarLynn wrote: | [flagged] | bfgoodrich wrote: | [dead] | [deleted] | graycat wrote: | [flagged] | Ensorceled wrote: | Maybe, just maybe, HN isn't for you? | Lammy wrote: | [flagged] | xupybd wrote: | A Karen is a personality type. They are not imputing the gender | on Elon but the personality. By applying the insult to men they | are de-gendering the insult. | | Not that I like the term Space Karen. | Lammy wrote: | It became an insult because people hate women who stand up | for themselves. It can't be de-gendered. | adventurer wrote: | That's not what a Karen is or why people use it. | w0mbat wrote: | The "Space Karen" slur is lame. Elon is the manager in this | situation, and if you're complaining to the manager, you're the | Karen. | harrego wrote: | See also Paul Haddad's situation[1] (creator of TweetBot): | | > I really want an official public statement. We have a large | number of sub. renewals for year 3 of Tweetbot coming up in a | couple of weeks. If we're permanently cut off I need to know so | we can remove the app from sale and prevent those. Which | obviously I'd rather not do. | | [1] https://tapbots.social/@paul/109690528614720936 | neilv wrote: | To the people who were already warning of things like this, in | the '80s and '90s, all the cries lately of "I let some rich guy | _own my social network_ ; how could I have known that would be | abused" might seem a bit /r/LeopardsAteMyFace. | birdyrooster wrote: | It's like when you exclaim "jesus christ" and are unwittingly | paying tribute to some assholes. I won't say his name anymore | either. | gnarbarian wrote: | He has every right to be mad but this post comes off as petulant | and juvenile. | rdlw wrote: | Well yeah, his life's work was destroyed at someone's whim with | the flick of a switch. | | How many people would be gracious? Why should anyone be? | roarcher wrote: | His "life's work" is a fresh coat of paint on someone else's | creation, which is of questionable value to begin with. And | using his mother's death as a comedic prop in a public rant | doesn't exactly engender sympathy. | Espressosaurus wrote: | This is what happens when you rely on a service you have no | control over. It'll happen now, it'll happen later, but at | some point, somebody is going to decide they make more money | turning the thing you rely on off. | killdozer wrote: | Everyone should be a cold emotionless machine that pumps out | code, just like me. | bobleeswagger wrote: | > Space Karen | | > billionaire bozo | | > comparisons to his Mother's death | | Yeah, I had a hard time getting through it. At least, I don't | get the point the author is trying to make. | | Is this _really_ a surprise given the direction social data has | gone in the past decade or so? APIs will only remain public as | long as they are useful. | | Elon sees an upside to making the API at twitter more private, | in order to maintain control over Twitter's direction. You can | argue as much as you want for, or against this, but don't add | noise and make me rake through it. | unpopular42 wrote: | Same thoughts. Someone's got to get emotions under control | dkjaudyeqooe wrote: | > petulant and juvenile | | Who does that remind you of? | bobleeswagger wrote: | Haha space man bad | brap wrote: | This is a pretty childish take. | | It's a business, it doesn't owe you anything. Calling the CEO | "Space Karen", "King Shithead" and such is just cringe, it's a | childish tantrum. Acting like not mentioning his name will | somehow affect him, one of the richest and most influential men | alive, is laughable. | | Be an adult. You took a bet relying on a third party business, | and that bet didn't pay off. You are responsible. Take the L and | move on. Sorry. | waynecochran wrote: | Was the Twitter API taken down intentionally or is this a bug? If | intentional was it announced ahead of time? If its a bug, has | this happened before -- looks like in happened in July 2022 | (https://api.twitterstat.us/history?page=3)? | rideontime wrote: | for 9 hours, and it was acknowledged. hardly comparable. | mattwilsonn888 wrote: | If federation was a worthwhile goal (in one's mind) after "the | bozo took over Twitter" then it is quite obvious _nothing_ | fundamentally has changed such that federation would have been a | noble goal as a foil to previous Twitter management. Seriously - | if more personal sovereignty is the goal then complaining about | Twitter only after new management is admitting that the primary | quality you don 't like _is the new management._ | | In reality the argument for federation is as I've already said - | more personal sovereignty, less centralized, corruptible, | overlord control. Twitter is certainly doing much better now than | before, and that doesn't mean federated communities online still | are not, in principle, superior. | | If