17 ms·

Tell HN: X is opening any tweet link in a webview whether you press it or not

647 points by stillatit 11mo ago

Just saw the CEO of Substack celebrating traffic from X/Twitter shooting up thinking they stopped suppressing tweets with links[0]. Actually, this traffic is because now any time you open a tweet with a link, the in-app webview loads in the background, and displays when you press the link. I run an ecom store that gets a lot of its customers from Twitter. I was also shocked to see my traffic double or triple overnight and thought the algorithm had blessed me and my business. Soon realized what was actually happening. Thought other traffic-monitors might appreciate this explanation. Meanwhile Nikita Bier is pretending they never suppressed tweets with links to begin with, offering the alternative explanation: "a common complaint is that posts with links tend to get lower reach. This is because the web browser covers the post and people forget to Like or Reply. So X doesn't get a clear signal whether the content is any good"[1]. A bit of a rewriting of history since Elon and his mom both tweeted about how it wasn't fair to use his platform to promote other links/platforms, even banning people who shared profiles of other social networks (including Paul Graham for a period). They suppressed all links shortly after. [0] https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985464687350485092 [1] https://x.com/nikitabier/status/1979994223224209709

braza 11mo ago
I understand the rationale and I am happy for the authors and I think the distribution will be way better. As a user I like to get out as soon as I click because I can trace back the link and I can do clipping or bookmark in my browser.
jacquesm 11mo ago
[flagged]
- stinkbeetle 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - littlestymaar 11mo ago
    Until the media starts following other social media, politicians will be kind of forced to stay there, not for the reach on the platform itself, but because in regular medias, tweets are being given the same visibility as a book nowadays.
    - anildash 11mo ago
      There's more than enough critical mass on other platforms that there's no excuse for them to still be on X, and it's a shame they stay there. Journalists would go to (for example) Bluesky if it were the only place they could get AOC dunking on the tycoons that they're obsessed with covering every utterance from.
      - londons_explore 11mo ago
        Blue sky has only 5% as many users, and isn't growing fast.
    - stinkbeetle 11mo ago
      [flagged]
  - jacquesm 11mo ago
    I completely predicted this comment. Maybe give it five minutes and you'll figure it out. Or not. Hint: when you're a politician, you don't have much choice, no matter what your preferences are. But when you're an ordinary person, like you or me you actually have a choice.
    - stinkbeetle 11mo ago
      Naturally, the comrades at the top are more equal than the rest of us.
    - haunter 11mo ago
      > when you're an ordinary person, like you or me you actually have a choice To use a dead platform or an actual active one? I don’t even follow politics on Twitter just video games and some fandoms but it’s actual alive compared to Bluesky where nothing happens basically. Especially true if you follow non-english content.
    - maplethorpe 11mo ago
      It depends. There are other professions that also rely on Twitter for work. Granted it's a shell of its former self, but a better alternative is yet to emerge.
- ares623 11mo ago
  [flagged]
- gnuplustoejam 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - jacquesm 11mo ago
    What's 'reddit tier' about it? As opposed to your contribution it was at least on topic.
    - gnuplustoejam 11mo ago
      Melodramatic + use of profanity generally indicates an appeal to emotion rather than a rational well-thought out statement. A rant about the CEO is not on topic.
      - decremental 11mo ago
        [dead]
- Lammy 11mo ago
  Don't care, I'll go where the funny is. Simply amassing that much money makes one complicit in The System, effectively ceasing to be human and embodying the will of the money itself, so let's not pretend like Jack Dorsey is any different or better.
  - jacquesm 11mo ago
    > so let's not pretend like Jack Dorsey is any different or better. I wasn't.
pavelai 11mo ago
It seems like they changed the strategy and enhanced UX. Feels like now there would a lot of worthless traffic in the web
saagarjha 11mo ago
I’m just happy they got rid of the system web view and replaced it with the one which they can inject their own JavaScript into. Bonus points that it covers the thing I want to read and I can’t turn it off. Truly, a masterpiece of engineering from the guy whose entire schtick was coming up with was to boost engagement from kids.
est 11mo ago
That's precisely what Wechat is doing. Most chinese "mega apps" do this. Elon absolutely on his track to copy this important feature [1] The webview works as a traffic faucet. Elon can turn it on or off for every third-party site, you know, for "Internet safety". My take: Next step is X.com proprietary APIs inside the Webview, like payment and everything. The ultimate goal is a "mini-app" framework that use PWA-like techs to run everything based on the Webview and circumvent Appstore. And last a phone that runs the "mini-app" framework because why not, as an "AI edge node" like Elon recently proposed. [1]: https://x.com/danmurrays/status/1683446630245187584 https://x.com/danmurrays/status/1683446630245187584
- ojr 11mo ago
  the webview messes up tokens and passwords managers so I don't see this happening. The US is too culturally different to have mega apps. In Asia their supermarkets also have a lot of information in the menu for example.
  - huflungdung 11mo ago
    [dead]
  - jeroenhd 11mo ago
    Replace "mega app" with "platform" and that's pretty much what Apple and Google are, Apple especially.
    - ojr 11mo ago
      no I will not replace mega app with platform, WeChat app is totally different from the App Store. In and Out has 5 menu items, similar to an app made in the USA, not too many features A Chinese market can list 50 items similar to WeChat that has 50 different features. The culture is reflected in the app design. source: https://digitalcreative.cn/blog/how-china-ux-is-different https://digitalcreative.cn/blog/how-china-ux-is-different
      - 11mo ago
robot-wrangler 11mo ago
Since we're doing PSAs, isn't it also now just a completely broken platform on mobile for everyone who isn't logged in? > Something went wrong, but don't fret - let's give it another shot. This is all I've seen for literally years now. No real error, does not even say to login or install an app, just blames it on my privacy extensions (I don't actually have any) and offers a button to pointlessly try again. No big loss, but surprising! On the one hand, it's the only time big tech isn't engaged in obnoxious harassment, but it's also a conspicuously dumb oversight in the funnel
- teiferer 11mo ago
  Always been like that. Twitter, Instagram, ... None of those platforms have usable UX if you're not logged in.
  - davedx 11mo ago
    False. You used to be able to read Twitter fine without being logged in
    - teiferer 11mo ago
      When was that? Already pre-Elon it was terrible.
      - input_sh 11mo ago
        Come on, pre-Elon you could click on a Twitter link and read the entire thread as well as the replies, now you just get a single tweet with no context above/below. And if you click on an account you just get top posts of all time instead of a chronological feed, so it's impossible to even find the context while being logged off.
        deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
        11mo ago
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
defraudbah 11mo ago
[flagged]
blikdak 11mo ago
What bugs me is the sheer number of people, and organisations, who still link to images and video or '1/20' long screeds on twitter, while the next article on their own site is bitching about how bad twatter/owner/politics etc is. Seriously if a site, blog, forum etc you know ever links to twitter then just stop interaction with them, they're lazy mofos need to do their own groundwork.
gcr 11mo ago
