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Comment by vladgur | Hacker News Reader

You want to read what service XYZ offers, but you dont want to do it within the constraints of service XYZ.

If you dont want to follow the constraints of service XYZ, you dont have to consume its content.

The market would dictate that if X content consumers found it too inconvenient to consume from X and that would result in a significant drop in demand, the X content producers would stop producing their content on X.

I dont like many things about X -- random ads, bookmark folders being a paid feature, enshittification of the algorithm if you god forbid linger over some controversial video or content.

But i keep coming back to it because its the best way to follow the minds of brilliant techies. The basic sign up flow that i did years ago was basically a no-op.

I suspect that for most people, creating an account is basically a few button clicks (thanks OAuth) and they dont mind creating an account.

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Twitter promised an open publishing platform with extensive API access. They're the ones who broke the (social) contract, not us.

Well if you're willing to accept that the extensive API access comes at a price, they at least somewhat fulfilled that promise.

It's just a different kind of gate, though.

> If you dont want to follow the constraints of service XYZ, you dont have to consume its content.

I am 100% okay with this. I don't want what Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook offer, so I no longer have an account these platforms. But I do have an account with my local electric utility. It's my only option. And if I want to find information about an outage, it's posted on their Facebook page. I'm 0% okay with this.

Last time I tried creating a Twitter account, I couldn't even complete the sign-up flow before getting automatically banned pending giving them my phone number. After that, I went to like and follow things. My account was then banned again for suspicious activity.

They want to consume XYZ, written by A,B,C and posted on twitter.

Do A,B,C agree with the changes to loginwall their content ex-post-facto?

Clearly they approve or they'd at least stop advertising their twitter handles on their websites and handouts. Most brands cannot ignore such a vast network effects and have made the decision to continue despite the changes.

> Clearly they approve or they'd at least stop advertising their twitter handles on their websites and handouts

I'm not so sure of your claim that one implies the other.

I bet if you just asked them, they'd prefer for the loginwall to be undone.

> you dont have to consume its content

That's the issue though, it's not Twitter's "content" and I'm not trying to "consume" it. I want to be able to read and see what others including public official and primary sources for ongoing events have to say. That they are on twitter is coincidental and generally only because Twitter has captured the "public square". That doesn't make what's posted on there theirs anymore than the postal service owns the letters you send.

> I suspect that for most people

Most people do not use X.

X usage is down year over year.

The smartest people I know don't post there anymore.

This is where freedom of choice is great. You can follow the people you want on platforms of your preference.

The smartest people i know, i mostly know because of their X presence.

I won't read anything on twitter as it currently stands, because the product sucks. The "fixed" functionality provided by xCancel is what makes it worth it for me to read. So, if you want me as a customer, you need to provide similar functionality.

Not all customers are as particular as I am, therefore a shitty product continues to thrive, and I can go do other things.

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