someone wants to use crypto to do justify sentiment like this, | they'd be mocked here, but this is much better? It goes to show | that people denouncing different approaches often aren't doing it | because those approaches lack coherent justification, but because | those approaches are related to aspects of technology some people | don't like and don't care to examine. | | There are plenty of reasons to lampoon the majority of approaches | 'crypto' takes to 'solve' problems - that doesn't mean one | shouldn't lampoon carefully and thoughtfully. Likewise, there is | reason to justify federated platforms, but a dislike of Elon | Musk's politics will not be the true driver. | klabb3 wrote: | > complaining about Twitter only after new management is | admitting that the primary quality you don't like is the new | management. | | This rings very true. The move to Mastodon isn't likely to | translate into "...but why do we need speech owners at all". | Unaccountable and unjustified concentrated power is simply not | a concern to most. Once the dust settles, business as usual | will kick in. It'll either be a feudal lordship of mastodon | instances, or a brand new dickhead in a leather jacket. | m3kw9 wrote: | Can't think of mastodon as a competitor to twitter. I gave it a | shot and it feels like discord for twitter. | [deleted] | sysadm1n wrote: | I never relied on Twitter's API, since building stuff with it is | akin to building your castle on other people's land. You're | always going to be a tenant, and the API gatekeepers play | landlord and can rugpull you without notice. | | But I'm looking into Nostr[0] as an alternative, aswell as | ActivityPub which seems to be working well these days. | | Dorsey's Bluesky Social[1] looks promising too, but it's a very | late move since Twitter should have been a protocol from the | outset. | | [0] https://nostr.com/ | | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol) | tptacek wrote: | I think (and have been saying this a bunch lately) that he's | right about ActivityPub and Mastodon, and that "a universal | timeline" is actually a really good way to put words to it. I was | a Mastodon hater for years, but having used it for the past month | or so with an actual community of people (really: the whole | community I interacted with on Twitter before), I have to admit | it: the ActivityPub people were right about this. It's easy to | see the potential, and how it pulls in the writing we were all | doing before there was Twitter while keeping most of what Twitter | was good for too. | | I'm expecting this to be the second-dumbest thing I ever | predicted badly (I dismissed MP3s, too!) | pbronez wrote: | If you want to help make the Fediverse happen, there appears to | be a serious need for energy and ideas in the standards effort. | | I have a thread going here | https://hachyderm.io/@PeterBronez/109688815511361197 | | But the upshot is, get involved with: | | https://www.w3.org/community/socialcg/ | riffic wrote: | The Fediverse has already happened. It's about to celebrate | its 15th year in a handful of months. | | https://fediverse.party/en/post/fediverse-14-years-in-2022/ | samwillis wrote: | I was sceptical too, but at this point I would say 75% of the | people I followed who I really got value from have moved over. | But not only that, the conversation has become better, more in | depth and less fleeting. | | I just hope the last few people I follow on Twitter who I | really enjoy following move over too. But unfortunately that's | "Space Twitter", so we will see... | zenmacro wrote: | Are there any guides, tools, apps, etc to try out ActivityPub? | hummingn3rd wrote: | Martin fowler made a guide from his own transition to | mastodon https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring- | mastodon.html | warinukraine wrote: | May I ask what was your original argument against Mastodon? | tptacek wrote: | I looked at in terms of the "Fediverse", a coherent | decentralized social network, with lots of instances | cooperating to make one intentional thing. I'm still not | bullish about that. But once you use it, you see that it's | basically hyper-interactive RSS. | | (Maybe you see the two at the same thing; I don't.) | warinukraine wrote: | > I looked at in terms of the "Fediverse", a coherent | decentralized social network, with lots of instances | cooperating to make one intentional thing. | | So what was your original argument against this? | tptacek wrote: | That it will never cohere. (That's about as much as I | want to say about this right now; this gets boring pretty | quickly.) | pmarreck wrote: | OK, I have to ask- What exactly was your argument against | MP3's? They literally let you transfer music with an order of | magnitude less data than it took on the CD! Was it an | audiophile