Twitter's latest user-unfriendly move requires an account just to read
In an unforeseen turn of events, Twitter has decided to test user patience by cloistering tweets behind a sign-in wall
Twitter was one of the few socials where government agencies could publish to the masses. Everyday Twitter erodes its worth for short-term wealth.
In hindsight, it seems absurd that we collectively trust a for-profit company to disseminate official information. Governments should probably take this opportunity to spin up their own Mastodon instances and migrate away from Twitter.
Germany of all countries has dippped into it: https://social.bund.de/
Not quite sure how this works without fax machines, but it does.
Yeah, I'm with you 100%. The same thing could be said about reputable news organizations. And really, there's no better "verification" than people and agencies having their accounts on servers tied to domains that they own.
The European Commission is on Mastodon and are seeing how it goes there. They post fairly routinely.
Some of us never did trust them to, but politicians went there anyway.
Everyday Twitter erodes its worth for short-term wealth.
This is, and will always be, the main push of capitalism. This isn't some cute new term like "enshittification" or something, this is just good ol fashion rent seeking and it's capitalism working as intended.
“Oh no, I can’t read anything on Twitter!”
No one with good mental health.
In areas experiencing ongoing conflict where maintream media is either muzzled/ unable to keep up, twitter is used by people & journalists to provide updates. In countries with dictatorial governments where the mainstream media cannot be trusted , twitter (&other SM) are used to organize protests and discussions.
In countries with dictatorial governments where the mainstream media cannot be trusted , twitter (&other SM) are used to organize protests and discussions.
It was good for this, but it is not anymore
Hey, there is some good art on Twitter. It's not all politics and Wendy
There are plenty of people on twitter to follow that are are good influence and creators of quality content, or just nice to keep track of what they're up to. No other platform unfortunately gives us the same amount of (casual) information about stuff like that. I hate what twitter's become just like the next person but there's just simply no alternative for casual user that provides the same experience.
Musk claimed that it's temporary. Either way this is an absolute disaster. This must be costing them insane amounts of money.
"we were getting data pillaged" ... LOL I wonder what on earth that means in his feeble mind.
Just some deranged rich snob who thinks UGC is .. his? Kinda sad if you think about it. People posted on Twitter with the expectation of it being public, not some man's sandbox.
That whole tweet reads like a screenwriter shit it out to fill some tech mumbojumbo plot point for a police procedural.
He only cares because it's not him that's doing the pillaging.
"Temporary" in corpo-speak means permanent if it generates profit and there-were-some-technical-issues if it doesn't, so this is just Felon Muskrat testing the waters.
Right, they will do a cost/benefit analysis to see if the amount of traffic and engagement that they lost cost more or less than what they made or saved by forcing log in.
Because that works so well for Pinterest right? I mean, we all have Pinterest accounts so we can access all that content on Pinterest don't we?
Oh... we don't? People add -site:pinterest.com to their google searches to avoid the site entirely? Well then... dang.
Personally, I don't get many search results from Pinterest
Or not anymore, anyway. Google's algorithm seems to have come to the conclusion that pinterest isn't worth linking as much anymore.
Twitter is going even harder than Pinterest. They're not even showing a preview of the content, they're just immediately redirecting users to a login page before seeing anything at all.
This is a much more extreme version of the same reason I never used Quora. I'd be allowed on one page, but after that, clicking on any internal link in the site would push a "create an account" dialogue and wouldn't let me click off to see the content. The way around that was just reloading the page, but the irritation and tiny extra step was enough to stop me from browsing that site. Just checked right now and Quora doesn't do this on PC, but it does on my phone.
Now Twitter won't let you on the site at all without logging in.
Also... Quora just seems fucking wild
Have to remember to change the results from "related" to "answers" to make sure you aren't seeing completely unrelated comments.
LinusTechTips just had an issue with this on WAN show tonight where Luke was trying to show a video on Twitter but he wasn't signed in on his stream laptop and Linus was remote so he couldn't share his screen.
Luckily the creator of the video they wanted to show had also posted it to YouTube so they were able to show it anyway, but it still disrupted the flow of the show and led them to not be able to use the platform as a news source.
So... Less ad exposure?
But higher conversion, I bet.
saw this too! looks like it broke a ton of tweet embeds too... Muskrat says its to mitigate scrapers but--this feels heavy handed
What damage do web scrapers actually cause Twitter? I don't understand Elon's logic in this move.
Extra traffic that their infrastructure can't handle since he fired all the people that knew how.
Like reddit, he also probably sees it as losing millions of dollars for data he wants to be paid for.
So losing money from degraded services and losing potential money from data being taken.
What's worth more - the loss of ad revenue from walled login, or the loss of potential revenue selling the data
Your first mistake is assuming that Elon Musk uses any kind of logic.
There's no way they cause more damage than what they have done now. The vast majority of users (and eyes on ads, etc) are not going to have accounts. The majority of accounts that might pay money only do so because lots of people (who may not be logged in) see them.
You have to assume flawed logic if you want to understand him.
there is no Elon logic other than having an ego larger than this planet
I mean they have to protect all that content that they've been given for free, right?
Guess I’m not going to Twitter anymore
Same I rarely went there to check specific people's posts. I have not made a twitter yet and certainly not going to make one now.
Good! This is a true death knell.
Good. Finally that one friend of mine will stop posting Twitter links and I can blacklist it again.
Good, faster Twitter dies, the better.
It’s starting to feel like LinkedIn. Can’t view a page without the person getting notified you looked.
Holy shit, I thought it was just a bug on my end. Sometimes I wonder: what has ELON been smoking?
"ketamine" says wsj
You don't smoke ketamine. And it definitely would not be responsible for the type of behavior he exhibits.
That's just called "extreme avarice," and "sociopathy."
Well, I guess we know he's been doing some weed already. ;)
Does this make it impossible to read posts from accounts that have blocked you in incognito mode?
The walled gardens are closing their gates...
That's just Elongated Muskowrat reminding everyone that he remains a shithead.
Timed carefully so the reporting of it is diluted by news about the Reddit API at the same time?
As much as I hate Twitter, this is just ridiculous. Pretty much ALL the big social-media sites I've seen now require accounts. This is only gonna create walled gardens...
I think the trend of many big tech companies nowadays to continue to further isolate themselves from user bases that made them a popular source to begin with, will eventually be to their own ruin. But you won't be able to convince greedy CEOs of this (at least not currently).
Facebook and Instagram already do this. It was only a matter of time for Twitter.
I'm locked out of my twit acct, so I can neither exit, nor read posts. LoL, what a joke.
Sorry, but this is ridiculous. I wonder what's happening next.
