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W3C Leaves Twitter
- superkuh 3y agoI clicked hoping the w3c mastodon site would have HTML. But nope, just another mastodon v3+ that only does anything if you run javascript. The w3c should try to do better. It wasn't possible with twitter but it is with mastodon.
- renewiltord 3y agoYou should probably reach out via email if you're willing to help and know a better way to do it.
- zimpenfish 3y agoYou can choose your own frontend to login with though, can't you? Like Brutaldon[1] which is bare-bones if you want that. [1] https://brutaldon.org/about https://brutaldon.org/about
- superkuh 3y agoIs there a way to use this without having an account on the mastodon server? I just want to use my web browser to read text on a web page.
- zimpenfish 3y agoI don't think there is - it's specifically designed to be a user frontend. Although it should be possible to whip up a text-friendly view of a server you're not logged into assuming they allow non-authenticated access to the API.
- Andrex 3y agoYour comment was worded poorly so you're getting downvoted, but I too share the disappointment that Mastodon is shamlessly promoting itself while lacking a JS-free way to even view public posts.
- cmdlineluser 3y agoYou can add `/embed` to the end of the URL (although it doesn't show replies/etc)
- superkuh 3y agoSince mastodon posts are generally very small most posts are split up into multiple so looking at the /embed will only give you say, 1 of 4, like in that Polish/German train DRM story on HN earlier, https://social.hackerspace.pl/@q3k/111528162462505087/embed https://social.hackerspace.pl/@q3k/111528162462505087/embed Unfortunately /embed is not very useful.
- o11c 3y agothey really should at least add that link to the noscript version of the site.
- mihular 3y agoFeel free to create such a client.
- organsnyder 3y agoDoes the W3C have any priorities to promote HTML-only sites? Otherwise, what's the problem? There are (of course) many good reasons to not require Javascript, but just because the W3C oversees the HTML standard doesn't mean they can't also use complementary technologies.
- idop 3y agoThe problem isn't that the website is not HTML-only, but rather that it is JavaScript-only (practically-speaking). If you're using NoScript, or otherwise have JavaScript disabled, you get an empty page with nothing but an error message.
- autoexec 3y agoAt least we had nitter for viewing tweets without the need to allow JS. AFAIK there's no nitter for mastodon (nastodon?) although you can get some data by looking at the RSS feed.
- idop 3y agoI use nitter a lot now that most links on the Internet are to tweets. It provides an experience vastly superior to that of actual Twitter. It takes Twitter from an unreadable cesspool to a readable cesspool.
- kstrauser 3y agoW3C is using web technologies? Say it ain't so! But sarcasm aside, JS is a web standard, just like HTML and CSS. While I understand the opinion of people who don't want to execute JS in their browser, I'm also highly sympathetic to devs who want to use things that are enabled by default in all modern browsers.
- superkuh 3y agohttps://www.w3.org/wiki/Graceful_degradation_versus_progressive_enhancement https://www.w3.org/wiki/Graceful_degradation_versus_progress... ... and this is neither.
- kstrauser 3y agoIronically, the wiki page you linked shows how to use JavaScript to show meaningful error messages to users. And in any case, graceful degradation is a good thing to shoot for, but far from a requirement. Mastodon is Free Software. If someone wants to fork it and make a version that replaces frontend JS with server side rendering, that's legal and fine.
- WaffleIronMaker 3y agoLooking through other server software[1], I totally agree that the majority of servers require JavaScript. However, there are a few that don't, such as Smithereen[2]. Picking a random Smithereen instance[3] lets us mirror the content without JavaScript (although it still doesn't seem to like being viewed through w3m). So, I think there's potential, but it's definitely not ideal. [1] https://fedidb.org/software https://fedidb.org/software [2] https://fedidb.org/software/smithereen https://fedidb.org/software/smithereen [3] https://friends.grishka.me/w3c@w3c.social https://friends.grishka.me/w3c@w3c.social
- coolbreezetft22 3y ago[flagged]
- toomuchtodo 3y agoIt's very strange. "If you don't like it, leave." people leave "You don't matter, go!" If you tell people to vote with their feet and attention, and they do, don't be mad at the outcome. I totally support Elon running Twitter however he wants, it's his to do as he pleases, but he is unable to hold participants hostage on the platform (which both he [1] [2] and some cohort of people who support him in some measure find unpleasant). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38470762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38470762 [2] https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23981928/elon-musk-ad-boycott-go-fuck-yourself-destroy-x https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29/23981928/elon-musk-ad-bo...
- dmix 3y agoNever understood this take. Telling companies to stop pressuring them with ad dollars is ideologically consistent. He's saying if you can't handle freedom of expression on the platform then don't use the platform. He's not forcing them to do anything, it's the other way around. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you meant by "hostage". Not sure who is being held hostage. Being pro-mega corporations moderating what conversations on the internet is allowable is a weird thing to be in vogue. Telling companies that don't want to be associated with the content to just walk away is the right choice, even if it hurts the business. I'd also rather see Twitter die than Disney and Co being the arbiters of discussion. We already have Facebook and Reddit for that, and neither are any better for generating healthy societal discourse.
