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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

Ok but I assume the user-hostile dark patterns are still present? So I can't scroll past more than a few tweets without a full page popover driving me to sign up?

I have no interest in ever "tweeting". I do not need an account to read tweets from a link sent to me. At this point I refuse to log in or comply with the wishes of Twitter PMs just on principle.

If the onion site does not feature these dark patterns then this will actually drive me to use Twitter more, and will actually take some of my usage off the web and onto tor.

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Even if you logged in, click 'read more' now only show you 3~10 more reply and yet another 'read more' button. This really drive me insane. I often encounter tweets with 200+ reply and you ask me to click 'read more' 20 times in order to read all reply? What's wrong with you?

So I ended wrote a script that click the 'Read more' automatically as soon as it showed up.

There should be a plaintext front end to twitter. Imagine entire threads reduced to simple markdown bulleted lists.

Instead of the terrible Twitter website, have you considered Nitter[0] with an extension like Privacy Redirect[1] (or on mobile, an app like UntrackMe[3])? No login prompt, no dark patterns, no JavaScript

[0] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter [1] https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect [2] https://f-droid.org/packages/app.fedilab.nitterizeme/

I don’t use Twitter. Someone texts me a link and I tap it, then we discuss. Is there some way to make mobile Safari automatically parse Twitter links and redirect?

Twitter is extremely low-value to me. Any additional effort and I will just do something else with my time.

Looks like there's an iOS app for this: https://apps.apple.com/app/privacy-redirect/id1578144015

There's a Nitter instance running at https://nitter.net/nasa

If you use a Twitter->Nitter redirect extension, it's a great experience!

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mo...

FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nitter-redire...

And IIRC you need a cell phone to get an account. At least it made me when I signed up for one to read the news. Maybe it was so dark I missed how to skip.

Yes even if you skip they’ll just flag your account for bot like activity and require a phone number to unlock. Happened to me first time I replied to Elon Musk, have to hand it to them, definitely something a bot would do.

Can we invent something like zero-knowledge proof-of-unique-living-person-and-not a-bot, without giving out personal details like phone number? Would be very valuable.

Or just allow anonymous reads on Twitter?

Agreed. Why is it so important that users protecting themselves by using Tor, etc aren't allowed to use Twitter?

Is it ads? Is it because it's harder to serve ads to such users? Say it ain't so...

Not only for viewing, but also for commenting. You know, people are sent to prison in Russia for liking FB posts. Or people are canceled for the same in other parts of the world.

I mean second paragraph first sentence full stop.

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