Does this mean an attacker can turn any impression into any GET request?
- stillatit 11mo ago
  Not sure how much of an attack that is. FWIW the preloading is nice as a user.
  - lysp 11mo ago
    Is the request coming from the user's IP or via a Twitter proxy? As a plain webview would mean that you can grab everyone's details.
- netsharc 11mo ago
  It'd be an interesting way to count how many impressions your tweets get: add a URL to every tweet, put a tracking "pixel" in the webpage (assuming the webview loads all assets; if not, then just add the "pixel' URL to the tweet..
  - modeless 11mo ago
    There's an impression counter on every tweet, visible to everyone
    - netsharc 11mo ago
      All ad networks also claim the ad you pay them to show got n impressions, according to their calculations, here's the bill...
  - hshdhdhehd 11mo ago
    Make the pixel a zip bomb for lols
    - efreak 11mo ago
      Advertising landing page full of CPI ads?
penguin_booze 11mo ago
Another example and incentive not to use apps and to be held hostage, when an equivalent web service is available. On Android, just use Hermit or some similar app to sandbox a webview of their webpage.
labrador 11mo ago
On a related topic, I've been following with some amusement the outrage on Reddit/r/Grok because Grok will no longer make porn. Apparently Grok was trained on all the NSFW material on X and Twitter before it intentionally so Grok could have a "spicy" mode. And spicy it was. Some of the stuff it made was really good and people loved it. But (allegedly) Musk changed his mind to go after enterprise and government accounts so spicy mode was killed and now there a lot of angry users complaining on Reddit. My interest is this: It appears that it's not possible to over-ride the training effectively since NSFW material bleeds into normal image requests. Musk had this problem before trying to over-ride Grok's training, so at one point said he would have to retrain Grok. It's interesting to me that LLMs can't be steered effectively, which makes me wonder if they can ever really be aligned ("safe")
- elpakal 11mo ago
  I mean isn't this just considered data poisoning?
  - labrador 11mo ago
    The training data was considered good by Musk to start with, so he could have spicy mode, but he changed his mind and now Grok is considered poisoned with porn. My question is, can that be fixed or does he have to start over again?
    - looobay 11mo ago
      There was research on LLMs training and distillation that if two models have a similar architecture (probably the case for Xai) the "master" model will distill knowledge to the model even if its not in the distillation data. So they probably need to train a new model from scratch. (sorry i don't remember the name but there was an example with a model liking howl to showcase this)
      - -_- 11mo ago
        Subliminal learning: https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/subliminal-learning/ https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/subliminal-learning/
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
elAhmo 11mo ago
Again, anyone still using Twitter should know they are contributing to the richest man in the world actively pushing to disrupt the core fabric of our society.
- nomdep 11mo ago
  Building rockets, moon bases, making fossil fuels less critical… yes, I agree
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    - wahnfrieden 11mo ago
      Escape from pitchforks
      - Integrape 11mo ago
        Shooting the billionaires into outer space would make the world a better place.
    - gruez 11mo ago
      >Cutting food stamps. How is Musk involved in the current budget debacle aside from being "republican"? It's easy to blame stuff on him when he was running DOGE, but since his falling out with trump blaming every cut on Musk is a tired and expired meme.
      - mayneack 11mo ago
        Given how much he contributed to the election outcome it hardly seems tired to blame him for the consequences. Plus he's on Twitter every week publicly discussing how much he uses the platform to put his thumb on the scale of discourse towards his personal beliefs. In what world is he not involved?
robinhood 11mo ago
I find it so sad that Twitter still gets traffic at all. Even if we put aside the super shady content on this platform (free speech, lol), the app, either on the web or mobile, has a sub-par user experience. I wish all the devs that I respect were using another platform.
- boringg 11mo ago
  X has a lock on live information that no one else has figured out yet not from a technical perspective but from an adoption perspective.
  - jeroenhd 11mo ago
    My government has been posting a lot of information (weather alerts, road works, etc.) on their own, dedicated Mastodon instance. They don't really advertise it, but it's good they have a platform to publish live information to in case the Americans continue to get weirder.
    - _whiteCaps_ 11mo ago
      Do you have any examples of this? I'd love to point this out to my local government.
      - jeroenhd 11mo ago
        https://social.overheid.nl/directory https://social.overheid.nl/directory has a list of government services, municipalities, and other stuff. https://social.overheid.nl/@RWSverkeersinfo https://social.overheid.nl/@RWSverkeersinfo is for traffic conditions https://social.overheid.nl/@knmi https://social.overheid.nl/@knmi is the royal national weather service Some services have shut down their Mastodon presence because their social media team found too little interaction and they don't want to use simple forward bots that nobody responds to, unfortunately.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo ago
    It's network effect, same as Facebook
mk89 11mo ago
What about links to malware or other illegal content that will be downloaded without me clicking on it...? Is it only in the app, or also with the browser? Crazy.
- phoronixrly 11mo ago
  You don't get it. It's worth it for the sake of UX. /s
- hunter2_ 11mo ago
  > also with the browser Browsers have been doing this forever: you make a request to a server (A) that you choose to interact with, and it could respond with various things (a redirect, a page with a meta refresh, a page with a frame / iframe, etc.) that result in your browser automatically making a request (and rendering the resulting page response) to some other server (B) that could get you in trouble. However, in this classic scenario, when A starts sending you to B, you stop trusting A. This is simple when A's behavior is entirely determined by A's owner. What if it's determined by other users (not just A's owner)? Typically, A would be careful to not serve a redirect (etc.) based on user input, as that would be considered an "open redirect" vulnerability (with an exception for link shorteners, I guess). Interesting how the webview preloading that we're discussing now commits essentially this same offense.
beezlewax 11mo ago
Why are you using twitter for anything at this stage?
- afpx 11mo ago
  I block X and related domains at the router.
- labrador 11mo ago
  It's still the most interesting platform for AI
  - labrador 11mo ago
    I just tried to find AI starter packs on BlueSky and confirmed that BlueSky is openly hostile to AI. I understand the reasons, it's just not where I'm at. I'll try Threads and see what happens.
    - jandrese 11mo ago
      Bluesky has lots of artists, authors, journalists, etc... who see AI as a direct threat to human creativity. Not that the AI will replace the creativity, but that it can generate slop that looks "good enough" and doesn't demand a living wage or healthcare benefits. Many of these creative types have little trust that corporate management won't try to replace them just to save a buck.
      - labrador 11mo ago
        I'm sympathetic to their arguments but that doesn't lesson my need to understand AI if I'm going to help them with their concerns. Ignoring it is not an effective strategy.
    - metabagel 11mo ago
      I can't vouch for these, but they seem like reasonable starting points. I searched for "AI starter pack" with the quotes. https://bsky.app/starter-pack-short/LFAZcGE https://bsky.app/starter-pack-short/LFAZcGE https://bsky.app/starter-pack/maosbot.bsky.social/3l3ix4wi64z2m https://bsky.app/starter-pack/maosbot.bsky.social/3l3ix4wi64...