- Volundr 3y agoHe calls them not spending their add money on Twitter "blackmail" and goes on to say they will kill the company. That doesn't sound like "if you can't handle freedom of expression on the platform then don't use the platform." To me. They AREN'T using the platform and he's mad about it.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoAre they running their own instance or is it being run by a third-party hoster?
- sprawl_ 3y agow3c.social is a friendly and respectful instance for people involved in the activities of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The instance is run on a volunteer basis by a few of the W3C team
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoIt's weird that they protected their tweets...I mean, just leave 'em for posterity. Were they even that active?
- duskwuff 3y ago> It's weird that they protected their tweets The alternative is having a random selection of highly liked (and, often, very old) posts show up on their profile for logged-out users. Setting their account to protected is an easy and effective way of making that go away -- and it also prevents users from following an account that's no longer in use.
- acdha 3y agoThe other thing I’d be worried about is deleting an account and then having Twitter give it out to some spammer who’d see traffic from the millions of links out in the wild.
- not2b 3y agoElon has stolen active accounts and handed them to others, and is purging inactive accounts, so keeping an inactive account is limited protection: https://www.fastcompany.com/90933866/elon-musk-x-stealing-more-users-twitter-handles https://www.fastcompany.com/90933866/elon-musk-x-stealing-mo...
- ceeam 3y agoShouldn't that be "we are no longer active, period"?
- memish 3y agoWhy? It's like opting out of the genepool. Twitter/X is still where everything happens and where you get closest to the source. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=twitter.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=twitter.com Even the most vocal Spaceman haters come back whenever something big is happening. This was reaffirmed again recently with the entire OpenAI CEO saga. Add to that community notes, the single best social media innovation.
- threeseed 3y agoBecause W3C should be supporting open platforms like Mastodon. And community notes is a nice addition but it isn't a replacement for moderation.
- duskwuff 3y agoIt's only appropriate; ActivityPub is one of the standards they manage. https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/
- memish 3y agoCommunity notes is the replacement for s/moderation/censorship. It's far more truthful and accurate than any s/moderation/censorship committee. This has been repeatedly demonstrated.
- threeseed 3y agoThe problem with community notes is that it requires a quorum of users. Which it makes it unsuitable for fast paced topics. This has been repeatedly demonstrated.
- memish 3y agoYou're right that it's too slow. It would help if they sent a notification to everyone who liked or interacted with such a tweet, to give them the community notes update. And or resurface it in the timeline.
- scottyah 3y agoIt is sad to see more tech stuff get political. I make this assumption because there are plenty of services that can post to multiple social media accounts, and even cross-posting really wouldn't take that much effort- maybe an additional minute per post if you have to log in each time. They're purposely limiting their reach, and I see no reasoning listed so I assume not everyone there is proud of their "why".
- timeon 3y agoI do not have account at Twitter. Sometimes Twitter shows me content sometimes it does not. Anyone who is posting just on Twitter is limiting reach. Twitter is closed internet. W3C posting to open platform is not limiting reach.
- irdc 3y agoWhat politics and why do you think this move is related to it? It could very well be due to cost related to the third party client ban.
- riffic 3y agonah this is good not sad.
- eganist 3y ago[flagged]
- mcguire 3y agoPossibly unrelated, but I've had a good dozen holocaust deniers show up in my feed today. And the report options no longer include a specific option for that.
- throw310822 3y ago[flagged]
- passion__desire 3y agoHe also visited Israel in support and met with the prime minister. Why would he do that?
- etchalon 3y agoObviously it's not W3C, but I keep wondering what account leaving Twitter would feel like an absolute nail in the coffin of the platform.
- dna_polymerase 3y ago@elonmusk
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- callalex 3y agoThere will be no one single event, it is dying a slow death by a thousand cuts, just like failed social media sites that preceded it.
- autoexec 3y agoYours. Leave twitter for good and the platform is dead to you.
- bensecure 3y agoi only visit twitter because somebody's linked to it. i'm not interested in opting out of a large number of discussions just because they take place in part on twitter.
- ahmedfromtunis 3y agoTwitter was the closest thing we had to a centralized, yet "distributed", one-stop shop for news. If you wanted to keep up with what's happening around you, either in general or in a specific topic, it was the place to be. It was possible to hear directly from the people who are reporting on the news you care about, but also from the people the news were about. And INTERACT with them directly. Unfortunately that didn't last for long. What the openai debacle showed us very clearly is how important the platform still is despite all the damage. Threads was as if it didn't even exist. The thing is, none of the fediverse networks who try to replace Twitter would be able to accomplish that same mission.