argument, or...? | | I was lucky enough to live in a freshman college dorm (a music- | focused dorm, no less!) circa 1997-1998 when Napster was still | a thing right after MP3's were a thing, and that shit was | _amaaaaazing_ | | I mean given how much people love music, I never had any doubt | that MP3's would be revolutionary | count wrote: | Napster didn't start until 1999 :) I remember downloading | mp3s on Napster, and then using my parallel port to transfer | them to my Diamond Rio MP3 player. All 4 songs at a time! | riceart wrote: | Before Napster there was FTP. | williamcotton wrote: | The first MP3 I downloaded was from IRC and played back | on the Fraunhofer Institute MP3 player. Old timers will | remember that if you caused your screen to redraw at all, | say by scrolling a window, the audio would skip. The | first song? Bob Dylan - Stuck in the Middle With You... | which is actually by Steeler's Wheel. | pmarreck wrote: | It was probably just FTP through the school's network then, | but I distinctly remember sharing MP3's like it was the | Wild West | tptacek wrote: | In the set-associative cache that was my brain in 1998, MP3s | occupied the same slot as XDCC'd Amiga mods. But much bigger | files. I was carrying around giant folders of CDs at the | time. Also: you had to listen to them... on your computer? I | had a whole discrete stereo system. Why would I want to | listen to music through game speakers? | dom96 wrote: | Great post. I hope we see a multitude of new clients for | Mastodon. In the meantime, if you're someone like me that is | dipping their feet into Mastodon but isn't ready to leave Twitter | fully yet, then you might be interested in a browser extension I | developed[0] which puts Mastodon posts in your Twitter timeline. | | [0] - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon- | chirper/l... | godelski wrote: | I've been thinking about social media a lot lately and how it has | changed my life. I'm only in my early 30's, but I think many | others my age grew up online and when the internet felt smaller, | but in a different way. I made life long friends through these | means. But something I've noticed is that as everyone has come | online, I have made fewer friends. What I personally miss is the | small niche communities. These don't seem to exist anymore. I | made several friends on sites like What.cd and found many artists | I would have never come into contact otherwise (even speaking | with many). Even friends on sites like Imgur when it was smaller, | but never once it grew. The global social media is cool and has | aspects that are nice to it (e.g. being able to talk to power), | but its same power is its greatest downfall (you can't speak to | your audience when your audience is everyone, filled with | different priors (how we interpret words), and different | willingness to act in good faith). | | I see everyone talking about Twitter and how it needs to be | replaced. But I want to know how we remake these smaller | communities. That's what I miss about the internet. There are | clearly size thresholds for these. Finding them is often hard and | word of mouth. But what I want to know is how we make these | flourish and bring personhood back to the internet. We should | have both types of communities. But I don't think methods like | Mastadon or Reddit really facilitate this. I think many even have | seen this change as HN has grown. There are several people that I | recognize their names but as the community has grown we have too | seen a change in content, culture, and how we speak to one | another. For good or bad. But I do think it is nice to have small | communities as well that do develop their own cultures. Maybe I'm | just old now though. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | Most of the old niche groups (IRC groups, imageboards, forums, | etc) I used to spend time on just migrated into private spaces | once social media became a de facto public space on the | internet. These places usually live as Discord guilds, Matrix | spaces, Telegram group chats, private fora, Patreon groups, | alternate networks (such as: mailing lists, Gemini, Freenet, | Urbit, etc.) | | I also feel like all this noise about Twitter is just the | Twitter early adopters realizing what the old IRC and | imageboard users knew long ago: social media is a semi-public | space now that everyone is online. | paulcole wrote: | > I'm only in my early 30's, but... [as time has gone on ]... | something I've noticed is that as everyone has come online, I | have made fewer friends | | Welcome to your 30s. You will make fewer friends than you did | in your 20s. | api wrote: | The net was a very different place before, say, somewhere | between 2010 and 2015. I saw a huge shift then. Everything got | monetized, weaponized, optimized for