sd9 11mo ago
This seems like a fairly reasonable UX improvement. Unless I'm missing anything, it doesn't seem like this has nefarious intent, it's just there so that when a user clicks a link, they see the content as quickly as possible. --- It's astonishing how quickly discussion disintegrates when Musk is mentioned on HN. He really is such a divisive figure, with incredibly polarised language both in support and against him. Normal reasoned arguments are just absent here. Sometimes when two people disagree, they can still have a nuanced conversation/argument about it. But not about Musk. There are some opinions in this thread that I vehemently disagree with, but it's not worth escalating by adding my opinion to the pile. It reminds me of that phenomenon where you read the newspaper and notice an article in your domain of expertise and it's riddled with errors! Then you turn the page, read an article about something else, and completely trust it. You somehow didn't transfer the knowledge that the newspaper is inaccurate to the new domain. It makes me wonder what other discussions on HN (and elsewhere) are completely devoid of nuance and reason, but I just don't notice it.
- oulipo2 11mo ago
  How are you supposed to have a "nuanced discussion" about a guy doing literal Hitler salutes in public?
  - Ajedi32 11mo ago
    When you're either unwilling or incapable of understanding other people's perspectives it is indeed very difficult. Try this: steelman the argument that what Musk did all those months ago wasn't a "literal Hitler salute". If you can do that, I suspect you'll find it a lot easier to have nuanced discussions about that topic (and possibly others) going forward.
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 11mo ago
      Fuck the salute. I can look at everything else he's done and still think he's a terrible individual that should not be given money or power.
aldousd666 11mo ago
Nobody wants a damn web view. If I'm clicking off to a link, I may want to click to another app and back in and still be where it was... If it's in a webview that's gone as soon as I click out. Yes, you can open in Chrome or whatever, open in a browser, but that's a pain in the ass to do an the time. I hate web views, in all forms.
- carlosjobim 11mo ago
  Why would the web view be gone after you've multi tasked? On my phone the web view stays open inside the parent app.
  - minitoar 11mo ago
    idk but I’ve definitely experienced this. Presumably it’s a bug.
- tracker1 11mo ago
  In the settings you can configure to open in the configured external browser. I recently switched phones, so had to adjust several apps for this. It's a pain and would be nice if it was a global setting to always open links in the browser.
- chairmansteve 11mo ago
  You know what to do..... ')
- emehrkay 11mo ago
  I clicked a link in IG once and and it opened via a webveiw. it was one of those "give us your email for a discount" popups so I put in "mark@aol.com" and at a later date, IG asked if I wanted to associate that email with my account (or something along those lines). I tend to take the extra step to "open in native browser" whenever webveiws popup
  - throwaway290 11mo ago
    I remember how tiktok basically injected a keylogger into any site they opened in a webview https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/technology/tiktok-browser-tracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/technology/tiktok-browser... I didn't think IG does something similarly shady
igleria 11mo ago
Nikita should be ashamed of how BAD the android X app is.
itsoktocry 11mo ago
I've been a long-time Twitter user. I don't hate Elon, so when he bought it I was cautiously optimistic. I deactivated last week. The platform is bad and getting worse. It's scammy and spammy. Everything is designed around garbage engagement, so that the X team can brag about how good the product is doing.
- scottcorgan 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - cheschire 11mo ago
    no, X. It looks like K, but the left side is also indented instead of vertical.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- vachina 11mo ago
  I prefer the X now. Unlimited stream of unhinged, unfiltered thought stream from strangers straight into my feed.
  - _alternator_ 11mo ago
    Is this … sarcasm?
    - throw-the-towel 11mo ago
      Maybe GP genuinely enjoys madness.
      - SLWW 11mo ago
        If you grew up with image boards in their heyday (pre-2004) then X could feel a bit nostalgic. However the word filters (to suppress messages) does dampen it a bit.
perlgeek 11mo ago
If you link to a page with ads on it, will that webview load count as an ad impression?
-_- 11mo ago
I’ve also noticed recently that when I click a Twitter link from Telegram, it hijacks the Telegram webview to open the tweet in Safari.
Quitschquat 11mo ago
I don’t know what everyone gets out of Twitter/X. I signed up recently to see what the fuss is about, I think I selected science and music as starting interests. Within 10 minutes I was getting lots of right wing borderline Nazi bullshit. Tries it all again in incognito mode. Roughly same thing. WTF
- jandrese 11mo ago
  First rule of Twitter is avoid the algorithm at all costs. The trolls have long since figured it out and now if the algorithm is involved you are going to see white supremacist talking points nonstop. Second rule of Twitter is why are you on Twitter, it's a full on Nazi bar now. The "following" feed that mostly shows you content from people you have explicitly followed is better, although the site really likes to swap back to the algorithmic "for you" feed whenever you aren't paying attention. However, even the following feed will still have the troll responses on most posts. You really can't avoid them on Twitter.
  - Quitschquat 11mo ago
    > Second rule of Twitter is why are you on Twitter, It was a short affair. No longer on Twitter. I can't see how anyone would want to be. It's a veritable cesspool.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
hmokiguess 11mo ago
seamless data harvesting hidden behind a feature, more cached urls for training data
dilap 11mo ago
Huge fan of X, but it's pissing in the face of your fans to tell such obvious lies.
- driverdan 11mo ago
  > Huge fan of X Why? It's a cesspool of hate. Even if you try to avoid the political nonsense Elon forces himself and his cronies into your recommendations.
  - dilap 11mo ago
    X has everything, and you can pick what you follow (there's a "For You" tab, but also a strictly chronological following tab). I like it for variety of political views (e.g. super-lefty @caitoz, super-righty @L0m3z), following interesting LLM stuff (@elder_plinius is a great follow), lots of devs (e.g. carmack...), art accounts (@yumenohajime, @neurocolor), nutrition/health stuff, so much good stuff! (The FYP, alas, sucks, and has since forever...)
    - programable 11mo ago
      But Elon Musk is a Nazi who goes around doing Hitler salutes. By using X you are implicitly endorsing and supporting this.
SilentM68 11mo ago
X is an authoritarian platform designed for freedomless speech. People, including myself, were booted out for giving opinions that did not align with their corrupt values. Even post-Elon, after appealing decision, some of us still haven't been let back in.
- jandrese 11mo ago
  Which opinions were those again?
  - rc_kas 11mo ago
    https://www.vice.com/en/article/x-purges-prominent-journalists-leftists-with-no-explanation/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/x-purges-prominent-journalis...
benlivengood 11mo ago
This reinforces why I never use the social media apps and only the web versions. Very few apps avoid the invasive engagement-maximization that browsers make a bit more difficult.
noodlesUK 11mo ago
They're also doing something very scammy with ads - if you are scrolling on mobile, they've changed the behaviour on iOS so that if you touch the ad at all, it considers it a click and opens it, whereas it's much less sensitive on ordinary posts and behaves like any other app. This is clearly to increase click-through artificially.
- doawoo 11mo ago
  The Tumblr app does this and it’s infuriating
- lossolo 11mo ago
