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Twitter kills off SMS notifications and posting in most countries
- koverda 6y ago> I’d guess that this is a cost-cutting move, as it’s much cheaper to offer push notifications from their app than it is to send out SMS. I'd have to second this guess. SMS is much more expensive than push notifications.
- cassalian 6y agoIMO the reasoning is more likely "you have to use our official app" rather than "text messages are expensive to send so let's discontinue"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 6y agoBut you don't. The mobile website works. Worse of the worse cases use Dabr.
- heleninboodler 6y agoFor extremely generous definitions of "works." I am constantly amazed at how long (and how many attempts) it often takes to load a single tweet page. The SPA-initializing state is usually measured in minutes on my iphone regardless of what kind of connection I'm on, and the result is often that message that the page failed to load because my browser made too many attempts. I don't know how you can possibly do this badly at delivering what should be the smallest web pages ever. My standard practice on mobile now is, no joke, take the URL of the tweet page I'd like to read and paste it into a new FB post because it's faster and more reliable to get FB to fetch preview the content than it is to load it with my own browser. (edit: and note this is while using FB in my mobile browser. Think about how much more complicated a FB page should be than a single tweet, and it's still 100x faster to load.) I've come to the conclusion that this is very intentional because they'd really like me to install the app and therefore have no incentive to improve the mobile experience, but I absolutely will not install an app for content that could very easily be delivered as a simple web page. I hope the trend of companies pushing their apps hard eventually reverses.
- AndrewGaspar 6y agoI just loaded a link to a tweet in a private browsing window on my iPhone in some sub-second amount of time. So whatever issue you're running into is a bug, not intentional.
- heleninboodler 6y agoInteresting how different our experiences are. This is a two-month old iphone, fully patched and with very few apps installed. Same experience as my previous iphone and android phones. Just verified: I sat and watched the "loading" spinner for over three minutes before starting to write this response. No idea how long it actually took, but it finished with just a blank white page with a twitter logo and a search bar. Maybe it's my mobile network (AT&T), who knows. But the experience is basically unusable, and I see at least one other person in this thread mentioning the error that indicates requests are being throttled, so I know I'm not alone.
- icedchai 6y agoIf you try it on wifi, is it still slow?
- heleninboodler 6y agoYes, as mentioned, it's regardless of what kind of connection I'm on.
- jen20 6y agoI find exactly the same thing with my iPhone too, and often on desktop via the web app. The SPA "loading" page will just spin indefinitely.
- karatestomp 6y agoI get frequent failures for various reasons on multiple connection types, including Google Fiber. Referrer seems to be part of it. Mobile does seem much worse (WiFi or cell network) which makes it feel intentional.
- mcintyre1994 6y agoIf you do want notifications then at least on iOS the mobile website doesn’t cover that.
- plorkyeran 6y agoThe mobile website's been broken for me for something like a year. It just shows "Something went wrong" with a Try again button that doesn't do anything. This happens for me on two different iPhones (a 6S and a XS).
- paxys 6y agoIn all such cases the cost of engineering/operations time to keep these services alive overshadows pretty much everything else. So it's not cost per SMS that they are worried about, but rather the time spent maintaining and fixing these systems compared to how much they are used.
- Felz 6y agoYou might not realize just how expensive SMSes can be. Based on AWS SMS pricing, they cost 6/10ths of a cent to US destinations each, so each deal sent to 90,000 people in the article would cost twitter $540. That's not even getting into Europe that can cost over 10 cents per SMS, but I doubt twitter supported that.
- fasteo 6y ago>>> Europe that can cost over 10 cents per SMS Not my knowledge. SMS prices in Europe varies from country to country, but I would say that they are, on average, around 3-4 cents. You have cheap countries like Portugal (1-2 cent), intermediate countries like Spain (2-3 cents) and France (3 cents) and expensive countries like Germany (6 cents) or Belgium (6 cents). From the top of me head, Azerbaijan is the most expensive country in the world, at 10 cents per SMS. Source: Running a SMS hub in Europe for the last 15 years.
- Felz 6y agoIt sounds like Amazon is adding quite a surcharge onto their SMS, then. https://aws.amazon.com/sns/sms-pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/sns/sms-pricing/
- ncallaway 6y ago> In all such cases the cost of engineering/operations time to keep these services alive overshadows pretty much everything else This is an extremely aggressive claim that I doubt holds up. I would absolutely agree with "In _many_ such cases", or "In _most_ such cases", but it's almost certainly false to claim "In _all_ such cases".
- fastball 6y agoI originally read your comment as "I'd have to second guess this" and I was very confused.
- kevincox 6y agoAre they serving ads over SMS? It seems like that is the biggest reason.
- eigen-vector 6y agoThis is quite unfortunate. In countries where whether the people have access to internet or not is under the control of the government, this was a neat work around to get voices heard. In the recent history, an 'internet lockdown' has been the MO of many (oppressive) governments, including India. edit: removed a comment on about 2-FA as it takes away from the intended point.
- pjc50 6y agoI don't think there are any countries with government controlled internet that don't also have government controlled mobile networks, and SMS is sent in the clear?
