5 ms·

While it's all well and good to launch new features, I think Twitter should improve their existing service and I'm referring to low hanging fruits. I don't und

by NearAP 4y ago

While it's all well and good to launch new features, I think Twitter should improve their existing service and I'm referring to low hanging fruits. I don't understand the rationale behind cutting me off while I'm scrolling through Twitter simply because I'm not logged in. Twitter can still display Ads to me irrespective of whether I'm logged in or not. In fact cutting me off means I leave Twitter which means I don't see the Ads they're selling which in turn means less Ad money for them. Even when logged in, Twitter will display the new message/note icon. When I click on it to read the notification, it turns out to be Twitter telling me to turn on notifications. Now normally, once you have read the message, the 'new' message/note icon is cleared. Instead Twitter displays it again almost immediately and this then goes on for the next few hours before they stop. If they can't fix these simple things, why would someone want to read longer content on Twitter. They would still get cut off again as Twitter is doing for existing tweets

makeitdouble 4y ago
I think the message is simply that Twitter isn’t that into you. Twitter wants people that log in, and turn on their notifications. You’d think you’re good enough for them, you can provide them ad revenue too, but you’re just not their type and they don’t find much happines with you. Ultimately it’s not you, it’s them.
rchaud 4y ago
Twitter doesn't care about a pair of anonynmous eyeballs not visiting their site anymore. It's not Google. Twitter's ad targeting depends on knowing what a user looks at, and how their network of connections/follows lines up with other user segments.
- NearAP 4y ago
  >> Twitter's ad targeting depends on knowing what a user looks at But they can track which tweets are being clicked, the IP of the person and a whole bunch of things even when you're not logged in. >> and how their network of connections/follows But that's the problem right there. If you force people to create an account to read tweets, they might do so but they won't follow anybody or follow very few people and tweet quite infrequently. I just don't think it's feasible to expect a significant number of people (like say # of users on Facebook) to be tweeting regularly. But it's possible that I'm wrong.
  - dorgo 4y ago
    > I just don't think it's feasible to expect a significant number of people (like say # of users on Facebook) to be tweeting regularly. The probability that somebody with a Twitter account tweets is infinitely higher than that somebody without a Twitter account tweets.
    - tacker2000 4y ago
      Im pretty sure that the majority of twitter users has never posted a tweet, think 80/20 rule. See this link, although its not exactly what im looking for: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-25-of-twitter-users-produce-97-of-all-tweets/610146/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-2...
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The fact this "login bullshit" appeared right about the time Apple started cracking down on privacy is very "sus" as the kids say.
- dangerface 4y ago
  > Twitter's ad targeting depends on knowing what a user looks at, and how their network of connections/follows lines up with other user segments. I never understood this argument for tracking users, google and twitter already know what the user is looking at as they are serving them the content directly. Why don't they base ads on what I'm looking at now? If I am looking at posts about dogs why not try to sell me something for my dog? Instead they seem to want to know what I was doing last week so they can serve me ads based on that, but there is no point in showing me adverts for shoes this week as I already bought them last week! My point is as some one who works in advertising it's more effective to target people on the content they consume today rather than base your targeting off of data you gathered last week, by then its too late.
LegitShady 4y ago
its not fast but I just use nitter.net instead
- tacker2000 4y ago
  Yea i heard of nitter, i guess it would be easy to write a ghostmonkey script to redirect all twitter links there.
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    depending on your browser there may already be an extension https://github.com/SimonBrazell/nitter-redirect https://github.com/SimonBrazell/nitter-redirect
  - Risse 4y ago
    I use LibRedirect: https://github.com/libredirect/LibRedirect https://github.com/libredirect/LibRedirect
    - tacker2000 4y ago
      Wow this is amazing
distrill 4y ago
> improve their existing service > I don't understand the rationale behind cutting me off while I'm scrolling through Twitter simply because I'm not logged in i mean, this really isn't a bug. this is working as intended, and i don't foresee them wanting to "fix" this anytime soon.
simonsarris 4y ago
it's gotten so bad that I started an unofficial bug tracker of broken things and missing-per-platform features (like voice tweets that have been out for years on iOS but are still absent in Android) https://github.com/simonsarris/Twitter-Bugs/issues https://github.com/simonsarris/Twitter-Bugs/issues
quickthrower2 4y ago
You can tell how far a service has “matured” into a big corp by this kind of behaviour. Big corps need to extract their pound of flesh from each visitor. When you tweet you are kind of an unpaid twitter employee. But tweeting gives people enough benefit they don’t seem to mind.
- ffhhj 4y ago
  Great point, an ad impression revenue is like $0.001, but content could be worth $1 or way more. Someone should write an article on the economics of these free labor models.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Ostensibly even these very HN comments are like that. But HN seems like it will always be well stewarded and open. Stackoverflow is better as it has a permissive license. Anyway for fun: (c) 2022 quickthrower2
toephu2 4y ago
> Twitter can still display Ads to me irrespective of whether I'm logged in or not. Twitter only shows ads to logged in users.
Akronymus 4y ago
> I don't understand the rationale behind cutting me off while I'm scrolling through Twitter simply because I'm not logged in. Precisely the reason why I switched over to nitter and have a rule that redirects me to it.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  You have a rule? I have a firefox plugin that does that. What is this "rule" you speak of? :)
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    Basically using a redirector plugin with a rewrite rule for twitter URL's to be translated to nitter. Over the months I accumulated quite a few little, useful rules. (Like stripping out the highlight text thingie that google "helpfully" adds when clicking on search results.) I can post a few once I get home. I like to do as much as I can with as few plugins as possible, which is why I don't have a dedicated plugin for that.
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    I am using https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenflpmgnfapjedencafcfakcekcd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenf... And added the following rule: Example URL: https://twitter.com/user/status/123456789 https://twitter.com/user/status/123456789 Include Pattern: https://twitter.com/ https://twitter.com/(.*) Redirect to: https://nitter.net/$1 https://nitter.net/$1 Pattern type: Regular expression
stjohnswarts 4y ago
You can use nitter and bookmarks to get most of the usefulness out of twitter.