  I noticed that too, it's so annoying.
- drdaeman 11mo ago
  Ads and “scammy” tactics were always like bread and butter. The whole point of industry is to just increase the numbers using whatever means possible except for what the industry deems unquestionably unacceptable, after all. So, naturally, there’s this incentive of making the paid-for action as low effort as tolerable (preferably under the guise of “improvement” to prolong the status quo) and make money while that window of opportunity is still open. Sad but true. As long as pay-per-click exists it’ll always be like that. Minimally necessary action will be probed, negative feedback (“won’t buy this on principle/will bug others to raise awareness on ethical concerns”) eventually making the industry raise the bar higher. Beats outright malware (auto-installing IE toolbars, yay!) and popup/popunders on a click anywhere eras of the past, but despite any possible illusions, the bar isn’t particularly high still (modern web is still nauseously popup-ridden), when viewed through the modern first-world optics. Not that I like anything about this - just an observation.
- jacobgkau 11mo ago
  > if you are scrolling on mobile, they've changed the behaviour on iOS so that if you touch the ad at all, it considers it a click and opens it, They did it for Android, too. Just the other day, I tried to view replies for an ad, and thought I'd accidentally clicked the ad multiple times before realizing that the replies indicator and even the timestamp (which is the normal "just go to the tweet" valve) were behaving the same as an ad click. Edit: Re-reading your comment, not sure if that was exactly what you meant, or if you just meant that it'll e.g. open the ad if you try to scroll on it.
thm 11mo ago
Day One Twitter user; built the very first API app and the first Android client. Launching a "competitor" next month - Keep an eye on https://flipso.com https://flipso.com
crnkofe 11mo ago
I stopped using Twitter somewhere around the time of Musk takeover. Only used it for event coverage live during events for which I found it genuinely useful at some point and of course doomscrolling. Can't say I miss it. Its like nothing changed in my life. I also managed to miss the LGBT exodus after Musk policy changes and learned about it later at a random FOSDEM talk. Global "social" feeds do everything in their power to steal attention and having it all back is great for sanity.
- tmaly 11mo ago
  A lot of teachers also stopped using it around the same time. This was unfortunate as it was an amazing source for project ideas for students.
porygonz 11mo ago
The new behavior is much better from a user perspective. When you tap on a post, it'll start loading the link in the background so once you are done reading the post the link will load immediately and the post will shelve on the bottom of the screen. It is very fluid, especially with blog posts / news articles.
throwaway106382 11mo ago
deleted my account a few weeks ago and it actually feels like my health has improved because i'm no longer constantly bombarded with ragebait and doomerism i hope they keep ruining the experience of using it some more
ronaldsvilcins 11mo ago
whaaat a surprise....
tmaly 11mo ago
Reddit does something similar in some way but not like this. I often save links to posts from Reddit in my Obsidian note app. Just copying the link marks it that you shared the link and artificially increases stats in that manner.
millzlane 11mo ago
The only way to win is to not play.
qwm 11mo ago
That explains the extra traffic I've been getting from Twitter.
joeyoungblood 11mo ago
Wait, so it's all just pre-loading traffic? Ugh.
- reddalo 11mo ago
  Mobile users with data caps must be super happy.
joeyoungblood 11mo ago
Wait, so it's all just pre-loading traffic? Ugh. Why would they do this? Speed? Confusion? Both?
throitallaway 11mo ago
The UI/UX of Twitter has always been a dumpster fire. The non-sequential view that you get when accessing a page when not logged in is horrible.
orsenthil 11mo ago
How does displaying the webview increase the traffic? Is it because when you scroll through the site, even if you have not openeded the link, it gets opened in the background and counts a visit?
carlosdp 11mo ago
What evidence do you have that the webview "opens in the background"? I just tried it, and it definitely isn't preloaded when I click a link...
nomilk 11mo ago
Banning PG was a mistake [0] > [George Hotz] I'm upset when I see PG get banned for mentioning mastodon > [Elon] yeah, that was a mistake [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNkSQ42jg4&t=42m14s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNkSQ42jg4&t=42m14s Meta note: it's worth listening to this historical 'space' in full (well, the first ~1h while Elon's on). The meta-pattern becomes obvious: people (esp nay-sayers) are outraged about ~20 different issues, X since addressed most of them, but the outrage-mob moved on to new issues, X will address them, and so on. The point: the ragey mob is never satified, X moves very quickly (partly due to it's willingness to try things, and occasionally fail in the short term) but this strategy is long-term optimal.
- ibero 11mo ago
  counter point: x active usage is down. the “ragey mob” were engaged users who have since left, along with the user growth and MAU.
  - nomilk 11mo ago
    Depending on the metric (e.g. MAU, DAU, web impressions etc) X is generally down about 3-20% since Elon's takeover. Seems fair to say X is a 'break even' investment at best. It will be extremely interesting to re-visit this thread in 10 years. X is currently a gateway for promoting Grok (with 11-figure DAU potential), and X is acquiring financial licences in US states, with a view to becoming an 'everything app' (something which the East seems to have - in the forms of wechat, Grab - but the West weirdly doesn't). If X can be the West's first 'everything app'.. trillion+ dollar valuation isn't out of the question.
    - antoniojtorres 11mo ago
      How exciting…
zahlman 11mo ago
> now any time you open a tweet with a link, the in-app webview loads in the background The what now? Is this also a feature of the actual website if I go there in a browser?
fukka42 11mo ago
> since Elon and his mom both tweeted about how it wasn't fair to use his platform to promote other links/platforms This is just so funny.
realaaa 11mo ago
so many people seem to be complaining that it got worse - duh? it was always shite platform guys c'mon :) but indeed unfortunately there is not many other things doing real-time info better than X / Twitter
senderista 11mo ago
I never use xitter by choice, but when I need to view a tweet/thread/profile I make sure the xcancel[0] browser extension is installed. [0] https://xcancel.com/ https://xcancel.com/
hn1986 11mo ago
This link is all you need to know about the lack of free-speech Twitter has. https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-still-throttling-competitors-links-check-for-yourself https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-s...
- stillatit 11mo ago
  That's incredibly damning. The throttling of Substack writers is so cruel, especially considering how much these writers have contributed to Twitter.
modeless 11mo ago
> Update 2: even correcting for the fake views, traffic to Substack links from X is up substantially. (full post reads, signups, etc. also track.) Real traffic is estimated at 3-4x higher than before, after correcting for the preloading. https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916 https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916
stillatit 11mo ago
Since this got so much attention, I feel the need to add that the CEO of Substack is now saying that even accounting for fake views, their traffic from X has gone up substantially. Tweet with graph: https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916 https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916
- sunaookami 11mo ago
  Here is more from an X developer: https://x.com/dinkin_flickaa/status/1985847269740990717 https://x.com/dinkin_flickaa/status/1985847269740990717 "Fix for false impressions going out in the next build" EDIT: Ah your shared post seems like it accounts for that.
zombot 11mo ago
> the in-app webview What app are you talking about?

