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No issue with licensing, all of those services had extremely lax and open APIs, it wasn't until the last few years that they started shutting down nearly all ac

No issue with licensing, all of those services had extremely lax and open APIs, it wasn't until the last few years that they started shutting down nearly all access. There was a huge push for open APIs for over a decade and then they started taking it away under the guise of 'user safety' when really it was due to 'can't make more money' with it.

userbinator 5y ago
It's been almost a year since Twitter decided you had to have a browser capable of running some disturbingly bloated JS app just to view what is essentially a series of short text messages with the occasional image or video. I don't use Twitter but I'm linked there occasionally, and the insanity of that realisation still remains a clear example of what the industry has become.
- SllX 5y ago
  Remember the good old days when “works with SMS” was a design constraint?
- addicted 5y ago
  I might be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure there was a short time when “Twitter Client” was to iOS dev tutorials what ToDo apps were to JS framework tutorials.
  - herbst 5y ago
    This was absolutely common. The simplicity and openness of the twitter api was one of the main things that draw me into programming. These days i dont even can have an account as they do not accept my phone number as valid...
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > It's been almost a year since Twitter decided you had to have a browser capable of running some disturbingly bloated JS app It was mid-December of last year. So almost 6 months.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  Crazy that’s what’s become of a tweet that started as an sms. The sms service appears dead too. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/27/21238131/twitter-sms-notifications-disabled-jack-dorsey-hack https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/27/21238131/twitter-sms-noti...
smnrchrds 5y ago
RIP FriendFeed. It was really the golden age of social media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed
Fogest 5y ago
Too hard to display their ads if people access their content via API. I am not going to be surprised at all if reddit soon announces features leaving the API or completely getting rid of it.
- drannex 5y ago
  Knowing Reddit, they won't announce it. It'll just slowly stop working until it's unceremoniously removed.
  - Fogest 5y ago
    Sounds like the current old reddit site. They keep adding the new features pretty much only to the redesign and soon it'll just be the bloated redesign. They slowly make the old stuff more and more shit until you either have to suck it up and switch or suffer through bad UX.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Case in point: Reddit has a /u/backtickbot, whose whole job is finding comments containing code blocks that don't render properly in old.reddit.com and alternate Reddit clients, and responding with a (link to) fixed code block. See for example: https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/n0qz5y/what_made_you_say_wow_python_is_so_much_better/gw9q6bv/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/n0qz5y/what_made_yo...
      - Fogest 5y ago
        I feel like this would be a very easy change for Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) to implement and have support for by default. But this gets into my similar point where you end up having to use tools like an extension or bot to fix functionality reddit leaves out. It's gotten pretty annoying for some things already. Old reddit doesn't support polls but in a weird way you can still see it from old reddit like an embedded piece of media. Overall it's already feeling pretty hacky and I'm sure it's just going to keep getting worse. I've tried to switch to new reddit multiple times and it's just so much slower. I'll admit it "looks" better, but I still get the same functionality but in a more efficient manner on the old reddit. The new reddit just feels slow and bloated.
javagram 5y ago
> There was a huge push for open APIs for over a decade and then they started taking it away under the guise of 'user safety' when really it was due to 'can't make more money' with it. Cambridge analytica is a well known issue of what happens when these platforms have open APIs as well. Especially for Facebook it began to seem like a downside that created PR damage I think - people were far more interested in attacking it for “privacy violations” rather than celebrating the openness of the api and data.
- Sakos 5y ago
  > Cambridge analytica is a well known issue of what happens when these platforms have open APIs as well. One doesn't have anything to do with the other. As a user, having an open API meant that I could choose which client to use to interface with FB messaging. This has no bearing on CA having access to user profiling data.

userbinator 5y ago

It's been almost a year since Twitter decided you had to have a browser capable of running some disturbingly bloated JS app just to view what is essentially a series of short text messages with the occasional image or video. I don't use Twitter but I'm linked there occasionally, and the insanity of that realisation still remains a clear example of what the industry has become.

SllX 5y ago
Remember the good old days when “works with SMS” was a design constraint?
addicted 5y ago
I might be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure there was a short time when “Twitter Client” was to iOS dev tutorials what ToDo apps were to JS framework tutorials.
- herbst 5y ago
  This was absolutely common. The simplicity and openness of the twitter api was one of the main things that draw me into programming. These days i dont even can have an account as they do not accept my phone number as valid...
HWR_14 5y ago
> It's been almost a year since Twitter decided you had to have a browser capable of running some disturbingly bloated JS app It was mid-December of last year. So almost 6 months.
twobitshifter 5y ago
Crazy that’s what’s become of a tweet that started as an sms. The sms service appears dead too. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/27/21238131/twitter-sms-notifications-disabled-jack-dorsey-hack https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/27/21238131/twitter-sms-noti...

smnrchrds 5y ago

RIP FriendFeed. It was really the golden age of social media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed

Fogest 5y ago

Too hard to display their ads if people access their content via API. I am not going to be surprised at all if reddit soon announces features leaving the API or completely getting rid of it.

drannex 5y ago
Knowing Reddit, they won't announce it. It'll just slowly stop working until it's unceremoniously removed.
- Fogest 5y ago
  Sounds like the current old reddit site. They keep adding the new features pretty much only to the redesign and soon it'll just be the bloated redesign. They slowly make the old stuff more and more shit until you either have to suck it up and switch or suffer through bad UX.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    Case in point: Reddit has a /u/backtickbot, whose whole job is finding comments containing code blocks that don't render properly in old.reddit.com and alternate Reddit clients, and responding with a (link to) fixed code block. See for example: https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/n0qz5y/what_made_you_say_wow_python_is_so_much_better/gw9q6bv/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/n0qz5y/what_made_yo...
    - Fogest 5y ago
      I feel like this would be a very easy change for Reddit Enhancement Suite (RES) to implement and have support for by default. But this gets into my similar point where you end up having to use tools like an extension or bot to fix functionality reddit leaves out. It's gotten pretty annoying for some things already. Old reddit doesn't support polls but in a weird way you can still see it from old reddit like an embedded piece of media. Overall it's already feeling pretty hacky and I'm sure it's just going to keep getting worse. I've tried to switch to new reddit multiple times and it's just so much slower. I'll admit it "looks" better, but I still get the same functionality but in a more efficient manner on the old reddit. The new reddit just feels slow and bloated.

javagram 5y ago

> There was a huge push for open APIs for over a decade and then they started taking it away under the guise of 'user safety' when really it was due to 'can't make more money' with it. Cambridge analytica is a well known issue of what happens when these platforms have open APIs as well. Especially for Facebook it began to seem like a downside that created PR damage I think - people were far more interested in attacking it for “privacy violations” rather than celebrating the openness of the api and data.

Sakos 5y ago
> Cambridge analytica is a well known issue of what happens when these platforms have open APIs as well. One doesn't have anything to do with the other. As a user, having an open API meant that I could choose which client to use to interface with FB messaging. This has no bearing on CA having access to user profiling data.