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Twitter is almost useless now unless you login with an account (that requires a phone number). I'm not sure who the subset of Tor users are who are comfortable

Twitter is almost useless now unless you login with an account (that requires a phone number). I'm not sure who the subset of Tor users are who are comfortable logging into a service such as Twitter?

Traster 5y ago
I think the point is to evade censorship in Russia, No?
- nonrandomstring 5y ago
  Yes, I'm seeing a relaxing of the general exclusion and abusive stance towards Tor users. But that gives me a weird feeling to be honest. We need to be in an international military crisis in order that basic values of privacy prevail at home? That does not speak well of our quiescent "western values"
  - adventured 5y ago
    > We need to be in an international military crisis in order that basic values of privacy prevail at home? ... That does not speak well of our quiescent "western values" It also doesn't speak ill of those values, it says nothing about the values. You're conflating two separate matters: the values, and the effort required to hold/protect them. Liberty requires a persistent effort to maintain against politicians, malevolent actors generally, that lust after increased power (for themselves and frequently the state as well). It makes sense that that would be a process of erosion and (hopefully) rejuvination across years, decades, generations, centuries - as the counter forces battle. If you're really fortunate you live in a system that makes it a lot more difficult for the power-seeking politicians to trample on your rights. Just because something of value requires effort to keep or maintain, that doesn't debase its value or otherwise speak to how great or how little the value is. Very valuable things often require an enormous investment to acquire and keep over time. At all times entropy is trying to destroy well ordered systems (eg democratic, constitutional, rights-protecting governments), it takes a huge amount of resources just to forestall that and you can never stop investing into it for long. It also takes an enormous investment of resources to maintain authoritarian, anti-rights systems. They can never stop using force to oppress the population, they have to constantly crush the spirit of the population. They have to divert human potential on a persistent basis toward destruction, oppression, violent actions against the citizenship, actions inspiring fear/terror/dread. They can never stop spewing propaganda meant to keep the population in check, docile, in fear, etc. That systems require active effort and mental attention to maintain, tells you very little about whether they're good or bad, the same goes for values a person holds (which also require effort to maintain), or the values a culture of people broadly holds.
    - KarlKemp 5y ago
      > Liberty requires a persistent effort to maintain against politicians, malevolent actors generally Politicians do not in general work to abolish democracy. The vast majority, in democratic countries, accepts and supports it. To just label them "malevolent actors" without even feeling the need to explain it is nihilistic cynicism: if all you ever do is scream at the top of your lung that someone is a corrupt scumbag, they will either adapt and become someone like that or quit.
    - nonrandomstring 5y ago
      Thanks for a thoughtful reply adventured. As I said, it gives me an uneasy/weird feeling, which is to say I haven't quite unpacked it myself yet. Your response is helping me. > It also doesn't speak ill of those values Well actually it does, at least in that it highlights them as inconsistent. Clearly my issue is that values prone to change according to circumstance are weaker, as generally one holds consistent values higher than fickle ones. However, your further points are interesting and deserve thought. > You're conflating two separate matters, the values, and the effort required to hold/protect them. Perhaps in a short, pithy comment I'm not taking time to distinguish the values (which I love and live by, and believe most of my countrymen uphold) and the laziness by which some fail to consistently and robustly stand up for them. > Liberty requires a persistent effort to maintain against politicians, malevolent actors generally Absolutely, and would you agree that we've slipped dreadfully in that duty in recent years? > Just because something of value requires effort to keep or maintain, that doesn't debase its value or otherwise speak or how great or how little the value is. I am glad you think that, and we agree. I am not sure if you thought I said otherwise? > Very valuable things often require an enormous investment to acquire and keep over time. Like previous wars in which my family have fought at