647 points by stillatit 11mo ago

braza 11mo ago

I understand the rationale and I am happy for the authors and I think the distribution will be way better. As a user I like to get out as soon as I click because I can trace back the link and I can do clipping or bookmark in my browser.

jacquesm 11mo ago

[flagged]

stinkbeetle 11mo ago
[flagged]
- littlestymaar 11mo ago
  Until the media starts following other social media, politicians will be kind of forced to stay there, not for the reach on the platform itself, but because in regular medias, tweets are being given the same visibility as a book nowadays.
  - anildash 11mo ago
    There's more than enough critical mass on other platforms that there's no excuse for them to still be on X, and it's a shame they stay there. Journalists would go to (for example) Bluesky if it were the only place they could get AOC dunking on the tycoons that they're obsessed with covering every utterance from.
    - londons_explore 11mo ago
      Blue sky has only 5% as many users, and isn't growing fast.
  - stinkbeetle 11mo ago
    [flagged]
- jacquesm 11mo ago
  I completely predicted this comment. Maybe give it five minutes and you'll figure it out. Or not. Hint: when you're a politician, you don't have much choice, no matter what your preferences are. But when you're an ordinary person, like you or me you actually have a choice.
  - stinkbeetle 11mo ago
    Naturally, the comrades at the top are more equal than the rest of us.
  - haunter 11mo ago
    > when you're an ordinary person, like you or me you actually have a choice To use a dead platform or an actual active one? I don’t even follow politics on Twitter just video games and some fandoms but it’s actual alive compared to Bluesky where nothing happens basically. Especially true if you follow non-english content.
  - maplethorpe 11mo ago
    It depends. There are other professions that also rely on Twitter for work. Granted it's a shell of its former self, but a better alternative is yet to emerge.
ares623 11mo ago
[flagged]
gnuplustoejam 11mo ago
[flagged]
- jacquesm 11mo ago
  What's 'reddit tier' about it? As opposed to your contribution it was at least on topic.
  - gnuplustoejam 11mo ago
    Melodramatic + use of profanity generally indicates an appeal to emotion rather than a rational well-thought out statement. A rant about the CEO is not on topic.
    - decremental 11mo ago
      [dead]
Lammy 11mo ago
Don't care, I'll go where the funny is. Simply amassing that much money makes one complicit in The System, effectively ceasing to be human and embodying the will of the money itself, so let's not pretend like Jack Dorsey is any different or better.
- jacquesm 11mo ago
  > so let's not pretend like Jack Dorsey is any different or better. I wasn't.

pavelai 11mo ago

It seems like they changed the strategy and enhanced UX. Feels like now there would a lot of worthless traffic in the web

saagarjha 11mo ago

I’m just happy they got rid of the system web view and replaced it with the one which they can inject their own JavaScript into. Bonus points that it covers the thing I want to read and I can’t turn it off. Truly, a masterpiece of engineering from the guy whose entire schtick was coming up with was to boost engagement from kids.

est 11mo ago

That's precisely what Wechat is doing. Most chinese "mega apps" do this. Elon absolutely on his track to copy this important feature [1] The webview works as a traffic faucet. Elon can turn it on or off for every third-party site, you know, for "Internet safety". My take: Next step is X.com proprietary APIs inside the Webview, like payment and everything. The ultimate goal is a "mini-app" framework that use PWA-like techs to run everything based on the Webview and circumvent Appstore. And last a phone that runs the "mini-app" framework because why not, as an "AI edge node" like Elon recently proposed. [1]: https://x.com/danmurrays/status/1683446630245187584 https://x.com/danmurrays/status/1683446630245187584

ojr 11mo ago
the webview messes up tokens and passwords managers so I don't see this happening. The US is too culturally different to have mega apps. In Asia their supermarkets also have a lot of information in the menu for example.
- huflungdung 11mo ago
  [dead]
- jeroenhd 11mo ago
  Replace "mega app" with "platform" and that's pretty much what Apple and Google are, Apple especially.
  - ojr 11mo ago
    no I will not replace mega app with platform, WeChat app is totally different from the App Store. In and Out has 5 menu items, similar to an app made in the USA, not too many features A Chinese market can list 50 items similar to WeChat that has 50 different features. The culture is reflected in the app design. source: https://digitalcreative.cn/blog/how-china-ux-is-different https://digitalcreative.cn/blog/how-china-ux-is-different
    - 11mo ago

robot-wrangler 11mo ago

Since we're doing PSAs, isn't it also now just a completely broken platform on mobile for everyone who isn't logged in? > Something went wrong, but don't fret - let's give it another shot. This is all I've seen for literally years now. No real error, does not even say to login or install an app, just blames it on my privacy extensions (I don't actually have any) and offers a button to pointlessly try again. No big loss, but surprising! On the one hand, it's the only time big tech isn't engaged in obnoxious harassment, but it's also a conspicuously dumb oversight in the funnel

teiferer 11mo ago
Always been like that. Twitter, Instagram, ... None of those platforms have usable UX if you're not logged in.
- davedx 11mo ago
  False. You used to be able to read Twitter fine without being logged in
  - teiferer 11mo ago
    When was that? Already pre-Elon it was terrible.
    - input_sh 11mo ago
      Come on, pre-Elon you could click on a Twitter link and read the entire thread as well as the replies, now you just get a single tweet with no context above/below. And if you click on an account you just get top posts of all time instead of a chronological feed, so it's impossible to even find the context while being logged off.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - 11mo ago