- saagarjha 6y agoThey'd have to remember to shut down the SMS network.
- joombaga 6y agoThis wasn't about 2FA via SMS. That still works.
- eigen-vector 6y agoI intended it to be a comment on how security is a reason why this was purportedly removed and that I understand, but I see that I muddled my statements there.
- seancoleman 6y agoThis reminds me of how I hacked twitter 10+ years ago to get free SMS delivery for a web app I built. Before Twilio, custom SMS notification delivery was hard and expensive. At the time, twitter allowed you to receive SMS notifications of tweets posted to a followed account. I created a private account and used twitter's API to post tweets to with the notification content I wanted to send. I then had "dummy" accounts follow the "notification" account. These dummy accounts had recipient phone numbers with SMS notifications turned on. The flow was: Web App -> Twitter API -> Tweet from "notification" account -> followers received SMS notifications. Free SMS delivery! It was clunky and SMS notifications looked like they came from twitter (they did) but it solved my use case perfectly.
- zamfi 6y agoHah! I did something quite similar back in the day for text message notifications of server downtime. The problem was that sometimes Twitter's messages were delayed by hours...
- bnt 6y agoDoes anyone remember the drama of failwhale and their Rails issues? Those were the times!
- ChrisArchitect 6y agowas thinking about the failwhale a few weeks back when github went down and was throwing angry pink unicorns. Different, pre-coronavirus times.
- rhizome 6y agoYou mean when Michael Arrington used his popular meda outlet to assassinate Blaine Cook's job and reputation? https://techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/amateur-hour-over-at-twitter/ https://techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/amateur-hour-over-at-twitt...
- rhizome 6y ago
- meigwilym 6y agoThere's some irony in that Twitter have moved on from the 140 character limit, and now cutting off SMS. Both were core features of the platform when initially launched, so that it coupled nicely with mobile/cell phones (obviously in the pre smartphone era).
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y agoOn the flip side, the experience is remarkably similar now to what it was a decade ago. It’s materially the same, which is rare for unicorns of this time.
- Dunedan 6y agoFor me, an occasional reader without a Twitter account, the experience became much worse in the past decade. That's because Twitter switched of RSS feeds and when opening links to individual tweets nowadays there is this ubiquitous "Something Went Wrong, Try Again" on first page load.
- pests 6y agoIf I'm not mistaken that "Something Went Wrong" is their web API keys being throttled...
- heleninboodler 6y agoIf this happens to a client attempting to load a single page in isolation (which it does, a lot), you are a failed web site. They may be a very successful mobile app, but as a website, they've failed miserably.
- ikt 6y agoI get this a lot and just assumed it was because I'm using a VPN.
- 6y ago
- aaronlifshin 6y agoHe writes: "Of course if that’s a major problem, then offering 2FA logins and password verification via cell phone wouldn’t make much sense either." But this is not necessarily true, as spoofing a source phone number of an SMS is a lot easier than receiving an SMS that was sent to another number.
- paxys 6y agoHe also skips over the fact that 2FA means second factor. Even if insecure it's still better than nothing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hombre_fatal 6y agoOnly if 2FA doesn't open up customer support channels that defeat the point of 2FA, like the common "oops I lost my phone lol" channel attack that gives you access to an account if you can provide the other factor. (Still) works against Amazon btw: https://medium.com/@espringe/amazon-s-customer-service-backdoor-be375b3428c4 https://medium.com/@espringe/amazon-s-customer-service-backd... I'd say 2FA is often worse than 1FA because customer support systems are rarely prepared to say "sorry, can't give you access to your account :/". Because 99.9% of the time, it really is a user accidentally locked out of their account.
- tsimionescu 6y agoThat has nothing to do with 2FA, has it? Having a recovery procedure that escalates up tp direct phone contact is the norm with or without 2FA. This system is probably older than the Internet, with banks operating on similar principles (of course, it escalates up to physical presence there).
- closeparen 6y agoIf the recovery procedure requires only one factor, then “2FA” is a lie.
- helloworldmanji 6y agohttps://mediafox.jp/ https://mediafox.jp/
- mkchoi212 6y agoAuthor’s claims are valid. SMS is still relied upon in countries without stable internet connection. Twitter should use its resources to fix the vulnerabilities and not just kill it off. Seems like they are straying away from their mission of allowing everyone to create and share ideas without barriers.
- raverbashing 6y ago"Starting away"? The writing on the wall for SMS was at least 10 years ago. Mobile twitter works fine with 2G connections and the right settings.
- epx 6y agoNowadays SMS take longer to deliver than WhatsApp. Have tried to use SMS being in very remote areas with bad cell coverage to tell my wife where I was, they never arrived. WhatsApp delivered as soon as I overcame a hill crest and there was a sliver of 3G signal.
- tracker1 6y agoI'm curious how much money Twitter is saving by cutting the option.
- jdofaz 6y agoSupposedly they had deals with the carriers https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3668372/how-was-twitter-able-to-send-receive-millions-of-sms-messages-for-free https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3668372/how-was-twitter-...
