[HN Gopher] Twitter now requires an account to view tweets
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Twitter now requires an account to view tweets
        
       Author : celsoazevedo
       Score  : 82 points
       Date   : 2023-06-30 19:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
        
       | chrisandchris wrote:
       | Somehow they required an account to view more than a few replies.
       | Then it got ,,better" and they removed that requirement. And a
       | few days ago I realized I can't view anything at all without
       | logging in.
       | 
       | I'm not really sad about that change. Just going to miss out some
       | things because I don't see why I should register to read a few
       | tweets a week.
        
       | Macha wrote:
       | I will miss some of the Ukraine news as twitter was good for
       | that, but that's about it for me at this point.
        
         | kibwen wrote:
         | Here's a Mastodon server that mirrors many Ukraine-related
         | Twitter accounts: https://fed.celp.de/@uanews
         | 
         | (Who knows how long it will keep working, of course.)
        
           | veave wrote:
           | Doesn't seem very neutral.
        
       | GloomyBoots wrote:
       | I'm not active on social media for the most part, and have to
       | remind people not to send me links to sites that require a login
       | (Pinterest for example). I don't have a Twitter account, but
       | there were accounts I liked to browse occasionally. In the months
       | before the Musk takeover, Twitter kept coming up with new things
       | that you couldn't do without logging in. Finally, it was
       | completely unusable. One of the earlier easy wins Musk made was
       | undoing all of that. Now, on top of everything else he's managed
       | to spectacularly torpedo, we're back to this.
        
       | jamesgreenleaf wrote:
       | Musk commented on this:
       | https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1674865731136020505
       | 
       | "Temporary emergency measure. We were getting data pillaged so
       | much that it was degrading service for normal users!"
        
         | celsoazevedo wrote:
         | Screenshot: https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/2023/twitter.png
        
           | denysvitali wrote:
           | I was confused at first on why a random dude posted a link to
           | a screenshot hosted on Celso Azevedo's website (the Google
           | Camera port index creator).
           | 
           | Then I realized... hello there! (:
        
             | celsoazevedo wrote:
             | Hey! Yep, that's me.
             | 
             | I was going to host the screenshot on imgur, but I'm not
             | sure if we can trust them anymore...
        
         | INTPenis wrote:
         | So first of all HE scaled the infrastructure down to save
         | money.
         | 
         | Secondly, that "data pillaging" was exposure, he just removed
         | exposure from people's tweets to save money, again.
         | 
         | Good work Elon.
        
         | csilverman wrote:
         | Yes, it was definitely the "data pillaging" that was degrading
         | service, and not the fact that Twitter is now hosted on a Mac
         | Mini under somebody's desk...
        
           | dang wrote:
           | " _Don 't be snarky._"
           | 
           | " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
           | of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
           | criticize. Assume good faith._"
           | 
           | I'm not saying you owe CEO billionaires or billionaire CEOs
           | better, but you owe this community better if you're posting
           | here. If you'd please review and follow the site guidelines,
           | we'd appreciate it:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
        
         | rlpb wrote:
         | Presumably this is because I have to download an entire
         | JavaScript app in order to view 280 bytes of tweet.
        
         | odd_perfect_num wrote:
         | What a shame the his post requires an account to view...
        
         | consumer451 wrote:
         | I wonder what percentage of legitimate traffic is blocked by
         | this. I would imagine that the majority of users don't have an
         | account, by a large margin, correct?
        
         | PopularUsername wrote:
         | I am unable to read the tweet, I'll have to take your word for
         | it
        
       | csilverman wrote:
       | This feels a little like the shittiest restaurant in town raising
       | its prices. I have an account, and I wouldn't even bother logging
       | in at this point. Why bother? The Twitter experience is so
       | devotedly wretched that whatever I'd get from the tweet I want to
       | see is outweighed by everything I have to wade through to see it.
       | 
       | There was a point when Twitter was good enough that maybe they
       | could have pulled something like this and gotten away with it. At
       | this point, I think all this will do is hasten their irrelevancy.
        
         | gottorf wrote:
         | > The Twitter experience is so devotedly wretched
         | 
         | Even the content aside (that you have to wade through), just
         | from a technical perspective the Twitter experience leaves a
         | lot to be desired.
        
