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Comment by johnisgood | Hacker News Reader

On top of all this, being logged in is not enough. I just checked right now. You have to verify yourself using either a credit card, or submitting an image of a valid ID, such as your driver's license or passport (I have neither, FWIW).

NO THANKS.

I cannot tell you just how much I hate this kind of bullshit. This is becoming increasingly common. Call me old and grumpy, but I would much prefer to go back 10-20 years. The web was a symbol of freedom, decentralization, and so forth. Now we have major websites that you can count on one hand that makes up the Internet. Along with their fucking shitty, severely restricting or limiting systems.

On the other hand, they might be successful in reducing my Internet consumption. :)

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Twitter won't let you browse more than a handful of tweets before blocking the service demanding you login.

I was trying to read an article about gpt-3 and the author had decided to embed tweets with pictures of text on, so not only could I not read the text without right-clicking the image to view on its own then zooming and panning but after a while Twitter would just prevent me from reading any further without logging in.

Twitter won't let you create an account without a phone number and, like most services that want to harvest your data like a Dementor from Harry Potter, they want to push you towards an app.

Tiktok is pretty hostile towards desktop users too. I refuse to install it on my mobile and why should I anyway?

And then there's the many iot devices that don't give you an interface at all if you don't have a phone. Ridiculous.

https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/sew1rn/twitte...

For now, this removes the login pop-ups. For mobile use, there's Fritter.

There is also Nitter as a frontend. I love it!

There's also [0] and [1], which are more mobile-friendly but present less information.

[0]: https://i.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/sew1rn/twitterc... [1]: https://reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/sew1rn/twittercom... (.compact does the exact same thing)

https://drewdevault.com/2021/09/23/Nitter-and-other-internet...

Use nitter, libreddit, invidious, bibliogram (is that one dead?) and others.

It's a shame that these big companies seem to suck at making usable websites. They probably chase "conversion" to new accounts at all costs. And that probably works (A/B tested).

They don't "suck" at it. It's not in their interest.

> It's a shame that these big companies seem to suck at making usable websites.

The Reddit and Twitter web apps are actually great on mobile, but they lock you out after a few minutes. I used to use both all the time until three or so years ago when the constant app pushing made both unusable.

The websites are extremely slow to load on my phone (galaxy s4 with lineageos 17.1). Using midori in a private tab:

- Time to load a twitter link: 14s (20s to display a preview of the picture).

- Same link on a nitter instance: 5s, page fully loaded, with replies.

Also, less than half the page is dedicated to content, I have:

- a search bar

- log in/sign up

- Cookies notice

- "Twitter is better on the app" "Not Now/Switch to the app" (that one takes a lot of space).

All of the above keeps floating above the content, so I can only scroll through a tiny window. The content is lazy-loaded, which makes scrolling annoying. A lot of space is wasted with buttons that are only useful if you're logged in.

The experience is terrible on mobile, and it's mostly the same for reddit.

They blocked my account and refused to unblock until I verified myself through phone. I got my account unblocked because I found a workaround for it. It was not supposed to unblock me or let me off the hook, but it did. Screw them. :D I rarely use it anyways.

do you mind sharing how did you unlock it without sharing phone number? i am in same situation

FWIW, I feel like this--age verification for age restricted videos--is probably caused by either a regulation that already happened or a regulation that was threatened and which Google felt safer to define the boundaries of for themselves (not that I think that often leads to sane outcomes).

It is, it's a requirement of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive in the EU, and in particular the UK and Irish regulators implementations of it. Especially the Irish one, since YouTube EMEA is based in Ireland and effectively make the regulatory decisions for the entire EU under the AVMS.

I feel like we all desperately took our eye off the ball when that was passed.

You are right. They are too big, and are at the crosshair of the Government. They must obey. I am pretty much against both in these cases, to be honest.

> Call me old and grumpy, but I would much prefer to go back 10-20 years. The web was a symbol of freedom, decentralization, and so forth.

Strange that no one has brought up hosting a peertube instance

> Now we have major websites that you can count on one hand that makes up the Internet.

No they don't make up the Internet. We have a couble big sites backed by megacorporations that have taken over the majority mindshare, but there are still plenty of smaller sites left. Don't give in and pretend that Google et al have won. Find traditional forums for your interests and participate in them. Start one if needed. Subscribe to individual blogs via RSS. Consider hosting your own. Want to share your creations? Create a website for them instead of just putting them on the most convenient social media platform. The independent web is not lost until we all agree that it is.

These seem to be requirements in certain jurisdictions and not universal. I have never been asked to verify myself for YouTube, or for my phone number, and yet I am an admin for four channels. Maybe it's because Google already has those for my other accounts (Playstore, Gmail, and Pay).

COPPA is responsible for this, not Google. Google are just following the law after being fined for not following it.

call your elected representatives and complain if you're in the US.

I am not in the US. These comments are good. I do believe most of the bullshit is regulation-related, coming from the Government.

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