- mtnGoat 6y agoI'd venture to bet its pretty significant, and i'll bet whatever provider they were using is scrambling right now.
- dylan33x 6y agoIt’s strictly due to security and feature development From what I understand
- dalyons 6y agotwitter had/has so called "zero rated" deals with most carriers, cut way back when. They dont(at least they didnt used to) pay anything per SMS, for most carriers. However, the infrastructure to go direct to that many international carriers is/was quite complicated, from both a technical & ongoing business management PoV (carriers are awful to deal with in both categories). i imagine the savings from no longer having to maintain either are quite substantial.
- herf 6y agoI was on a flight a couple years ago that had free texting through T-Mobile. What else to do but use Twitter through SMS? It was surprisingly still very good--could follow the news at very low bandwidth.
- crazygringo 6y agoI mean, Twitter over SMS made perfect and necessary sense back in the first decade of its life. But honestly the time has long since passed where it still makes sense to support. Smartphone notifications with the app are far superior in every way. (And if you don't want to install the app? I mean, just don't use Twitter then.) And the only people who don't have smartphones these days are the kind of people who have made an intentional choice to reduce their always-on digital connection. They are the very least likely people to use Twitter anyways. It's a good thing when a company is able to simplify its software architecture to remove code that's expensive to maintain and keep protected from security vulnerabilities.
- AkshatM 6y ago> the only people who don't have smartphones these days are the kind of people who have made an intentional choice to reduce their always-on digital connection This needs to be qualified: with respect to Twitter's target audience. It's empirically not true that smartphone penetration is universal. Only ~350 million smartphones exist in India for 1 billion people, for example (source: McKinsey Global Institute's "Digital India" report publication from April 2019). It's a fair statement to say that the majority of prospective and current Twitter users have smartphones, which justifies this decision.
- crazygringo 6y agoTotally agreed. I'm wondering if Twitter still supports SMS in India, but unfortunately can't locate any page that lists the countries they're still supporting. Bizarrely, the relevant link in their help center is broken: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/supported-mobile-carriers https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/supported-mobile-c... It used to work: https://web.archive.org/web/20200420041309/https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/supported-mobile-carriers https://web.archive.org/web/20200420041309/https://help.twit...
- jdofaz 6y agoTwitter via SMS stopped being useful when they blocked sending commands via SMS.
- QuantumGood 6y agoI "lost" 250,000 followers back in the day due to a Twitter change. People used to think we— @Twitter_Tips —worked for Twitter. When Twitter forced us to change our username to @TweetSmarter, @Twitter_Tips became a "new" account (that no one could use) that started with zero followers. In a few weeks it racked up over 250,000 followers—that were "ours"—because of all the press, blogs, lists, good will, etc we had on that account. We supported the great software ecosystem that grew up around Twitter, and watched closely as Twitter killed it all off.
- alexmingoia 6y agoThat’s fucked up. It’s a lesson though for me that email and RSS are the only true ways to build an audience that’s actually yours.
- donatj 6y agoMy wife will be disappointed, she still uses it regularly.
- cfv 6y agoTwitter has degenerated into one of the least friendly things to build an app for. I've had a better dev experience with Gab, ffs. Not only that, but also their community building and tending is abysmal too, so your app will end up used mostly by the kind of user that brings infinitesimal value with them. Twitter isn't worth it.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoGab runs on mastodon which was designed to be the most friendly thing possible to hack on so its not surprising.
- searchableguy 6y agoJust curious, isn't gab that extremist right wing site?
- horsemessiah 6y agoYup. Basically Facebook for the alt right.
- 0xff00ffee 6y agoTXT2MOB IS DEAD! LONG LIVE TXT2MOB!
- cicadas 6y agoGood. SMS 2FA should follow.
- caocuong2404 6y agoYeah, I have same problem.
- tallgiraffe 6y agoWow, it’s been more than 10 years since twitter was born. Can’t believe they’ve been running txt based version for this long. Does it mean the mobile web has finally penetrated enough countries where browsing is as cheap and accessible as text?
- HenryBemis 6y agoWait!!!!! So Dan was a freeloader, instead of HIM paying the cost to notify HIS subscribers (aka TWITTER followers), he externalised/rolled off the cost to Twitter. Now that Twitter wants to do some cost-cutting and Dan has to pay HIS own "phone bill" for HIS customers, Dan is calling out on Twitter? Suck it up bro. When I hear people complaining that "in our office they changed the coffee to a shittier one", I know what this is a prelude for avalanche of cost cutting measures. SMS in Twitter are being switched off? Blame the folks that created their business on someone else's £€¥$ and the Twitter shareholders came calling for more profit. I wonder what are the savings that Twitter is making by flipping that switch off...
- yosito 6y agoI remember when the ability to use Twitter via SMS was touted as a way to help people communicate around firewalls and internet outages or restrictive data plans. I'm not sure if there was ever a strong case for that, but the idealist in me feels that this is a loss for some of the least connected.
- habanany 6y agoI believe they didn’t like the idea of people setting up notifications to received Trump tweets and deleting the app