       | villgax wrote:
       | This was the case for interactivity for any click if opened
       | without logging in since years, similar to Instagram as well
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535822
        
       | f0e4c2f7 wrote:
       | Sort of related, I was wondering will teddit.net also be shutting
       | down when the API is shuttered?
       | 
       | Seems like it would be but didn't know if it works using scraping
       | or something.
        
       | millzlane wrote:
       | I noticed this earlier today when trying to follow a quote from
       | linked from a new York times article. I thought "well thats
       | fucked up how will anyone know what they said" lol. Twitter is
       | such a crap show now lol. Really only useful to people who use
       | it.
        
       | mkl95 wrote:
       | Twitter has now endured Instagram levels of enshittification. It
       | has been a crappy product since the mid 2010s, but at least it
       | was minimally usable back then.
        
       | tedunangst wrote:
       | Was a little surprised to discover that nitter just throws up
       | stack traces to users for errors.
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | Since today I've been https://nitter.it/ . Don't know how long it
       | will work though.
        
       | xwdv wrote:
       | Sucks that it's gone, but as a final aside, I never liked the
       | name Nitter anyway. You better have perfect diction when talking
       | about Nitter.
        
       | justnotworthit wrote:
       | for the desperate:
       | 
       | https://syndication.twitter.com/srv/timeline-profile/screen-...
       | add username at end
       | 
       | from https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ and
       | https://gist.githubusercontent.com/robotblake/a0f020381c1a91...
        
       | wheelerof4te wrote:
       | This is why I've disconnected from all social media, these forum-
       | like sites being an obvious exception.
       | 
       | They have become an anti-thesis of freedom that was promised when
       | World-wide-web emerged.
        
       | HungSu wrote:
       | A lot of comments suggesting federation as the solution to
       | centralisation. I believe this is a false dichotomy.
       | 
       | I think Write Once, Publish Everywhere (including both
       | centralised and federated) is much better.
       | 
       | https://indieweb.org/POSSE
        
         | thih9 wrote:
         | How to do that in practice?
         | 
         | I find it tedious to update various social media platforms by
         | hand, especially when each platform has its own rules and
         | conventions. There are paid services that help but they often
         | don't cover all of the platforms that I use, or are
         | prohibitively expensive. Also if you just post a link to your
         | site some social media platforms will treat you as a spammer.
        
         | kibwen wrote:
         | Different contexts call for different approaches. "Write once,
         | publish everywhere" is ideal for read-only content. For a
         | social network that is user-centric/identity-focused (like
         | Twitter), federation makes sense; for a social network that is
         | "topic-centric" (like Reddit) you can just have individual
         | forums like the old days.
        
         | RobotToaster wrote:
         | How?
         | 
         | twitter and facebook make automating that difficult with their
         | API restrictions.
        
       | jug wrote:
       | Ugh, what an eventful time of social media this has been.
       | 
       | First Twitter API, then Reddit API, so today Apollo and many more
       | Reddit clients shut down, and now Nitter. :-(
       | 
       | I'm happy Lemmy is kind of taking off. I think it's helped more
       | than Mastodon because it's less realtime/feed focused and slower
       | paced. It also doesn't require you to form a friend circle to
       | benefit. Instead, the community is waiting for you already. You
       | just sign up on an instance and add your communities. Done. This
       | helped me a lot, together with sites like https://sub.rehab
        
       | agluszak wrote:
       | 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
        
         | badtension wrote:
         | Looks like this is the best moment to move to the fediverse.
         | Each country to have its own instances and accounts for all
         | public institutions and governors.
        
         | KSteffensen wrote:
         | 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/
        
           | wepple wrote:
           | NY Transit officially stopped using Twitter. I hope others
           | follows.
           | 
           | Google results that require a login to view are cancerous
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | > Can you imagine Musk banning some random non-USA government
           | agency because he had a fit while high at 3 am?
           | 
           | Not only, but also.
           | 
           | Does the Chinese government run an account? Have American
           | politicians been as upset about this as they seem to have
           | been about TikTok? I'd check the former, but, well, the
           | subject under discussion.
        