addiction, or drowned in | spam. There's always been bad actors and criminals and trolls | online too but in the past decade they have either gotten worse | or become more empowered. | | The golden age of the open Internet was really between about | 1996 when it started to go public and 2010. The net today feels | like either a ghost town or a hellhole. The only remaining good | places seem to be niche sites or groups and private forums. The | fediverse is decent but I am concerned for its long term future | if it becomes big enough to be a worthy target for spammers and | trolls. | | As for the cause of the decline I can think of a few big | factors: | | 1. Engagement maximizing algorithms give weight to the most | inflammatory content. These hit the scene big starting around | 2008. If you forced me to pick one root culprit I would blame | this. | | 2. Thanks to monetized social media "Internet troll" is now a | career option. You can make money. You can maybe even become | the President of the United States. | | 3. Speaking of politics, I think something changed when enough | people got online that the net became the major source for | political opinion. There is now not just money but power to be | gained by manipulating things online. This attracts a whole | different level of scum. | | 4. Trolls have escalated to the point that people have died. | Mass shooters post their manifestos on boards now before they | go on killing sprees. Running a forum today is just not fun | anymore, especially if it's not narrowly focused and topical. | Nobody in their right mind would set up something like | Something Awful or 4chan today. | | What happened to optimistic online cyber culture reminds me a | bit of what happened to the 1960s counterculture. In a few | years it went from exploration and optimism and art to Manson | and Altamont. There seems to be a pattern where whenever | humanity seems to be making a cultural breakthrough we get | naive and then things go real bad real fast. | kibwen wrote: | _> But I don 't think methods like Mastadon or Reddit really | facilitate this._ | | Reddit offers two features for supporting intentionally-small | communities: first, you can restrict posting to accounts that | have been manually approved (although I think voting is still | open to anyone with a Reddit account), and secondly you can | make the subreddit private such that only approved accounts can | see its contents (which solves the aforementioned voting | problem). | | As for Mastodon, that's a matter of setting up your own topical | instance and restricting who can make an account. | shrubble wrote: | I think that you make an interesting point. Having recently | become interested in vintage computers I have been spending | time with the forums at vcfed.org . | | To be honest unplugging from the political outrage machine | helped my mental state...and I might in time make some friends | on that site... | nathias wrote: | they still exist on the fringes, there are forums from early | web, new forums, new types of tech (defi and crypto has a lot | of that) | kristianc wrote: | > new types of tech (defi and crypto has a lot of that) | | I'm sure crypto and Defi has some good people, but a huge | proportion of them seem to be grifters and scammers who I'd | want nothing to do with. That wasn't really the case on the | early web. | [deleted] | k__ wrote: | _" as everyone has come online, I have made fewer friends."_ | | Probably has to do with your age. | | I made many friends in my 20s, most through the internet. | | This got less and less as I grew older. | | But I know a bunch of people in their 20s who still make | friends online. | madrox wrote: | This situation is heart breaking for us who have a lot of | attachment to this API. I built a research thesis around data | mining the firehose, and that work got me my first data mining | job. I made hundreds of valuable connections. However, the API | really died years ago when requirements of ad-based revenue meant | neutering many endpoints. It's been on life support since. Recent | events really were about pulling the plug. | | But Mastodon excites me the way I used to be excited about | social. There's possibility again to turn it into the things we | gave up on a decade ago. I look forward to a new wave of | innovation here. | | And yes, I refuse to say the name of the company or the owner at | this point. I agree with the author. It isn't deserved. | throwmeup123 wrote: | [flagged] | ygggvbbjiuygvf wrote: | [flagged] | throwmeup123 wrote: | [flagged] | okokwhatever wrote: | [flagged] | crummy wrote: | this guy spent 16 years writing and maintaining a Twitter | client | antiquark wrote: | Twitter has been crippling their API long before "Space Hilter" | took over. | | https://tidbits.com/2018/08/20/twitter-cripples-third-party-... | retrocryptid