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I think the article misses the two bigger reasons to avoid writing Important content on Twitter: - Twitter forces people to log in to read it. The... dozens?..

by evouga 4y ago

I think the article misses the two bigger reasons to avoid writing Important content on Twitter: - Twitter forces people to log in to read it. The... dozens?... of us who have a burner account but don't use Twitter regularly and have no interest in doing so probably can't be bothered to log in to read what you're writing. - Twitter could delete your posts for any reason, or no reason, at any time(*). Given the ongoing Twitter-Musk struggle and Twitter's generally dubious financial outlook, this is not idle alarmist speculation. (*): The content on your blog could also disappear at any time, however, unlike your Twitter thread (1) the material will be archived by the Internet Archive and (2) you have full control over your data and if/when to stop hosting it.

nine_k 4y ago
- Twitter nudges you to log in to read. This can be sidestepped. Also, https://nitter.net https://nitter.net exists (and you can run your own copy if you want to). - Any third-party service can delete your post. Keep a copy of the source material. OTOH possibly more people lose interest in their blogs and stop keeping them online than old but important Twitter threads get deleted. - There are apps that create nice blog-like pages from Twitter threads. If you re interested mostly in reading, they do a really adequate job of turning a Twitter thread into a compact page not overburdened with heavy / slow scripts.
- evouga 4y ago
  > OTOH possibly more people lose interest in their blogs and stop keeping them online than old but important Twitter threads get deleted. I agree with you that this is true for now. However I expect that in the not-so-distance future, all Twitter threads will get deleted.
- xigoi 4y ago
  The author of Nitter wishes Twitter didn't exist, they created Nitter just to make Twitter slightly more bearable.
ISL 4y ago
Login is not forced. I was surprised to read the assertion above. Popping open https://twitter.com/EricTopol https://twitter.com/EricTopol in an incognito window allowed me to read posts and threads without login. Public-square distribution without login has been one of Twitter's key differentiators from Day 1 -- it is the reason that reporters/news-channels like it so much. You can cite it and everyone can see the same thing in real time.
- jklinger410 4y ago
  Whether or not Twitter blocks you from viewing a tweet before logging in is not consistent.
- evouga 4y ago
  On my phone I get a popup demanding that I "verify [my] password to get the full Twitter experience" with no way of dismissing the popup. But you are right that on my desktop in incognito mode it let me view the threads unmolested, so I was wrong in my original post.
  - ISL 4y ago
    I, too, sit corrected -- thank you for the follow-up!
- AlanYx 4y ago
  Popping open the link you provide only works for me in incognito mode on desktop. In regular mode on desktop, it appears to work, but very shortly after beginning to scroll, it pops up a box saying I have to log in to see more. On mobile, I can't read anything at all; there's a box saying I have to log in. It's not really public-square distribution in any general sense. Hence the popularity of proxies like nitter.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> The... dozens?... of us who have a burner account but don't use Twitter regularly and have no interest in doing so probably can't be bothered to log in to read what you're writing. This right here is why this doesn't matter. Those "dozens?" of people are a drop in the bucket relative to the overall distribution these people are getting on Twitter. > Twitter could delete your posts for any reason, or no reason, at any time(*). Given the ongoing Twitter-Musk struggle and Twitter's generally dubious financial outlook, this is not idle alarmist speculation. This also misses the point of Twitter. Twitter threads aren't meant to be blog posts. They're meant to be ephemeral and in-the-moment. They're passed around for a few days or weeks and then mostly forgotten, with a few exceptions. Blog writers will scoff at the idea, but Twitter writers have embraced this dynamic and made the most of it. I think the core error is trying to equate Twitter threads to blog posts on a different platform. They're not. They're different formats with different use cases and different target audiences. Dropping a blog post into a Twitter thread wouldn't make for great reading, just as dropping a Twitter thread into a blog template usually looks out of place and incomplete. People write to their audience and they write for the platform. There's a place for both Twitter threads and blogs, but we don't have to pick one or the other as the sole source of distribution.
- evouga 4y ago
  > Twitter threads aren't meant to be blog posts. They're meant to be ephemeral and in-the-moment. But regardless of what they're meant to be, in practice, they are also used as blog posts (as in the three examples linked to by the OP). I don't think the OP is complaining about Tweets raving about the new sandwich place down the block.