           | corndoge wrote:
           | > Why the hell are government agencies using Twitter/Facebook
           | for official communication in the first place?
           | 
           | Exactly this. It's fine if they use twitter to syndicate news
           | that is also announced on official government systems, but
           | not as a primary and certainly not as a solitary distribution
           | method.
           | 
           | > Can you imagine Musk banning some random non-USA government
           | agency because he had a fit while high at 3 am?
           | 
           | That would be hilarious and maybe it would result in some
           | people learning that twitter is in fact a private corporation
           | that can do whatever it wants, but i doubt it - similar
           | incidents proved that large swathes of users believe twitter
           | is or should be treated as public infrastructure rather than
           | prompting significant moves to user controlled platforms
        
           | kevinmchugh wrote:
           | Musk has been deferential to governments to date, even when
           | that flies in the face of his idea of a free speech platform.
        
             | KerrAvon wrote:
             | Musk has also been deferential to catturd2 and banned
             | journalists for imagined crimes.
        
             | andsoitis wrote:
             | > Musk has been deferential to governments to date, even
             | when that flies in the face of his idea of a free speech
             | platform.
             | 
             | It's a business. Free speech is the brand.
        
           | nologic01 wrote:
           | This is one of the biggest scandals nobody is talking about.
           | 
           | Any talk about privacy awareness is invalidated when public
           | sector entities endorse these platforms and encourage
           | citizens to participate.
           | 
           | Any talk about the public sector not picking winners is a
           | joke when they explicitly advertise and provide links on
           | their websites to particular platforms.
           | 
           | We have normalized alot of abnormal stuff in the past
           | decade...
        
           | paulddraper wrote:
           | > Why the hell are government agencies using Twitter/Facebook
           | for official communication in the first place?
           | 
           | Reach.
           | 
           | IDK if anyone is using it as the _sole_ method of
           | communication.
           | 
           | But Twitter in practice has a much higher reach than every
           | other method.
        
             | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
             | I've definitely seen critical info communicated either only
             | on Twitter, or first on Twitter and only much later
             | elsewhere. Not sure if it was alerts ("chemical plant on
             | fire, close windows") or crisis communication ("emergency
             | water supplies being distributed at Foo street"), but it
             | was a case of "use Twitter or suffer serious consequences".
             | 
             | Stuff like "public transit line 17 out of service" being
             | announced only on Twitter is completely par for the course.
        
             | KerrAvon wrote:
             | It doesn't, though; this is a myth propagated by
             | journalists, who are Twitter addicts and are the only
             | reason it survived Musk's initial incompetence.
        
       | marcodiego wrote:
       | Since today I've been https://nitter.it/ . Don't know how long it
       | will work though.
        
         | emergie wrote:
         | Looks like nitter doesn't work anymore. I am unable to find a
         | working instance
         | 
         | https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances
        
       | rconti wrote:
       | Looks like Twitter was officially evicted out of their Boulder
       | office today. Had a fire sale on furniture out on the street, at
       | least until the Sheriff seemed to stop employees from going into
       | the building anymore.
        
         | jacobsenscott wrote:
         | Lol, I would have made the drive up just to see if I knew.
        
       | lapcat wrote:
       | Here's a trick to view a tweet: use the embed.
       | 
       | https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=16748657311...
        
       | jansan wrote:
       | I tend to spend way more time on Twitter than I should, so I
       | blacklisted it on my router and only accessed it through Nitter.
       | Since I will not remove it from the blacklist, that's it with
       | Twitter. Overall this is probably a good thing for me.
        
       | ineedausername wrote:
       | Should we cry now or something?
        
         | duringmath wrote:
         | They're just reporting the news how you react to it is up to
         | you
        
           | mydriasis wrote:
           | I choose to cry, then. Seems sensible.
        
             | diego_sandoval wrote:
             | I choose to delete my Twitter account, which I didn't use
             | much anyway.
        
       | nunez wrote:
       | This killed nitter.
       | 
       | Fuck.
       | 
       | I guess I'm done with Twitter.
       | 
       | Reddit is in Eternal September. Twitter is login-walled. If HN is
       | next, I'll probably be mostly done with the Internet.
       | 
       | This version of the Internet is starting to suck. :(
        
         | j-bos wrote:
         | I feel the same. Had 4 twitter accounts I followed on nitter
         | after losing my account, and now, not sure. Feels like a time
         | of (light) mourning.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | coffeebeqn wrote:
       | Ok, I'm not entirely unhappy to stop consuming Twitter for good.
       | Musk sure showed me
        
       | odd_perfect_num wrote:
       | This phased out obsolescence (where people who care can create an
       | account to archive old content before the site's deletion) should
       | be the new norm!
        
