Hacker News Reader

Comment by cristifalcas | Hacker News Reader

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Reset the counter.

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1135439789090574338

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1522599896066396161.html

But you came across this and you wouldn't have come across it if he just put it on his own website. Network effects and game theory...

We came across this by seeing it here on HN. Lots of people's own websites get posted here on HN, so we might well have come across it anyway.

Considering that foone's "website" (or blog) is entirely giant Twitter threads...

People post their own and others' websites here very regularly!

Actually the moment I see that a link leads to Twitter or Instagram I don't click it.

It’s strange I have no issue reading posts like these but every time they come up someone complains about the format of twitter and I still have no idea what makes it so difficult for people and I definitely did not grow up with it.

Well first of all you need to be familiar with the format. Or better said, with the abuse of the format. Because while it might look like replies, you need to figure out it was used to post an article and not actually additions/corrections what would be a common use for someone replying to themselves. But it's still hard to figure where it ends as the replies from the author seamlessly blend into other users' replies. It doesn't help this particular author doesn't number those tweets (which in itself is ridiculous) or even use punctuation or capitals. It just seems like random rant, not something we're supposed to be be reading when someone shares a tweet.

And then there's the noise. Why do I need to skip icons, names, numbers, padding, dividers after every sentence? And while our brains are relatively good at it, I still need to process it as it gives clues into where the "article" ends.

Twitter is the worst format to post articles. At least it was until someone came up with the idea to post them as videos with computer voiceover.

(I'm using the word article here, but I'm still not convinced it isn't just a random rant)

Nowadays it cuts off threads and refuses to let you read to the end unless you're logged in.

I just tried and I could read that whole thread without being logged in. Maybe twitter lets you read the whole thing if you've ever logged in with that browser?

I guess if this is actually a problem, anyone who's bothered by it, who doesn't have a twitter login could look into rewriting twitter.com links to nitter.net instead.

If you scroll a little too far at the end, it'll lock you out and prompt you to login. Basically as soon as the first "recommended" tweet is displayed mid-screen.

The way I scroll as I read, I often have to go back and reload the page just to read the last tweet in a thread.

Yes this is soooo annoying. Luckily thread reader app doesn't do this (yet)

Because it's actively user-hostile. It's not that we can't figure it out, it's that it takes extra effort and creates a problem that shouldn't be there in the first place. If things like ThreadReaderApp or Nitter can present the content in a more accessible & pleasant form, Twitter should be able to do so as well.

I see this and would argue it’s not user hostile. Rather twitter’s target users are those who sign up and log in to view and consume content so they can target. It’s not a hostility towards user but rather a non-catering to its non-users. For the majority of content , tweets and threads are not an issue. They easily consume it and if they don’t want to deal with the format they utilize tools that utilize Twitter’s API.

Sure they can but it will hurt their ad tracking

I kind of appreciate the signal: When someone chooses to blog on twitter you know it's facile at best, and more likely simply stupid (as in this case).

To be fair, I feel the same way about this comment.

I guess there will always be parts of the internet that each of us finds annoying.

It's fine to prefer different approach to content publishing, but there are lots of solutions to this problem – use them instead of complaining about the ways that other people choose to publish their content.

See https://threadreaderapp.com/user/Foone

Even with thread reader this looks still really ranty and choppy. All the isolated sentences, the all-caps parts etc.

But it's ok, not everyone likes every type of content.

It sounds like a pain having ADHD though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com