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

defraudbah 11mo ago

[flagged]

blikdak 11mo ago

What bugs me is the sheer number of people, and organisations, who still link to images and video or '1/20' long screeds on twitter, while the next article on their own site is bitching about how bad twatter/owner/politics etc is. Seriously if a site, blog, forum etc you know ever links to twitter then just stop interaction with them, they're lazy mofos need to do their own groundwork.

gcr 11mo ago

Does this mean an attacker can turn any impression into any GET request?

stillatit 11mo ago
Not sure how much of an attack that is. FWIW the preloading is nice as a user.
- lysp 11mo ago
  Is the request coming from the user's IP or via a Twitter proxy? As a plain webview would mean that you can grab everyone's details.
netsharc 11mo ago
It'd be an interesting way to count how many impressions your tweets get: add a URL to every tweet, put a tracking "pixel" in the webpage (assuming the webview loads all assets; if not, then just add the "pixel' URL to the tweet..
- modeless 11mo ago
  There's an impression counter on every tweet, visible to everyone
  - netsharc 11mo ago
    All ad networks also claim the ad you pay them to show got n impressions, according to their calculations, here's the bill...
- hshdhdhehd 11mo ago
  Make the pixel a zip bomb for lols
  - efreak 11mo ago
    Advertising landing page full of CPI ads?

penguin_booze 11mo ago

Another example and incentive not to use apps and to be held hostage, when an equivalent web service is available. On Android, just use Hermit or some similar app to sandbox a webview of their webpage.

labrador 11mo ago

On a related topic, I've been following with some amusement the outrage on Reddit/r/Grok because Grok will no longer make porn. Apparently Grok was trained on all the NSFW material on X and Twitter before it intentionally so Grok could have a "spicy" mode. And spicy it was. Some of the stuff it made was really good and people loved it. But (allegedly) Musk changed his mind to go after enterprise and government accounts so spicy mode was killed and now there a lot of angry users complaining on Reddit. My interest is this: It appears that it's not possible to over-ride the training effectively since NSFW material bleeds into normal image requests. Musk had this problem before trying to over-ride Grok's training, so at one point said he would have to retrain Grok. It's interesting to me that LLMs can't be steered effectively, which makes me wonder if they can ever really be aligned ("safe")

elpakal 11mo ago
I mean isn't this just considered data poisoning?
- labrador 11mo ago
  The training data was considered good by Musk to start with, so he could have spicy mode, but he changed his mind and now Grok is considered poisoned with porn. My question is, can that be fixed or does he have to start over again?
  - looobay 11mo ago
    There was research on LLMs training and distillation that if two models have a similar architecture (probably the case for Xai) the "master" model will distill knowledge to the model even if its not in the distillation data. So they probably need to train a new model from scratch. (sorry i don't remember the name but there was an example with a model liking howl to showcase this)
    - -_- 11mo ago
      Subliminal learning: https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/subliminal-learning/ https://alignment.anthropic.com/2025/subliminal-learning/

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

elAhmo 11mo ago

Again, anyone still using Twitter should know they are contributing to the richest man in the world actively pushing to disrupt the core fabric of our society.

nomdep 11mo ago
Building rockets, moon bases, making fossil fuels less critical… yes, I agree
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - wahnfrieden 11mo ago
    Escape from pitchforks
    - Integrape 11mo ago
      Shooting the billionaires into outer space would make the world a better place.
  - gruez 11mo ago
    >Cutting food stamps. How is Musk involved in the current budget debacle aside from being "republican"? It's easy to blame stuff on him when he was running DOGE, but since his falling out with trump blaming every cut on Musk is a tired and expired meme.
    - mayneack 11mo ago
      Given how much he contributed to the election outcome it hardly seems tired to blame him for the consequences. Plus he's on Twitter every week publicly discussing how much he uses the platform to put his thumb on the scale of discourse towards his personal beliefs. In what world is he not involved?

robinhood 11mo ago

I find it so sad that Twitter still gets traffic at all. Even if we put aside the super shady content on this platform (free speech, lol), the app, either on the web or mobile, has a sub-par user experience. I wish all the devs that I respect were using another platform.

boringg 11mo ago
X has a lock on live information that no one else has figured out yet not from a technical perspective but from an adoption perspective.
- jeroenhd 11mo ago
  My government has been posting a lot of information (weather alerts, road works, etc.) on their own, dedicated Mastodon instance. They don't really advertise it, but it's good they have a platform to publish live information to in case the Americans continue to get weirder.
  - _whiteCaps_ 11mo ago
    Do you have any examples of this? I'd love to point this out to my local government.
    - jeroenhd 11mo ago
      https://social.overheid.nl/directory https://social.overheid.nl/directory has a list of government services, municipalities, and other stuff. https://social.overheid.nl/@RWSverkeersinfo https://social.overheid.nl/@RWSverkeersinfo is for traffic conditions https://social.overheid.nl/@knmi https://social.overheid.nl/@knmi is the royal national weather service Some services have shut down their Mastodon presence because their social media team found too little interaction and they don't want to use simple forward bots that nobody responds to, unfortunately.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 11mo ago
  It's network effect, same as Facebook

mk89 11mo ago

What about links to malware or other illegal content that will be downloaded without me clicking on it...? Is it only in the app, or also with the browser? Crazy.

phoronixrly 11mo ago
You don't get it. It's worth it for the sake of UX. /s
hunter2_ 11mo ago
> also with the browser Browsers have been doing this forever: you make a request to a server (A) that you choose to interact with, and it could respond with various things (a redirect, a page with a meta refresh, a page with a frame / iframe, etc.) that result in your browser automatically making a request (and rendering the resulting page response) to some other server (B) that could get you in trouble. However, in this classic scenario, when A starts sending you to B, you stop trusting A. This is simple when A's behavior is entirely determined by A's owner. What if it's determined by other users (not just A's owner)? Typically, A would be careful to not serve a redirect (etc.) based on user input, as that would be considered an "open redirect" vulnerability (with an exception for link shorteners, I guess). Interesting how the webview preloading that we're discussing now commits essentially this same offense.

beezlewax 11mo ago

Why are you using twitter for anything at this stage?

afpx 11mo ago
I block X and related domains at the router.
labrador 11mo ago
It's still the most interesting platform for AI
- labrador 11mo ago
  I just tried to find AI starter packs on BlueSky and confirmed that BlueSky is openly hostile to AI. I understand the reasons, it's just not where I'm at. I'll try Threads and see what happens.
  - jandrese 11mo ago
    Bluesky has lots of artists, authors, journalists, etc... who see AI as a direct threat to human creativity. Not that the AI will replace the creativity, but that it can generate slop that looks "good enough" and doesn't demand a living wage or healthcare benefits. Many of these creative types have little trust that corporate management won't try to replace them just to save a buck.
    - labrador 11mo ago
      I'm sympathetic to their arguments but that doesn't lesson my need to understand AI if I'm going to help them with their concerns. Ignoring it is not an effective strategy.
  - metabagel 11mo ago
    I can't vouch for these, but they seem like reasonable starting points. I searched for "AI starter pack" with the quotes. https://bsky.app/starter-pack-short/LFAZcGE https://bsky.app/starter-pack-short/LFAZcGE https://bsky.app/starter-pack/maosbot.bsky.social/3l3ix4wi64z2m https://bsky.app/starter-pack/maosbot.bsky.social/3l3ix4wi64...

