Hacker News Reader

Comment by bastard_op | Hacker News Reader

So can people please quit posting twitter feeds finally?

Some of us still have never used or signed up with twitter, or feel the need to, and really don't want to. Bad enough they removed non-javascript access, since they are permablocked through noscript here, I simply close postings on HN that link there and curse them for bothering. Asking for a login atop that is just a 4x non-starter for "news" links.

Yes, some of us still respect our privacy.

View on HN

It would be great if the community here just started downvoting stories that are twitter links. If it's not worth a blog post somewhere, why should we care?

Twitter threads are a confusing mess to look at and usually I can't figure out OP was trying to convey by posting a link to 30 tweets that probably should have been a text post somewhere.

I just gave up railing against it and run it through threader.app or threadreaderapp.com.

That doesn't make it into something the original poster re-read after themselves as a whole before posting.

Some of the highest upvoted content on HN is tweet storms with really awful takes (that driver one yesterday was full of them). I think it's fine to link to quality tweet threads but a lot of them are quite bad.

Microblogging is no less legitimate than blogging.

Considering how difficult is to follow lengthy posts that are split up in reverse chronological order, and how unintuitive it is to find replies, I surely disagree. The medium is very poor for centralized discussion of a single topic, in contrast to something like a single Reddit or HN article.

I mean, sure, but that's one tweet. 40 tweets in a row that you're supposed to read in order, comprise one large whole, nothing "micro" about it. I actually respect when someone follows the rules as it were, and spends the effort to post one tweet that conveys a lot concisely with a little. That to me is deserving of the label microblogging. Although unfortunately right alongside that is all the idiotic shallowness, sloganeering and fascistic tendencies posted by people who are like "thank god, a place where the format is as tiny as my thoughts." That's fitting a little into a little, so if there's a counter-argument to be made legitimacy-wise, that's it right there. But spreading something longer over a bunch of tweets, that's just regular blogging, on the wrong platform. I'm not fooled. It's a nuisance. Like when someone decides to pay you $5 as 500 pennies.

Can you even downvote posts here? I thought you can only downvote comments

There is no downvoting for submissions, although I wish there were.

Oh, I assumed for higher karma users they could downvote actual story posts... ohwell

Posts can be flagged, though there's a karma threshold required to do so.

A sufficient number of flags will kill a post (it's noted as "flagged").

This is addressed in multiple FAQ items, linked at the bottom of every HN page: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Unfortunately, given the nature of network effects, I suspect those who use Twitter will continue to use it, news media will continue to treat it as a primary source for comments from people, and those of us who wish to refrain from using it just... Won't have access to that channel of data. I don't see a scenario where a mass-walkout happens... Certainly not from this.

It'll be like the good old days of only finding out what's happening in the next town over because you read the paper's account of it, only now the next town over is just a site we could create an account on but refuse to.

Is that so bad though? Nothing I idly read about online much less twitter has any bearing on my daily life. It's mindless content masking as some important cultural zeitgeist. It's no different than netflix or any other time sink.

I think some people have misunderstood this change. It's been active for me for about a week, I suspect most others without accounts just haven't noticed.

Clicking on a linked tweet still works, it's only when you then click on another from within the site that it asks you for a login. It's the same approach Quora takes iirc.

Pretty sure their sign up rates are going down the shitter, so they need some creative ways to satisfy the execs or whatever

I don't have an account, and the change has been noticeable and annoying. It's more than just clicking on another tweet, though from what I can tell they've been A/B testing this behavior (sometimes I get it and sometimes I do not). On mobile, you can't click through to someone's profile from the tweet without creating an account. If the tweet chain is more than 4 or 5 tweets, you cannot read the rest without creating an account. It's prevented me from normal browsing habits multiple times, like reading the ASML twitter thread that was posted on HN a couple of days ago.

Except that you often have to click something in Twitter to see the "thread", or a decent resolution of a tweeted picture, etc.

I cannot view threads or expand images or see people's responses to threads any longer. This does not compel me to sign up at all. Quite the opposite effect. Twitter is not the ideal place for long form threads anyways. *yes lets just keep adding more 140 character mini blogs to make a long form news posting*

Yeey, finally someone says it! I've been trying to flag all possible Twitter links on here simply because their content isn't accessible to me.

I there's a better compromise for both parties. A website that you give a twitter link, it scrapes the content and rehosts without the login banner or bloat. You share this link instead of the original twitter link. Twitterers get to share the content they want and anyone can read without issue.

I fully share your sentiment. Tip, though: threadreaderapp.com will proxy them for you if you do really want to see them for some reason. I've also heard nitter.net mentioned, but haven't tried it yet.

I mostly use theoldreader.com, which doesn't, and honestly don't mind they don't capitulate and work-around privacy walls. Watching twits tweet with twats is mostly a non-starter anyways, nor would I believe anything I see there any more than facebook or other scandal rag links anyways.

I will not take the time to take a Twitter link and send it through that website. Anything on Twitter is time wasted as far as I am concerned.

If, for any reason, you stop using Twitter, your life will be going to be far more pleasant.

Keyword here being some

I don’t understand the HB obsession with not creating accounts or reading Twitter. I haven’t logged into Twitter in years I stay logged in. Also reading Twitter is trivial people have consumed countless billions of tweets. Yet for some reason programmers on HN struggle with it.

It lets them track you across sites that use their iframes.

Scary. Patagonia might show me an ad when i read the WSJ since i follow their twitter account.

Where I go on the Internet outside of Twitter dot com is none of their business.

It’s how sites with billions in expenses are run without having to charge directly. I never click on ads so google and Twitter are free for me.

Twitter destroyed in myopic greed what was once a sensible service that shared in our vision of an open web. The “struggle” you refer to is protest.

I am just as confused as to how literally multiple people have figured out how to use and navigate Twitter. I have probably failed at many other things in my life too though. Maybe it's me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com