wrote: | Space Hitler? That's the kind of hyperbole that seriously | undercuts your credibility. Mr. Musk is "Space Mussolini" at | best. | threeseed wrote: | Given how many of us used third party apps I wouldn't say it | was crippled. | | And there are only two examples given: streaming and push | notifications. | | The first as Twitter pointed out was because it was only ever a | beta feature and even today their own apps don't support this | feature. | paxys wrote: | Yes that is mentioned in the opening paragraphs of the article. | mkoc wrote: | Not sure how it is for others, but for me tapbot Tweetbot is | working again since today; is the API back up? | cmcfadden wrote: | Paul mentioned that they had a way to push new API info to the | clients, so I think they basically just re-registered the app | as a YOLO thing to see how long until Twitter pulls the plug | again. | geerlingguy wrote: | I was able to get an access token, and my timeline loads in | Tweetbot, but I can't see mentions or activity, and I can't | tweet from it. | clouddrover wrote: | Tweetbot partially works because they're using new API keys: | | https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/15/23556359/tweetbot-twitter... | | It's a temporary workaround at best. The new API access is rate | limited and Tweetbot will likely be banned again. | pmarreck wrote: | Imagine being this mad about putting all your eggs in a basket | you have zero control over, not seeing the massive existential | risk of that single point of failure, and then whining like an | entitled Gen Z'er when the inevitable happens | pxtail wrote: | Yep, it makes no sense - fueling, empowering someone's private | property,even voluntarily helping to sidestep/skip platform | shortcomings to make it dominant player instead of promoting | open standards and solutions and then surprise, "Pikachu face" | | I'm perceiving Asahi Linux initiative in similar way and it's | astonishing to see people putting countless man-hours for free | into improving device produced by one of richest companies in | the world which is known for having full controll on sofware | and hardware intentionally and steadily making it as locked as | possible, hostile to OS What could go wrong here.. | Lio wrote: | I've had the Mastodon client downloaded for a while now but | haven't really got round to switching over to it. | | I think this is the push I really need. Space Karen has done me a | favour. | | I sure as shit won't be going back to Twitter's dumpster fire of | a native client. | | Edited timelines, promoted tweets and user preferences that | randomly reset themselves to the most annoying settings. | | Nope. | Ciantic wrote: | End of an era. | | I like that he sees that ActivityPub should be so much more than | Mastodon. "a truly universal timeline" of various things on the | internet. | | For that to happen we can't limit ourselves to just Mastodon, but | start building alternative takes. | | Yes, some aren't viewable on other clients, but that's fine, then | they just show a link, but at least you can reply/reblog/like | items. | Waterluvian wrote: | I just hope we walk before we try to run. It feels like | Mastodon has been given a colossal opportunity and it feels | like it's being completely squandered. | | I trust that Space Jerk will give Mastodon a very long | opportunity window but the sooner the better. | | Maybe revolution is a good idea and I'm completely wrong. But I | still find Mastodon so frustrating and unreliable that I am | just not on social media at all now. | bee_rider wrote: | Apparently as a baby I learned to run before walking so I | want to defend doing it that way. | | Running is a bit easier than walking, walking is a process of | carefully balancing at each step. Running is just falling, | but you catch yourself before you hit the ground. As long as | you aren't too concerned with steering, you can easily at | least run until you find an obstacle. And then you've learned | about a new type of obstacle! | | Even the fastest baby should have trouble getting into | trouble as long as the parents are attentive -- they are tiny | and parents have long arms to catch them. | | Babies barely have the capability to generate enough kinetic | energy to harm themselves I'm pretty sure. | | Or I dunno, at least I survived. Apply this to your analogy | as you'd like. | Waterluvian wrote: | _me typing out a definition for running that dictates that | it's not just stumbling recklessly forward in style, all | for an analogy_ | | "You're probably wondering how I got here..." | bee_rider wrote: | Haha, fair enough. Hopefully the slightly tongue in cheek | nature of my post came through. | | I've always understood this to be what the expression was | about, though. Skipping the first step to jump