sd9 11mo ago

This seems like a fairly reasonable UX improvement. Unless I'm missing anything, it doesn't seem like this has nefarious intent, it's just there so that when a user clicks a link, they see the content as quickly as possible. --- It's astonishing how quickly discussion disintegrates when Musk is mentioned on HN. He really is such a divisive figure, with incredibly polarised language both in support and against him. Normal reasoned arguments are just absent here. Sometimes when two people disagree, they can still have a nuanced conversation/argument about it. But not about Musk. There are some opinions in this thread that I vehemently disagree with, but it's not worth escalating by adding my opinion to the pile. It reminds me of that phenomenon where you read the newspaper and notice an article in your domain of expertise and it's riddled with errors! Then you turn the page, read an article about something else, and completely trust it. You somehow didn't transfer the knowledge that the newspaper is inaccurate to the new domain. It makes me wonder what other discussions on HN (and elsewhere) are completely devoid of nuance and reason, but I just don't notice it.

oulipo2 11mo ago
How are you supposed to have a "nuanced discussion" about a guy doing literal Hitler salutes in public?
- Ajedi32 11mo ago
  When you're either unwilling or incapable of understanding other people's perspectives it is indeed very difficult. Try this: steelman the argument that what Musk did all those months ago wasn't a "literal Hitler salute". If you can do that, I suspect you'll find it a lot easier to have nuanced discussions about that topic (and possibly others) going forward.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 11mo ago
    Fuck the salute. I can look at everything else he's done and still think he's a terrible individual that should not be given money or power.

aldousd666 11mo ago

Nobody wants a damn web view. If I'm clicking off to a link, I may want to click to another app and back in and still be where it was... If it's in a webview that's gone as soon as I click out. Yes, you can open in Chrome or whatever, open in a browser, but that's a pain in the ass to do an the time. I hate web views, in all forms.

carlosjobim 11mo ago
Why would the web view be gone after you've multi tasked? On my phone the web view stays open inside the parent app.
- minitoar 11mo ago
  idk but I’ve definitely experienced this. Presumably it’s a bug.
tracker1 11mo ago
In the settings you can configure to open in the configured external browser. I recently switched phones, so had to adjust several apps for this. It's a pain and would be nice if it was a global setting to always open links in the browser.
chairmansteve 11mo ago
You know what to do..... ')
emehrkay 11mo ago
I clicked a link in IG once and and it opened via a webveiw. it was one of those "give us your email for a discount" popups so I put in "mark@aol.com" and at a later date, IG asked if I wanted to associate that email with my account (or something along those lines). I tend to take the extra step to "open in native browser" whenever webveiws popup
- throwaway290 11mo ago
  I remember how tiktok basically injected a keylogger into any site they opened in a webview https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/technology/tiktok-browser-tracking.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/technology/tiktok-browser... I didn't think IG does something similarly shady

igleria 11mo ago

Nikita should be ashamed of how BAD the android X app is.

itsoktocry 11mo ago

I've been a long-time Twitter user. I don't hate Elon, so when he bought it I was cautiously optimistic. I deactivated last week. The platform is bad and getting worse. It's scammy and spammy. Everything is designed around garbage engagement, so that the X team can brag about how good the product is doing.

scottcorgan 11mo ago
[flagged]
- cheschire 11mo ago
  no, X. It looks like K, but the left side is also indented instead of vertical.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
vachina 11mo ago
I prefer the X now. Unlimited stream of unhinged, unfiltered thought stream from strangers straight into my feed.
- _alternator_ 11mo ago
  Is this … sarcasm?
  - throw-the-towel 11mo ago
    Maybe GP genuinely enjoys madness.
    - SLWW 11mo ago
      If you grew up with image boards in their heyday (pre-2004) then X could feel a bit nostalgic. However the word filters (to suppress messages) does dampen it a bit.

perlgeek 11mo ago

If you link to a page with ads on it, will that webview load count as an ad impression?

-_- 11mo ago

I’ve also noticed recently that when I click a Twitter link from Telegram, it hijacks the Telegram webview to open the tweet in Safari.

Quitschquat 11mo ago

I don’t know what everyone gets out of Twitter/X. I signed up recently to see what the fuss is about, I think I selected science and music as starting interests. Within 10 minutes I was getting lots of right wing borderline Nazi bullshit. Tries it all again in incognito mode. Roughly same thing. WTF

jandrese 11mo ago
First rule of Twitter is avoid the algorithm at all costs. The trolls have long since figured it out and now if the algorithm is involved you are going to see white supremacist talking points nonstop. Second rule of Twitter is why are you on Twitter, it's a full on Nazi bar now. The "following" feed that mostly shows you content from people you have explicitly followed is better, although the site really likes to swap back to the algorithmic "for you" feed whenever you aren't paying attention. However, even the following feed will still have the troll responses on most posts. You really can't avoid them on Twitter.
- Quitschquat 11mo ago
  > Second rule of Twitter is why are you on Twitter, It was a short affair. No longer on Twitter. I can't see how anyone would want to be. It's a veritable cesspool.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

hmokiguess 11mo ago

seamless data harvesting hidden behind a feature, more cached urls for training data

dilap 11mo ago

Huge fan of X, but it's pissing in the face of your fans to tell such obvious lies.

driverdan 11mo ago
> Huge fan of X Why? It's a cesspool of hate. Even if you try to avoid the political nonsense Elon forces himself and his cronies into your recommendations.
- dilap 11mo ago
  X has everything, and you can pick what you follow (there's a "For You" tab, but also a strictly chronological following tab). I like it for variety of political views (e.g. super-lefty @caitoz, super-righty @L0m3z), following interesting LLM stuff (@elder_plinius is a great follow), lots of devs (e.g. carmack...), art accounts (@yumenohajime, @neurocolor), nutrition/health stuff, so much good stuff! (The FYP, alas, sucks, and has since forever...)
  - programable 11mo ago
    But Elon Musk is a Nazi who goes around doing Hitler salutes. By using X you are implicitly endorsing and supporting this.