       | aeyes wrote:
       | Embed links still work and I don't see how Twitter could disable
       | them without causing a bit more outrage. But maybe they don't
       | even care anymore.
        
       | morbegn0 wrote:
       | https://nitter.cz/, from the Czech collective NoLogz, has a
       | statement in place of the error message:
       | 
       | | |
       | 
       | "Nitter.cz is not working, just like all other Nitter instances.
       | The reason is Twitter blocking all access to it's content without
       | login.
       | 
       | We are sorry, but there is nothing we can do about it right now
       | and we are not sure if the situation will change in the future.
       | 
       | Don't trust corporations, especially those where one egomaniac
       | has all the power. Use open-source and community driven solutions
       | if you can (like Mastodon).
       | 
       | Sincerely, NoLog.cz collective
       | 
       | PS: You can also donate to us to keep our other services running"
        
       | activitypea wrote:
       | I just ran into this problem -- not being able to view tweets
       | without logging in. As much as I hate Musk, this is clearly the
       | trajectory of all platforms. Without a unified push towards self-
       | hosting or the fediverse, the internet as we know it is over :(
        
         | jtriangle wrote:
         | We'll probably see a comeback once the LLM craze has blown
         | over. So, 5-10 years
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | Been over for a long time. We've had a lot of consolidation
         | into Reddit (which, you can browse mostly anonymously, it will
         | just beg you to death to log in unless you use the old site);
         | and we've also had a mountain of consolidation into Discord
         | (the most unsearchable system ever designed).
         | 
         | People stopped hosting their own forums. Frankly, it's hard to
         | not see why. The constant spam and people avoiding bans wasn't
         | helpful - and modern forum software like Discourse is pure
         | agony to set up and maintain if you don't know what you are
         | doing. Not that forum software hasn't always been hard to set
         | up, but the modern software stacks are particularly hard to
         | manage. Also, what normal people see as good UX, in my
         | experience, almost completely _does not match_ what computer
         | engineers and the average open-source contributor sees as good
         | UX.
        
       | hayd wrote:
       | Noticed this morning that nitter was down and twitter made tweets
       | completely unavailable until you're logged in. Very annoying.
       | 
       | I wonder what happened to embedded tweets?
        
         | saurik wrote:
         | (Embedded tweets also stopped working.)
        
           | neltnerb wrote:
           | And people said I was being a Luddite for saying "just copy
           | the text or take a screenshot", that's a lot of "news"
           | articles at this point.
           | 
           | Definitely disturbing that journalists (especially) figured
           | it was good archival practice to rely on the Twitter API in
           | providing context.
           | 
           | For years, if I didn't enable twitter's javascript, news
           | articles are missing images and quotes, obviously so. It's
           | embarrassing, I honestly don't know how they recover from
           | this, I don't know why they kept relying on Twitter embedding
           | when screenshots and copy/paste work better and don't break.
        
             | CatWChainsaw wrote:
             | I grew up with the practice of never putting more of my
             | life in the digital world than necessary. Given the recent
             | Amazon smarthome snafu I don't see a reason to change.
             | 
             | Very innovation, many progress.
        
         | nickloewen wrote:
         | This comment on a related HN post seems to indicate they're
         | still working: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36542606
         | 
         | Here's the example link from that comment:
         | https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=16748657311...
         | 
         | Edit: and here's a random news article (post?) that has a
         | working embedded tweet:
         | https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/30/23780357/new-footage-of-t...
        
       | renewiltord wrote:
       | As an amusing aside, you can search for "username twitter" for
       | many of the people posting here on hn.algolia.com and get a
       | sequence of "I don't use Twitter" then "This Twitter account is
       | decent" in a short span of time which makes me suspect many of
       | these claims are not true.
       | 
       | For my part, this is an annoyance since I use nitter's API to
       | feed Tweets to a Slack I share with friends.
        