by evouga 4y ago

nine_k 4y ago

- Twitter nudges you to log in to read. This can be sidestepped. Also, https://nitter.net https://nitter.net exists (and you can run your own copy if you want to). - Any third-party service can delete your post. Keep a copy of the source material. OTOH possibly more people lose interest in their blogs and stop keeping them online than old but important Twitter threads get deleted. - There are apps that create nice blog-like pages from Twitter threads. If you re interested mostly in reading, they do a really adequate job of turning a Twitter thread into a compact page not overburdened with heavy / slow scripts.

evouga 4y ago
> OTOH possibly more people lose interest in their blogs and stop keeping them online than old but important Twitter threads get deleted. I agree with you that this is true for now. However I expect that in the not-so-distance future, all Twitter threads will get deleted.
xigoi 4y ago
The author of Nitter wishes Twitter didn't exist, they created Nitter just to make Twitter slightly more bearable.

ISL 4y ago

Login is not forced. I was surprised to read the assertion above. Popping open https://twitter.com/EricTopol https://twitter.com/EricTopol in an incognito window allowed me to read posts and threads without login. Public-square distribution without login has been one of Twitter's key differentiators from Day 1 -- it is the reason that reporters/news-channels like it so much. You can cite it and everyone can see the same thing in real time.

jklinger410 4y ago
Whether or not Twitter blocks you from viewing a tweet before logging in is not consistent.
evouga 4y ago
On my phone I get a popup demanding that I "verify [my] password to get the full Twitter experience" with no way of dismissing the popup. But you are right that on my desktop in incognito mode it let me view the threads unmolested, so I was wrong in my original post.
- ISL 4y ago
  I, too, sit corrected -- thank you for the follow-up!
AlanYx 4y ago
Popping open the link you provide only works for me in incognito mode on desktop. In regular mode on desktop, it appears to work, but very shortly after beginning to scroll, it pops up a box saying I have to log in to see more. On mobile, I can't read anything at all; there's a box saying I have to log in. It's not really public-square distribution in any general sense. Hence the popularity of proxies like nitter.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> The... dozens?... of us who have a burner account but don't use Twitter regularly and have no interest in doing so probably can't be bothered to log in to read what you're writing. This right here is why this doesn't matter. Those "dozens?" of people are a drop in the bucket relative to the overall distribution these people are getting on Twitter. > Twitter could delete your posts for any reason, or no reason, at any time(*). Given the ongoing Twitter-Musk struggle and Twitter's generally dubious financial outlook, this is not idle alarmist speculation. This also misses the point of Twitter. Twitter threads aren't meant to be blog posts. They're meant to be ephemeral and in-the-moment. They're passed around for a few days or weeks and then mostly forgotten, with a few exceptions. Blog writers will scoff at the idea, but Twitter writers have embraced this dynamic and made the most of it. I think the core error is trying to equate Twitter threads to blog posts on a different platform. They're not. They're different formats with different use cases and different target audiences. Dropping a blog post into a Twitter thread wouldn't make for great reading, just as dropping a Twitter thread into a blog template usually looks out of place and incomplete. People write to their audience and they write for the platform. There's a place for both Twitter threads and blogs, but we don't have to pick one or the other as the sole source of distribution.

evouga 4y ago
> Twitter threads aren't meant to be blog posts. They're meant to be ephemeral and in-the-moment. But regardless of what they're meant to be, in practice, they are also used as blog posts (as in the three examples linked to by the OP). I don't think the OP is complaining about Tweets raving about the new sandwich place down the block.