Hacker News Reader

Comment by roosterjm2k2 | Hacker News Reader

This is a very entitled piece... and a very entitled thought process...

When you are using someone else's platform, they still make the rules... this line in particular: "it wouldn’t help other developers who I believe deserve to get the same level of opportunity as me." ... nobody "deserves" access to any API... period.

I don't understand the entitlement in so many tech projects, who get upset when a 3rd party they are freely using changes their service... you were never entitled to it in the first place, you merely benefited from its existence and should be appreciative of what you were allowed to do instead of feel entitled to it.

View on HN

Author here. To be clear, I don't believe I deserve free or special access to anything. The point I was trying to make was actually more in the opposite direction: I wouldn't want to receive free/special access as an exception now simply because the project has become "famous", if the same opportunity doesn't exist for other independent developers when their projects are starting out -- I just want to encourage a level playing field.

(When Emojitracker originally received elevated access 3 years ago, the project was not famous or well known at all, it was just a slightly more formal version of Me saying: "hey check this out, I think this might be a cool hack but I need access to 900 keywords instead of 400, that ok?" and Twitter: "yeah cool, no problem dude.")

So you are still accessing the streaming endpoint, but you have more keywords than they normally allow? So you are not accessing the entire Firehose and parsing from there, right? Do you regularly update it to include new emoji when they come out? I am thinking about ways to do it on the free stream still, just trying to see where you are already at.

You should only expect a level playing field from public infrastructure.

You should never expect a level playing field from private infrastructure.

If anything this is more proof for the need of a public access Twitter-like service using public key crypto for self-signed authentication.

You clearly were not part of the launch of twitter.

They sought out and begged for developers to use their platform. Then they started killing the apps one by one.

Your comment while "wise" in hindsight is thoughtless, arrogant and tone deaf to the work involved in creating an actual product that users use.

There is a large difference between entitlement and disappointment.

In the future you should invest your energies in building and supporting open and public platforms instead of hoping that some private company isn't going to part ways with your interests at some point.

The OP was not being thoughtless, arrogant or tone deaf, he was just being honest. If you feel disappointed it is because you made a poor decision. You should learn from your mistakes instead of shouting at the person who points out the tragic results of your actions.

There are plenty of open source and open platform projects out there. BitTorrent, Bitcoin, HTTP, OpenPGP... pick one and start building!

You should feel entitled to your individual rights in whatever republic you live in. You should not feel entitled to tell a private company how to run their business. Doing otherwise will always lead to disappointment.

Way to blame the victim, man.

Giving advice about life that cuts right to point is not "blaming the victim". No one was hurt here. We're just pointing out the obvious fact that people spent their time unwisely when they built on top of private platforms.

The right thing to do is consider this a lesson well learned, shut up, eat crow, and get on with your life like an adult, safe in the knowledge that you won't make the same mistake again.

Generally speaking the vast majority of people in this forum have a shockingly bad understanding of how our government, legal, accounting and financial systems work. That infrastructure isn't going anywhere and companies like Twitter exist only because of these formal systems. Learning the details of the relationships between these systems is your responsibility. You can easily be taken advantage of without a knowledgable understanding of the rules of the game. This is no one's fault but your own.

Then twitter should stop coming to the dev community and begging for us to like them again.

When twitter was just shutting things down and making it clear they were going to make money off the thing, I wasnt surprised nor was I happy, they had clearly decided to monetize what other people were doing themselves, but worse.

Since then twitter has not done anything that I would consider engaging or of note, and from the articles I read on HN, in a crunch on how the heck to monetize their platform and are coming back to the dev community trying to win mindshare.

You can't have it both ways.

Out of all the sentences in OP's post.. that was the one that showed the LEAST entitlement. He's basically saying "I don't want to be treated special since everyone else doesn't have elevated access". That's all.

I think it comes from many companies branding themselves as altruistic and developer-friendly. I don't think people would be surprised at this move had Twitter said: "Using our platform? We own you. We will pursue all potential profit deriving from our platform to the fullest extent of the law."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com