great cost. > At all times entropy is trying to destroy well ordered systems No. Sorry. That's too simplistic a take. I'm not talking about the constant gardening required to maintain structures of value, I am alluding to the malevolent domestic forces who would sell our hard won freedom, democracy and liberal values down the swanny for their own aggrandisement and profit when it suits them, and sing a different song when virtue signalling calls. Let me try to be clearer what I am attacking here. It is sloppy and selective values. It is a laziness that lies somewhere between "sworn enemies unite against a common foe", and a prejudiced framing effect. We're all very happy to cheer on Tor, VPNs or other instruments that circumvent tyranny, so long as it's not _our_ tyranny. All of us have benefited hugely from the freedoms immanent therein. We built these tools (US Navy), and the internet itself (DARPA), in pursuit of spreading the same values that we no longer have the stomach to robustly defend here. Yet when a tyrant goes crazy in Overthereistan we're all sweetness and light and our digital "doors are always open for freedom". Those double standards are not a good look. I need more time to think about it, but maybe what irks me here is simple hypocrisy.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    > We need to be in an international military crisis in order that basic values of privacy prevail at home? Pretty much, yes. The US benefitted hugely from defining itself in opposition to the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It's a major countervailing force to growing to resemble your opponent. Arguably, the US hasn't really figured out how to effectively define itself in opposition to China, given how liberally China has been copying parts of the US economic playbook (ie. "Capitalism with Chinese characteristics"), which itself is a trick the Soviets never managed.
  - hombre_fatal 5y ago
    Well, sure. If most Tor traffic to your service is abuse where it may be worthwhile to block it completely, then a catastrophic event that gets more honest people using Tor may make it worthwhile to unblock it.
  - Shish2k 5y ago
    My site blocks tor nodes not because I hate privacy, but because the overwhelming majority of spammy / abusive content was posted over the tor network, and blocking tor improved the signal:noise ratio better than the best anti-spam tools :/
cronix 5y ago
Use nitter.net to view twitter. Just http://nitter.net/username http://nitter.net/username. It barely uses javascript (except if you want to watch video), no ads, no popups, no login, no "trending" section. Just the content of the person you're trying to read content from. All twitter links are replaced with nitter links, so navigation isn't an issue. Even if I had a Twitter account I'd use Nitter to browse. It's a lighter experience with no extra crap.
- MuffinFlavored 5y ago
  How to make this work with private accounts of people you follow? Is there a way to "log into Nitter"?
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
  thanks, i really like this. i've been using the ublock zapper to get around twitters obnoxious sign up wall. i feel like websites like this, and archive.ph are a sign of the future web. very little or now javascript, very light and fast - it inspires me to want to build something again.
  - hombre_fatal 5y ago
    That said, hard to feel like it's the future of the web when it's just wrappers around the services that people are actually using.
  - cgb223 5y ago
    How do I set up uBlock to get around the sign in wall? Or is zapper a separate add on?
    - 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
      it's not a good solution tbh, it's like blocking html elements but on reload they come back. the zapper is integrated into ublock, if you click on the icon its there. i think a better solution is blocking cookies as another comment mentioned, but for me that seems to cause an infinite reload loop.
Whateverest 5y ago
I am not a twitter user, but I guess the focus is on circumventing censorship rather than privacy.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I don’t see how those are exclusive? You need privacy to circumvent censorship
  - notatoad 5y ago
    imagine you're living in a country that's currently blocking twitter, but somebody is posting essential information on twitter that you need to read. twitter on Tor circumvents that censorship. giving twitter your phone number is irrelevant to that.
    - pjerem 5y ago
      > but somebody is posting essential information on twitter Tell that somebody that websites exists.
      - sodality2 5y ago
        Which have terrible discovery compared to social media. Make a website about a hobby and you're unlikely to get many views. Post it on social media and you'll get way more
        pjerem 5y ago