       | agluszak wrote:
       | Putting the internet in the hands of corporations was the worst
       | thing that ever happened to technology
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | Doesn't come as a surprise when you look at how openly hostile
         | the open source community still is to prioritizing user
         | experiences and supporting tech-illiterate users in general.
         | 
         | FOSS, fediverse, IPFS all had their chance, and they blew it.
         | Corporations were the ones who opened up the internet to the
         | 99% of people who would otherwise never have been there at all,
         | and now they want to collect their cut.
        
           | MrOwen wrote:
           | To be completely fair, FOSS' marketing budget is orders of
           | magnitude smaller than these corporation's budgets. Not to
           | say that you're wrong but I suspect that's more like a drop
           | in the bucket compared to marketing.
           | 
           | Even now, these federated sites on the rise have technicial
           | growing pains. And those will probably take years to get
           | through until it's to a point where everyone can use it with
           | little friction.
        
         | RIMR wrote:
         | The internet was conceived as a democratic haven, a realm where
         | every individual had the potential to influence and shape their
         | digital experience. However, a pervasive dip in technological
         | literacy and a rising dependency on heavily-guided online
         | pathways has begun to shift this balance. If this trend
         | persists, corporations will continue to maintain their
         | overarching dominion.
         | 
         | A dynamic, user-driven community still thrives in the vast
         | expanse of the digital world, yet it lies hidden beyond the
         | towering edifices of corporate-controlled structures.
         | Discovering these spaces has become an increasingly formidable
         | task, as the infusion of corporate social content into
         | journalistic and blogging platforms perpetuates the mirage that
         | such networks are all that exist.
         | 
         | Each colossal tech corporation we see today began its journey
         | as a modest, affable endeavor. As these projects expanded with
         | their burgeoning popularity, users neglected to challenge the
         | escalating influence and control these companies wielded.
         | 
         | Nitter was merely an alternative facade to Twitter. Despite
         | offering an ad-free environment, it lacked substantial
         | advantages as the underlying platform remained the same -
         | Twitter.
         | 
         | However, the digital realm is not void of choices. Federated
         | social media is emerging as a profound alternative. Yet, a
         | majority of those voicing concerns about corporate social media
         | seem to dismiss options like Mastodon. This is primarily due to
         | their increased technological demands and people's comfort in
         | having a corporation guide their online journey.
         | 
         | The power to reshape your digital footprint rests in your
         | hands. You can sever ties with your corporate social media
         | accounts. You can choose to eschew media that incessantly
         | embeds corporate social media content. You can advocate for an
         | internet not ruled by corporate influence. All it requires is
         | the willingness to venture beyond the realm of comfort.
        
           | the-printer wrote:
           | > The internet was conceived as a democratic haven, a realm
           | where every individual had the potential to influence and
           | shape their digital experience.
           | 
           | I have a hard time reconciling this perspective with history.
           | Were any of these ideals present among the
           | people/organizations responsible for the internet and the Web
           | at the time that they were being developed? Or is sentiment
           | like yours something that people adopted later on?
        
             | RIMR wrote:
             | I was speaking more to the ethos that arose as the internet
             | was opened up to the public and began to evolve in the late
             | 20th century. You are correct that this is a far cry from
             | its initial conception as a military communications network
             | (ARPANET).
        
         | nomel wrote:
         | I'm not sure that's a fair perspective.
         | 
         | Twitter made a convenient, easy to use, centralized (which is
         | an _absolute_ positive for user experience), social media
         | product that attracted people, by their own free will. The
         | number of people using a social media service amplifies its
         | "usefulness", so the more people, the stronger it attracts new
         | users.
         | 
         | We didn't put the internet in the hands of these corporations.
         | We walked over and _sat_ in their, easy to use, hands.
        
         | throwaway1777 wrote:
         | What in the heck are you even talking about? The internet would
         | be nothing without tech companies.
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | At university I was using JANET, and in some ways it was
           | better than what we have now.
           | 
           | I don't think they'd have ever bothered inventing privacy
           | violating trackers A/B testing (though if I'm wrong this is
           | the best place to assert wildly and be quickly corrected).
        
             | throwaway1777 wrote:
             | Who cares. 99.99% of the world would never use something
             | like that. They want apps on iPhones.
        