recklessly | and possibly incorrectly to the second. | Waterluvian wrote: | Hahah indeed. Hence my ridiculous reply. | | Yeah I'm not sure I feel strongly about my own opinion. I | think I'm just worried that a bunch of engineers, in | absence of designers and product, are going to do what | engineers do best: find fun technical problems to solve. | thejohnconway wrote: | Just curious, what is unreliable for you? My setup is as | reliable as Twitter ever was for me (I run my own server). | Some things are annoying of course, but I'm a little | surprised techy people would find those rough edges so bad | they wouldn't use it. | Waterluvian wrote: | I'm not on the same server as all my Twitter friends and I | cannot get my timeline to reliably update with everyone's | Toots and Goots. | | It works if I catch up the next morning. But there is no | reliable ability for real-time Toot Blooting. | | In all fairness I took two weeks off. Maybe it's better. Or | maybe I need to try another server (three tries so far.) | | Figuring out what server to pick was ridiculous. I | eventually decided "just find a really popular one." But | they were all just crashing out when making an account or | were closed to new accounts. | | I misunderstood what "federated" meant because I also | learned that it really matters what server you're on. It's | not like email. The length of your Toot is different, rules | of what you Toot is different. The stuff on your server is | a bit more first class than what's on other servers. And my | Toot Boots didn't Doot Doot or Bloot Flute. | tomcam wrote: | How would you un-squander Mastodon? | Ciantic wrote: | I feel like it was squandered as well, but I don't blame | anyone on that, Mastodon core team employed their second | person last month full-time. | | When the next wave comes I hope if Mastodon can't get its act | together there are commercial offerings that can take the | wave, and I'm all for it. Cloudflare is building its own | Mastodon API-compatible server, and Medium put its own | instance. | Waterluvian wrote: | This is what I'm super pumped about. Because of the | fundamentals of the technology, big actors with resources | to do it properly can make Mastodon awesome, without | completely capturing the social network. | scarface74 wrote: | Micro blog supports ActivityPub | | https://help.micro.blog/t/mastodon-and-activitypub/95 | input_sh wrote: | There's actually a lot of software projects, Mastodon is just | by far the most popular one. | | On top of my head: Pixelfed (Instagram alternative), Peertube | (YouTube alternative), Pleroma (another Twitter-like | microblog), Bookwyrm (Goodreads alternative), Funkwhale (like | a mashup between Soundcloud and a podcast host), Owncast | (Twitch alternative), Mobilizon (event organizing), lemmy | (reddit alternative)... | | They're all rather tiny and unpolished, having even less | resources to work with than Mastodon, but you should be able | to follow a user on any of them from Mastodon. At least in | theory, haven't tried with all of them. | | The annoying thing in my opinion is that you can't have a | set-in-stone identity and then use different frontends for | different purposes, kind of like you can on Facebook for | groups/events/marketplace/stories. You have to have an | account on all of them to make use of all features, even | though they're all relying on the same protocol to a certain | extent. | ygggvbbjiuygvf wrote: | It's not even clear that they "pulled the plug", could just be a | temporary outage. Wish Musk would announce his thoughts on the | future of the API, though. | paxys wrote: | Regardless of how it started, a "temporary outage" that has | lasted for several days and has received zero acknowledgement | from the company can now be considered intentional. They don't | get the benefit of doubt without sending even a bare minimum | "sorry, we are working on fixing it" tweet. | Kwpolska wrote: | Can a "temporary outage" be limited only to the most popular | apps? Can a "temporary outage" affect Twitterrific for iOS but | not Twitterrific for Mac [0]? | | [0] https://blog.iconfactory.com/2023/01/state-of-the- | twitterver... | rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: | [flagged] | servercobra wrote: | Losing your business like this has to be infuriating, but | that's always the risk building your business on top of someone | else's business. However, the writing style completely | undercuts the message with the name calling. I wonder if Craig | will still pull the plug now that the API seems to be back up. | rideontime wrote: | where have you heard that the API is back up for those who've | been banned? only thing I've seen is that some have worked | around their bans by getting new API keys ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-15 23:00 UTC)