        Ok. But here someone is going to use Tor to reach "essential" information on Twitter. I don't think there is so essential information on Twitter that anyone would take the hassle to read it through Tor.
      - roywiggins 5y ago
        A surprising amount of timely information from public institutions (everything from road conditions to "it's not a real nuclear attack[0]") is often much more accessible via Twitter than anywhere else. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/what-the-hell-happened-in-hawaii/550514/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/wh...
ravenstine 5y ago
Whom do you trust your identity with more? Twitter or the regime you're under? As much as I despise Twitter, I'd much rather that they exclusively know my identity than both they and the regime. This isn't to say that I agree with Twitter requiring phone numbers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pyronik19 5y ago
  - mrtranscendence 5y ago
    Twitter is not a "leftist organization". Contrary to the belief of the somewhat unhinged, there's no conservative-hating conspiracy of tech giants, which are on the whole not particularly left-leaning where it counts. There are absolutely conservatives on Twitter; there have always been and it remains that way now.
    - hecatoncheires 5y ago
      Twitter literally banned the sitting President of the United States, a Republican. Other Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene have had their accounts banned, while this has never happened to a Democrat. People were banned for questioning COVID (e.g. the lab leak hypothesis), banned for questioning the 2020 Presidential election's integrity (yet nobody was banned for speculating on Russian interference and calling Trump illegitimate in 2016), banned for misgendering or deadnaming transgenders. Conveniently all the wrongthink that fall squarely in opposition to progressive ideology. I don't think anyone believes there's a secret conspiracy, it's more that the type of people who work in programming, and particularly for a Bay Area company like Twitter, tend to be very progressive. It's the same miasma that clouds the mainstream media, academia, and now most corporate PR.
mmaunder 5y ago
Privacy and freedom theater.
- belter 5y ago
  It used to have some use before they started with their dark patterns. Can't stand their mandatory use of a phone number...
beardog 5y ago
Some people use Tor to bypass censorship or mask their traffic metadata from a local adversary
probotect0r 5y ago
It doesn't require a phone number. Created an account the other day with only email.
- Aissen 5y ago
  Yup, they usually lock the account once you start using it, possibly using some kind of pattern detection.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    And there my account sits, a year later. I can't close it because they won't let me do that without adding a number, but I'm not going to add it.
  - danuker 5y ago
    > possibly using some kind of pattern detection. The pattern of "not having provided a phone number" perhaps?
    - Aissen 5y ago
      I wanted to provide them the benefit of the doubt. Probably.
  - bierjunge 5y ago
    Tried it two times in last six months. Once via the Android app and the second time on the website on my laptop. Both accounts were blocked after less than 15 minutes without even doing anything (except following a few accounts which Twitter suggested based on my interests... [0]). Both times they wanted a phone number to unlock. I tried to contact the support, but they never responded. [0] different accounts, based on different interests
    - bierjunge 5y ago
      It's getting even better. I just logged into one of the suspended accounts. Pretty much everything is locked, but without any information about the suspension. It's pretty much "Oops, something went wrong. Please try again later." on everything. Ok, let's try it with the "Twitter privacy policy inquiries" form (while logged in). Nope, can't submit anything, because of the suspension. So why not have some fun? Just sent a GDPR request via the "suspension appeal" form. Why? For the lulz and to have some legal leverage. Not even five minutes passed and I got a email. My account is not suspended anymore... WTF twitter?
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
On desktop I disable all cookies from twitter and it allows me to browse freely.
- azangru 5y ago
  It used to do the same for me in the incognito mode on Chrome. Not anymore :-(
david_draco 5y ago
Logging in is also annoying via Tor, requiring so many CAPTCHAs
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Twitter is almost useless now unless you login with an account (that requires a phone number). I'm not sure who the subset of Tor users are who are comfortable logging into a service such as Twitter?