         | darkarmani wrote:
         | No. Centralizing control of something that was designed to be
         | distributed is what is stupid.
         | 
         | The Internet is supposed to be distributed. We've gotten so
         | used to consolidated services that we have forgotten this
         | lesson.
        
           | convolvatron wrote:
           | don't you think one is a consequence of the other?
        
           | staplers wrote:
           | Centralizing control of something that was designed to be
           | distributed
           | 
           | This is human nature/greed unfortunately. Look at any natural
           | (distributed) resource. The current economic system rewards
           | this as well.
        
             | osmarks wrote:
             | It is not an issue of human nature. Centralization just
             | makes implementation waaaay easier. Distributed systems
             | design is very hard.
        
             | eddythompson80 wrote:
             | There is a failure of technology too. The internet is
             | distributed, sure, but the server-client architecture puts
             | all the operational burden on the server. The expectation
             | that everyone will run their own internet exposed instance
             | of _any_ thing is still simply not feasible, even today.
             | The operational complexity of security, availability,
             | monitoring etc are unmanageable even for technical users.
             | Back when smaller forums were popular, hearing of a forum
             | getting hacked was pretty much the norm. They get hacked,
             | they go down for few days, they come back from a backup
             | losing few days or hours of data, and on to the next
             | vbulletin. Phpbb, nuke, or whatever vulnerability /hack.
             | There doesn't yet exist a distributed system that can
             | replace something like facebook, twitter, Reddit, YouTube,
             | TikTok, instagram, or even WhatsApp without a significant
             | operational burden or added complexity.
             | 
             | It's also not a very interesting problem to solve because
             | of the type of cliffs you will run into due to precisely
             | how the "internet works"
        
           | hkt wrote:
           | Centralisation vs decentralisation in tech is pretty much
           | irrelevant.
           | 
           | What is relevant is governance. We allow billionaires and
           | venture capitalists to govern a commons that we all rely on.
           | Surprise surprise, it isn't going well.
           | 
           | The solution is not to have (difficult to scale) federated
           | alternatives. The solution is collective ownership.
           | 
           | Imagine for a moment that the multinationals that are
           | increasingly in charge of our lives were owned by their
           | customers. Imagine they had a fair electoral system,
           | reflecting the variety of those users, limiting them to one
           | person, one vote, and that their constitutions were designed
           | to guarantee the rights of minorities.
           | 
           | The journey that most countries went on through the 20th and
           | 21st centuries, in other words.
           | 
           | Tech giants and other multinationals are a different kind of
           | beast, because they govern a little slice of our lives
           | instead of having carte blanche. But it is not beyond the
           | realm of possibility for democratically operated
           | multinationals to exist. It will be hard to do, but IMO, that
           | approach has a bright future because non-techies can grasp it
           | and participate in it more easily, and that is one less
           | barrier to a runaway network effect than the fediverse has.
        
             | MrOwen wrote:
             | Can you not have both? Each federated instance costs money
             | to upkeep. Some instances could elect for collective
             | ownership or even elect to donate for develop (probably
             | this needs to be carefully considered to deter corporate
             | ownership). I like your idea but I think there needs to be
             | an interim step and for now, maybe that's federation. Maybe
             | we'll get to the place you speak of... one day.
        
           | skrowl wrote:
           | [dead]
        
           | flyinghamster wrote:
           | It's that old tradeoff - convenience vs. single point of
           | failure. Unfortunately, we're getting to see now what that
           | single point of failure does to us. A big chunk of the open
           | web is winking out of existence at this very moment.
        
           | badtension wrote:
           | > No. Centralizing control of something that was designed to
           | be distributed is what is stupid.
           | 
           | Sounds like the issues we currently have with democracy.
        
             | seanw444 wrote:
             | Distributed power takes more effort. Of course people
             | naturally trend towards lazy over the generations because
             | it's easier and more efficient at the cost of everything it
             | was initially supposed to be. And now we are where we are:
             | executive branch agencies legislating.
        
               | badtension wrote:
               | That's why we shouldn't optimize everything, the longer I
               | live the more I understand that overoptimization is the
               | root of all evil. We should analyse what we are doing and
               | how we are changing things in the long term, monitor the
               | situation and adjust accordingly. Otherwise our systems
               | will find a local optimum that benefit the most powerful
               | groups. Happens in all aspects of life, modern capitalism
               | being the prime example.
        