- tptacek 3y agoWhy not? The fediverse stuff works pretty well as far as I can see. It's Twitter reframed as a regression back towards RSS and the blogosphere, which people here should be into; it's like that scene in High Fidelity, Mastodon picked up where your precious Google Reader left off. The only thing the fediverse lacks that Twitter really provided was the starfucking celebrity culture. I'm not judging, I have guilty pleasures too, but for my tastes: good riddance!
- Krisando 3y ago> The fediverse stuff works pretty well as far as I can see. Not the grand parent, my instance is shutting down in January. I have no way to migrate my posts. This is the sixth time I've gone through this over the years. I don't feel like dealing with this stuff anymore. > The only thing the fediverse lacks that Twitter really provided was the starfucking celebrity culture. If you pay attention to the few notable people in their fields, they describe some of the problems such as: https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/111511735894043437 https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/111511735894043437 I hope my comment explains some of the whys for you.
- tptacek 3y agoI read this thread and it's not really clear what it's about. It seems to be about the need to mute and block people explicitly. I haven't had to do that much with Mastodon. I had to do it a lot on Twitter, and by all accounts it has gotten much, much worse. I called the Fediverse a "regression" for a reason. You could lose all your blog posts, too --- there were things that mitigated the risk, just like there are with the Fediverse, but there were no real promises. My point is, it's a regression back towards a world nerds tend to aver was a kind of golden age of reading and writing online. A lot of the things people now say they appreciate about Twitter are part and parcel of the way Twitter destroyed that golden age. Now we've got it back. I'm surprised at some of the people who aren't overjoyed by this, who I expected would be.
- ranting-moth 3y ago[flagged]
- andrew_ 3y agoAnd nothing of value was lost.
- lynx23 3y ago[flagged]
- kadoban 3y ago> Why is it that when people change names, calling them by their old name is near a crime. But when a service renames, and some rebellious part of the world doesn't feel like going with that, misnaming a service for months is totally fine? > I know, the service doesn't have any feelings to hurt, but... But what? You answered your own question.
- bdcravens 3y agoFor starters, when you go to x.com, it redirects to twitter.com.
- not2b 3y agoYour argument might apply if the owner of the site formerly known as Twitter respected the concept of calling people by their preferred names, but he doesn't, not even in the case of his own child. So, nice try.
- lynx23 3y agoSo you apparently consider An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth as a valid approach to life?
- not2b 3y agoWow. The "offense" of calling a site that uses the domain "twitter.com" Twitter is just as bad as refusing to call a person by their preferred name? This is "an eye for an eye"?
- rsynnott 3y agoNah, even if Musk wasn’t an asshole, Twitter is still not a person.
- bunderbunder 3y ago
- nalekberov 3y agoSeeing these news right after deactivating your Twitter account. :) Twitter is not a platform any more it used to be, a lot of fake accounts with blue ticks and ads after ads. I just wonder what was Elon's original idea with Twitter, buy big social network, rename it to "X", show to the world that "Yes, I can", then destroy it gradually from inside?
- illiac786 3y agoMy personal little conspiracy theory with zero proof: he wanted to destroy Twitter all along. But he cannot just shut it down, I think that would make him vulnerable to some legal battles. Much better and much more sadistic to gradually destroy the good name of Twitter.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoIt’s a silly theory not simply because he’s ruining his own image and he will never be able to get another loan again, and investors will not trust him, nor the public, but also because he’s personally dependent on Twitter. Twitter dying would hurt him more than losing a child. Or a few.
- illiac786 3y agoWoooow. Have you lost credit worthiness and a child and can do such a comparison? It feels like trolling, making such insensitive comparisons. I hope this is not based on your personal experience... That would suck on multiple levels. Secondly, my theory is, it's all worth it to him. (It's called an obsession, or being crazy.)
- nalekberov 3y agoSo he pays $44 Billion to destroy a brand? Why?
- jjeaff 3y agoNo way. Elon has, for a long time, relied heavily on Twitter to drum up interest. He basically has no advertising budget at Tesla and SpaceX. My guess is that he saw his lack of control of Twitter as a liability. after all, things he or others have posted have increased or decreased the stock price of Tesla by billions. not to mention that if he owns the platform, he can juice his own posts which he started doing immediately. so I think it was that mixed with some ego and stupidity and impulsivity and maybe some drugs mixed in there.
- joshe 3y agoSorta surprised at how badly people dislike the Cybertruck.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dang_bro 3y ago[dead]
- goldforever 3y ago[dead]
- goldforever 3y ago[dead]
- falcor84 3y agoI wonder if the WHATWG will follow suit
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoI beg that w3cmemes does!
- samyar 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rsynnott 3y agoCarface will presumably now decry web standards as ‘woke’, migrate Twitter to Gopher.
- silexia 3y agoFree speech is truly under attack. I am glad Elon has a platform that allows controversial ideas to be heard. Every other platform is in lockstep with the woke and politically correct crowd. You can't have science without truly dissenting opinions. You can't have a democracy without free speech and ideas that are very unpopular. I hope people continue using Twitter just to support free speech.