Traster 5y ago

I think the point is to evade censorship in Russia, No?

nonrandomstring 5y ago
Yes, I'm seeing a relaxing of the general exclusion and abusive stance towards Tor users. But that gives me a weird feeling to be honest. We need to be in an international military crisis in order that basic values of privacy prevail at home? That does not speak well of our quiescent "western values"
- adventured 5y ago
  > We need to be in an international military crisis in order that basic values of privacy prevail at home? ... That does not speak well of our quiescent "western values" It also doesn't speak ill of those values, it says nothing about the values. You're conflating two separate matters: the values, and the effort required to hold/protect them. Liberty requires a persistent effort to maintain against politicians, malevolent actors generally, that lust after increased power (for themselves and frequently the state as well). It makes sense that that would be a process of erosion and (hopefully) rejuvination across years, decades, generations, centuries - as the counter forces battle. If you're really fortunate you live in a system that makes it a lot more difficult for the power-seeking politicians to trample on your rights. Just because something of value requires effort to keep or maintain, that doesn't debase its value or otherwise speak to how great or how little the value is. Very valuable things often require an enormous investment to acquire and keep over time. At all times entropy is trying to destroy well ordered systems (eg democratic, constitutional, rights-protecting governments), it takes a huge amount of resources just to forestall that and you can never stop investing into it for long. It also takes an enormous investment of resources to maintain authoritarian, anti-rights systems. They can never stop using force to oppress the population, they have to constantly crush the spirit of the population. They have to divert human potential on a persistent basis toward destruction, oppression, violent actions against the citizenship, actions inspiring fear/terror/dread. They can never stop spewing propaganda meant to keep the population in check, docile, in fear, etc. That systems require active effort and mental attention to maintain, tells you very little about whether they're good or bad, the same goes for values a person holds (which also require effort to maintain), or the values a culture of people broadly holds.
  - KarlKemp 5y ago
    > Liberty requires a persistent effort to maintain against politicians, malevolent actors generally Politicians do not in general work to abolish democracy. The vast majority, in democratic countries, accepts and supports it. To just label them "malevolent actors" without even feeling the need to explain it is nihilistic cynicism: if all you ever do is scream at the top of your lung that someone is a corrupt scumbag, they will either adapt and become someone like that or quit.
  - nonrandomstring 5y ago
    Thanks for a thoughtful reply adventured. As I said, it gives me an uneasy/weird feeling, which is to say I haven't quite unpacked it myself yet. Your response is helping me. > It also doesn't speak ill of those values Well actually it does, at least in that it highlights them as inconsistent. Clearly my issue is that values prone to change according to circumstance are weaker, as generally one holds consistent values higher than fickle ones. However, your further points are interesting and deserve thought. > You're conflating two separate matters, the values, and the effort required to hold/protect them. Perhaps in a short, pithy comment I'm not taking time to distinguish the values (which I love and live by, and believe most of my countrymen uphold) and the laziness by which some fail to consistently and robustly stand up for them. > Liberty requires a persistent effort to maintain against politicians, malevolent actors generally Absolutely, and would you agree that we've slipped dreadfully in that duty in recent years? > Just because something of value requires effort to keep or maintain, that doesn't debase its value or otherwise speak or how great or how little the value is. I am glad you think that, and we agree. I am not sure if you thought I said otherwise? > Very valuable things often require an enormous investment to acquire and keep over time. Like previous wars in which my family have fought at great cost. > At all times entropy is trying to destroy well ordered systems No. Sorry. That's too simplistic a take. I'm not talking about the constant gardening required to maintain structures of value, I am alluding to the malevolent domestic forces who would sell our hard won freedom, democracy and liberal values down the swanny for their own aggrandisement and profit when it suits them, and sing a different song when virtue signalling calls. Let me try to be clearer what I am attacking here. It is sloppy and selective values. It is a laziness that lies somewhere between "sworn enemies unite against a common foe", and a prejudiced framing effect. We're all very happy to cheer on Tor, VPNs or other instruments that circumvent tyranny, so long as it's not _our_ tyranny. All of us have benefited hugely from the freedoms immanent therein. We built these tools (US Navy), and the internet itself (DARPA), in pursuit of spreading the same values that we no longer have the stomach to robustly defend here. Yet when a tyrant goes crazy in Overthereistan we're all sweetness and light and our digital "doors are always open for freedom". Those double standards are not a good look. I need more time to think about it, but maybe what irks me here is simple hypocrisy.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > We need to be in an international military crisis in order that basic values of privacy prevail at home? Pretty much, yes. The US benefitted hugely from defining itself in opposition to the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. It's a major countervailing force to growing to resemble your opponent. Arguably, the US hasn't really figured out how to effectively define itself in opposition to China, given how liberally China has been copying parts of the US economic playbook (ie. "Capitalism with Chinese characteristics"), which itself is a trick the Soviets never managed.
- hombre_fatal 5y ago
  Well, sure. If most Tor traffic to your service is abuse where it may be worthwhile to block it completely, then a catastrophic event that gets more honest people using Tor may make it worthwhile to unblock it.
- Shish2k 5y ago
  My site blocks tor nodes not because I hate privacy, but because the overwhelming majority of spammy / abusive content was posted over the tor network, and blocking tor improved the signal:noise ratio better than the best anti-spam tools :/

cronix 5y ago

Use nitter.net to view twitter. Just http://nitter.net/username http://nitter.net/username. It barely uses javascript (except if you want to watch video), no ads, no popups, no login, no "trending" section. Just the content of the person you're trying to read content from. All twitter links are replaced with nitter links, so navigation isn't an issue. Even if I had a Twitter account I'd use Nitter to browse. It's a lighter experience with no extra crap.

MuffinFlavored 5y ago
How to make this work with private accounts of people you follow? Is there a way to "log into Nitter"?
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
thanks, i really like this. i've been using the ublock zapper to get around twitters obnoxious sign up wall. i feel like websites like this, and archive.ph are a sign of the future web. very little or now javascript, very light and fast - it inspires me to want to build something again.
- hombre_fatal 5y ago
  That said, hard to feel like it's the future of the web when it's just wrappers around the services that people are actually using.
- cgb223 5y ago
  How do I set up uBlock to get around the sign in wall? Or is zapper a separate add on?
  - 5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
    it's not a good solution tbh, it's like blocking html elements but on reload they come back. the zapper is integrated into ublock, if you click on the icon its there. i think a better solution is blocking cookies as another comment mentioned, but for me that seems to cause an infinite reload loop.