         | jrflowers wrote:
         | This makes sense. It's all been downhill since we stopped using
         | the public utility company America Online
        
         | warmwaffles wrote:
         | [x] doubt
         | 
         | Putting the internet in the hands of the Government wouldn't
         | fair much better.
        
           | phone8675309 wrote:
           | False dichotomy - there are more options for Internet control
           | than purely private and purely government.
        
           | agluszak wrote:
           | That's a false dichotomy. Government-regulated doesn't mean
           | government-run. I wish we had laws in place that would
           | prevent Facebook/Apple/Google/Twitter monopolies/walled
           | gardens from happening
        
           | hkt wrote:
           | See my comment above: these companies could be the formal and
           | effective property of their users.
        
           | JohnFen wrote:
           | The internet started in the hands of the government.
        
       | omoikane wrote:
       | Twitter has started blocking unregistered users (theverge) -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36535822
        
       | teddyh wrote:
       | Paul Graham famously started to use Mastodon (but has not written
       | anything there since last year). But the _HN Status_ emergency
       | "is HN down" channel never switched. It used to be publicly
       | readable at  <https://twitter.com/HNStatus>. But now, if HN was
       | to go down, only logged-in Twitter users would be able to see
       | why.
        
       | rektide wrote:
       | "Temporary emergency measure"
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36540957
        
         | fuzzbazz wrote:
         | Perfectly timed with tomorrow reddit API changes and possible
         | user exodus.
        
         | agluszak wrote:
         | Same kind of speech as "special military operation"
        
           | orblivion wrote:
           | The thing is if it weren't meant to be temporary I'd still
           | expect him to undo it. Twitter is iconic, it's a big part of
           | "the news" in a way. It just doesn't seem like it would be
           | the same thing if it had exclusivity. So I'd expect them to
           | reverse the decision after seeing the drop in engagement.
           | Just like they did regarding the ban on promoting one's
           | Mastodon account.
        
       | berkle4455 wrote:
       | You can blame this all you want on evil social media
       | corporations, but the reality is AI companies scraping public
       | conversations to feed LLMs are the current reason for walls being
       | erected around every single garden. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
       | Reddit, LinkedIn.. all heading toward full walled garden mode to
       | prevent scrapers from repurposing data and profiting off their
       | systems.
       | 
       | Federated systems are a nice idea, but they're not funded and
       | will crumble under the same pressure until they too go into
       | private mode. It's simply not a financially sound decision to run
       | an open node that is continually harvested by corporations
       | seeking to profit off the conversations occurring on your
       | platforms.
        
         | Nextgrid wrote:
         | AI companies is a stupid argument. If the AI company operates
         | legitimately, then TOS prohibiting using the content for LLM
         | training purposes would be enough. If the AI company doesn't
         | want to play ball then restricting public access won't stop
         | them, they'll just register accounts en-masse and scrape that
         | way.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | KerrAvon wrote:
         | Twitter has been slow since Musk took over and fired all of the
         | competent devops people and then shut down most of the data
         | centers. It's reasonable to assume that he's either been lied
         | to or is lying about the cause of this.
        
       | AlexandrB wrote:
       | I've viewed twitter wayyyyy less (only when someone links
       | something) since Tweetbot stopped working and I think it's been
       | good for my mental health. A login wall will take that usage down
       | to zero, so good news overall.
        
         | nocoiner wrote:
         | Same here. I haven't really missed it at all (by contrast, I
         | stopped using Reddit when the blackout started earlier this
         | month, and that feels like more of a loss).
         | 
         | Weirdly, Twitter had started becoming so unreliable for me for
         | several months prior (frequently not loading, video rarely
         | working) that my click-through rate on Twitter links was
         | already diminishing. But looks like it's 0% from here on out.
        
       | babypuncher wrote:
       | Does this mean companies will finally stop putting their official
       | announcements only on Twitter? I already deleted my Twitter
       | account months ago and I'm not about to create a new one.
        
       | hiddendoom45 wrote:
       | A fork of nitter by PrivacyDevel [0] should still work as it adds
       | the option of using user account tokens to bypass content
       | restricted tweets.
       | 
       | [0] https://github.com/PrivacyDevel/nitter
        
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