by NearAP 4y ago

makeitdouble 4y ago

I think the message is simply that Twitter isn’t that into you. Twitter wants people that log in, and turn on their notifications. You’d think you’re good enough for them, you can provide them ad revenue too, but you’re just not their type and they don’t find much happines with you. Ultimately it’s not you, it’s them.

rchaud 4y ago

Twitter doesn't care about a pair of anonynmous eyeballs not visiting their site anymore. It's not Google. Twitter's ad targeting depends on knowing what a user looks at, and how their network of connections/follows lines up with other user segments.

NearAP 4y ago
>> Twitter's ad targeting depends on knowing what a user looks at But they can track which tweets are being clicked, the IP of the person and a whole bunch of things even when you're not logged in. >> and how their network of connections/follows But that's the problem right there. If you force people to create an account to read tweets, they might do so but they won't follow anybody or follow very few people and tweet quite infrequently. I just don't think it's feasible to expect a significant number of people (like say # of users on Facebook) to be tweeting regularly. But it's possible that I'm wrong.
- dorgo 4y ago
  > I just don't think it's feasible to expect a significant number of people (like say # of users on Facebook) to be tweeting regularly. The probability that somebody with a Twitter account tweets is infinitely higher than that somebody without a Twitter account tweets.
  - tacker2000 4y ago
    Im pretty sure that the majority of twitter users has never posted a tweet, think 80/20 rule. See this link, although its not exactly what im looking for: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-25-of-twitter-users-produce-97-of-all-tweets/610146/ https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-study-shows-that-2...
- bombcar 4y ago
  The fact this "login bullshit" appeared right about the time Apple started cracking down on privacy is very "sus" as the kids say.
dangerface 4y ago
> Twitter's ad targeting depends on knowing what a user looks at, and how their network of connections/follows lines up with other user segments. I never understood this argument for tracking users, google and twitter already know what the user is looking at as they are serving them the content directly. Why don't they base ads on what I'm looking at now? If I am looking at posts about dogs why not try to sell me something for my dog? Instead they seem to want to know what I was doing last week so they can serve me ads based on that, but there is no point in showing me adverts for shoes this week as I already bought them last week! My point is as some one who works in advertising it's more effective to target people on the content they consume today rather than base your targeting off of data you gathered last week, by then its too late.

LegitShady 4y ago

its not fast but I just use nitter.net instead

tacker2000 4y ago
Yea i heard of nitter, i guess it would be easy to write a ghostmonkey script to redirect all twitter links there.
- LegitShady 4y ago
  depending on your browser there may already be an extension https://github.com/SimonBrazell/nitter-redirect https://github.com/SimonBrazell/nitter-redirect
- Risse 4y ago
  I use LibRedirect: https://github.com/libredirect/LibRedirect https://github.com/libredirect/LibRedirect
  - tacker2000 4y ago
    Wow this is amazing

distrill 4y ago

> improve their existing service > I don't understand the rationale behind cutting me off while I'm scrolling through Twitter simply because I'm not logged in i mean, this really isn't a bug. this is working as intended, and i don't foresee them wanting to "fix" this anytime soon.

simonsarris 4y ago

it's gotten so bad that I started an unofficial bug tracker of broken things and missing-per-platform features (like voice tweets that have been out for years on iOS but are still absent in Android) https://github.com/simonsarris/Twitter-Bugs/issues https://github.com/simonsarris/Twitter-Bugs/issues

quickthrower2 4y ago

You can tell how far a service has “matured” into a big corp by this kind of behaviour. Big corps need to extract their pound of flesh from each visitor. When you tweet you are kind of an unpaid twitter employee. But tweeting gives people enough benefit they don’t seem to mind.

ffhhj 4y ago
Great point, an ad impression revenue is like $0.001, but content could be worth $1 or way more. Someone should write an article on the economics of these free labor models.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Ostensibly even these very HN comments are like that. But HN seems like it will always be well stewarded and open. Stackoverflow is better as it has a permissive license. Anyway for fun: (c) 2022 quickthrower2

toephu2 4y ago

> Twitter can still display Ads to me irrespective of whether I'm logged in or not. Twitter only shows ads to logged in users.

Akronymus 4y ago

> I don't understand the rationale behind cutting me off while I'm scrolling through Twitter simply because I'm not logged in. Precisely the reason why I switched over to nitter and have a rule that redirects me to it.

stjohnswarts 4y ago
You have a rule? I have a firefox plugin that does that. What is this "rule" you speak of? :)
- Akronymus 4y ago
  Basically using a redirector plugin with a rewrite rule for twitter URL's to be translated to nitter. Over the months I accumulated quite a few little, useful rules. (Like stripping out the highlight text thingie that google "helpfully" adds when clicking on search results.) I can post a few once I get home. I like to do as much as I can with as few plugins as possible, which is why I don't have a dedicated plugin for that.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  I am using https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenflpmgnfapjedencafcfakcekcd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirector/ocgpenf... And added the following rule: Example URL: https://twitter.com/user/status/123456789 https://twitter.com/user/status/123456789 Include Pattern: https://twitter.com/ https://twitter.com/(.*) Redirect to: https://nitter.net/$1 https://nitter.net/$1 Pattern type: Regular expression

stjohnswarts 4y ago

You can use nitter and bookmarks to get most of the usefulness out of twitter.