Whateverest 5y ago

I am not a twitter user, but I guess the focus is on circumventing censorship rather than privacy.

edgyquant 5y ago
I don’t see how those are exclusive? You need privacy to circumvent censorship
- notatoad 5y ago
  imagine you're living in a country that's currently blocking twitter, but somebody is posting essential information on twitter that you need to read. twitter on Tor circumvents that censorship. giving twitter your phone number is irrelevant to that.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    > but somebody is posting essential information on twitter Tell that somebody that websites exists.
    - sodality2 5y ago
      Which have terrible discovery compared to social media. Make a website about a hobby and you're unlikely to get many views. Post it on social media and you'll get way more
      - pjerem 5y ago
        Ok. But here someone is going to use Tor to reach "essential" information on Twitter. I don't think there is so essential information on Twitter that anyone would take the hassle to read it through Tor.
    - roywiggins 5y ago
      A surprising amount of timely information from public institutions (everything from road conditions to "it's not a real nuclear attack[0]") is often much more accessible via Twitter than anywhere else. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/what-the-hell-happened-in-hawaii/550514/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/01/wh...

ravenstine 5y ago

Whom do you trust your identity with more? Twitter or the regime you're under? As much as I despise Twitter, I'd much rather that they exclusively know my identity than both they and the regime. This isn't to say that I agree with Twitter requiring phone numbers.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pyronik19 5y ago
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  Twitter is not a "leftist organization". Contrary to the belief of the somewhat unhinged, there's no conservative-hating conspiracy of tech giants, which are on the whole not particularly left-leaning where it counts. There are absolutely conservatives on Twitter; there have always been and it remains that way now.
  - hecatoncheires 5y ago
    Twitter literally banned the sitting President of the United States, a Republican. Other Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene have had their accounts banned, while this has never happened to a Democrat. People were banned for questioning COVID (e.g. the lab leak hypothesis), banned for questioning the 2020 Presidential election's integrity (yet nobody was banned for speculating on Russian interference and calling Trump illegitimate in 2016), banned for misgendering or deadnaming transgenders. Conveniently all the wrongthink that fall squarely in opposition to progressive ideology. I don't think anyone believes there's a secret conspiracy, it's more that the type of people who work in programming, and particularly for a Bay Area company like Twitter, tend to be very progressive. It's the same miasma that clouds the mainstream media, academia, and now most corporate PR.

mmaunder 5y ago

Privacy and freedom theater.

belter 5y ago
It used to have some use before they started with their dark patterns. Can't stand their mandatory use of a phone number...

beardog 5y ago

Some people use Tor to bypass censorship or mask their traffic metadata from a local adversary

probotect0r 5y ago

It doesn't require a phone number. Created an account the other day with only email.

Aissen 5y ago
Yup, they usually lock the account once you start using it, possibly using some kind of pattern detection.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  And there my account sits, a year later. I can't close it because they won't let me do that without adding a number, but I'm not going to add it.
- danuker 5y ago
  > possibly using some kind of pattern detection. The pattern of "not having provided a phone number" perhaps?
  - Aissen 5y ago
    I wanted to provide them the benefit of the doubt. Probably.
- bierjunge 5y ago
  Tried it two times in last six months. Once via the Android app and the second time on the website on my laptop. Both accounts were blocked after less than 15 minutes without even doing anything (except following a few accounts which Twitter suggested based on my interests... [0]). Both times they wanted a phone number to unlock. I tried to contact the support, but they never responded. [0] different accounts, based on different interests
  - bierjunge 5y ago
    It's getting even better. I just logged into one of the suspended accounts. Pretty much everything is locked, but without any information about the suspension. It's pretty much "Oops, something went wrong. Please try again later." on everything. Ok, let's try it with the "Twitter privacy policy inquiries" form (while logged in). Nope, can't submit anything, because of the suspension. So why not have some fun? Just sent a GDPR request via the "suspension appeal" form. Why? For the lulz and to have some legal leverage. Not even five minutes passed and I got a email. My account is not suspended anymore... WTF twitter?

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

On desktop I disable all cookies from twitter and it allows me to browse freely.

azangru 5y ago
It used to do the same for me in the incognito mode on Chrome. Not anymore :-(

david_draco 5y ago

Logging in is also annoying via Tor, requiring so many CAPTCHAs

deleted 5y ago

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deleted 5y ago
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