SilentM68 11mo ago

X is an authoritarian platform designed for freedomless speech. People, including myself, were booted out for giving opinions that did not align with their corrupt values. Even post-Elon, after appealing decision, some of us still haven't been let back in.

jandrese 11mo ago
Which opinions were those again?
- rc_kas 11mo ago
  https://www.vice.com/en/article/x-purges-prominent-journalists-leftists-with-no-explanation/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/x-purges-prominent-journalis...

benlivengood 11mo ago

This reinforces why I never use the social media apps and only the web versions. Very few apps avoid the invasive engagement-maximization that browsers make a bit more difficult.

noodlesUK 11mo ago

They're also doing something very scammy with ads - if you are scrolling on mobile, they've changed the behaviour on iOS so that if you touch the ad at all, it considers it a click and opens it, whereas it's much less sensitive on ordinary posts and behaves like any other app. This is clearly to increase click-through artificially.

doawoo 11mo ago
The Tumblr app does this and it’s infuriating
lossolo 11mo ago
I noticed that too, it's so annoying.
drdaeman 11mo ago
Ads and “scammy” tactics were always like bread and butter. The whole point of industry is to just increase the numbers using whatever means possible except for what the industry deems unquestionably unacceptable, after all. So, naturally, there’s this incentive of making the paid-for action as low effort as tolerable (preferably under the guise of “improvement” to prolong the status quo) and make money while that window of opportunity is still open. Sad but true. As long as pay-per-click exists it’ll always be like that. Minimally necessary action will be probed, negative feedback (“won’t buy this on principle/will bug others to raise awareness on ethical concerns”) eventually making the industry raise the bar higher. Beats outright malware (auto-installing IE toolbars, yay!) and popup/popunders on a click anywhere eras of the past, but despite any possible illusions, the bar isn’t particularly high still (modern web is still nauseously popup-ridden), when viewed through the modern first-world optics. Not that I like anything about this - just an observation.
jacobgkau 11mo ago
> if you are scrolling on mobile, they've changed the behaviour on iOS so that if you touch the ad at all, it considers it a click and opens it, They did it for Android, too. Just the other day, I tried to view replies for an ad, and thought I'd accidentally clicked the ad multiple times before realizing that the replies indicator and even the timestamp (which is the normal "just go to the tweet" valve) were behaving the same as an ad click. Edit: Re-reading your comment, not sure if that was exactly what you meant, or if you just meant that it'll e.g. open the ad if you try to scroll on it.

thm 11mo ago

Day One Twitter user; built the very first API app and the first Android client. Launching a "competitor" next month - Keep an eye on https://flipso.com https://flipso.com

crnkofe 11mo ago

I stopped using Twitter somewhere around the time of Musk takeover. Only used it for event coverage live during events for which I found it genuinely useful at some point and of course doomscrolling. Can't say I miss it. Its like nothing changed in my life. I also managed to miss the LGBT exodus after Musk policy changes and learned about it later at a random FOSDEM talk. Global "social" feeds do everything in their power to steal attention and having it all back is great for sanity.

tmaly 11mo ago
A lot of teachers also stopped using it around the same time. This was unfortunate as it was an amazing source for project ideas for students.

porygonz 11mo ago

The new behavior is much better from a user perspective. When you tap on a post, it'll start loading the link in the background so once you are done reading the post the link will load immediately and the post will shelve on the bottom of the screen. It is very fluid, especially with blog posts / news articles.

throwaway106382 11mo ago

deleted my account a few weeks ago and it actually feels like my health has improved because i'm no longer constantly bombarded with ragebait and doomerism i hope they keep ruining the experience of using it some more

ronaldsvilcins 11mo ago

whaaat a surprise....

tmaly 11mo ago

Reddit does something similar in some way but not like this. I often save links to posts from Reddit in my Obsidian note app. Just copying the link marks it that you shared the link and artificially increases stats in that manner.

millzlane 11mo ago

The only way to win is to not play.

qwm 11mo ago

That explains the extra traffic I've been getting from Twitter.

joeyoungblood 11mo ago

Wait, so it's all just pre-loading traffic? Ugh.

reddalo 11mo ago
Mobile users with data caps must be super happy.

joeyoungblood 11mo ago

Wait, so it's all just pre-loading traffic? Ugh. Why would they do this? Speed? Confusion? Both?

throitallaway 11mo ago

The UI/UX of Twitter has always been a dumpster fire. The non-sequential view that you get when accessing a page when not logged in is horrible.

orsenthil 11mo ago

How does displaying the webview increase the traffic? Is it because when you scroll through the site, even if you have not openeded the link, it gets opened in the background and counts a visit?

carlosdp 11mo ago

What evidence do you have that the webview "opens in the background"? I just tried it, and it definitely isn't preloaded when I click a link...

nomilk 11mo ago

Banning PG was a mistake [0] > [George Hotz] I'm upset when I see PG get banned for mentioning mastodon > [Elon] yeah, that was a mistake [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNkSQ42jg4&t=42m14s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNkSQ42jg4&t=42m14s Meta note: it's worth listening to this historical 'space' in full (well, the first ~1h while Elon's on). The meta-pattern becomes obvious: people (esp nay-sayers) are outraged about ~20 different issues, X since addressed most of them, but the outrage-mob moved on to new issues, X will address them, and so on. The point: the ragey mob is never satified, X moves very quickly (partly due to it's willingness to try things, and occasionally fail in the short term) but this strategy is long-term optimal.

ibero 11mo ago
counter point: x active usage is down. the “ragey mob” were engaged users who have since left, along with the user growth and MAU.
- nomilk 11mo ago
  Depending on the metric (e.g. MAU, DAU, web impressions etc) X is generally down about 3-20% since Elon's takeover. Seems fair to say X is a 'break even' investment at best. It will be extremely interesting to re-visit this thread in 10 years. X is currently a gateway for promoting Grok (with 11-figure DAU potential), and X is acquiring financial licences in US states, with a view to becoming an 'everything app' (something which the East seems to have - in the forms of wechat, Grab - but the West weirdly doesn't). If X can be the West's first 'everything app'.. trillion+ dollar valuation isn't out of the question.
  - antoniojtorres 11mo ago
    How exciting…

zahlman 11mo ago

> now any time you open a tweet with a link, the in-app webview loads in the background The what now? Is this also a feature of the actual website if I go there in a browser?

fukka42 11mo ago

> since Elon and his mom both tweeted about how it wasn't fair to use his platform to promote other links/platforms This is just so funny.

realaaa 11mo ago

so many people seem to be complaining that it got worse - duh? it was always shite platform guys c'mon :) but indeed unfortunately there is not many other things doing real-time info better than X / Twitter

senderista 11mo ago

I never use xitter by choice, but when I need to view a tweet/thread/profile I make sure the xcancel[0] browser extension is installed. [0] https://xcancel.com/ https://xcancel.com/

hn1986 11mo ago

This link is all you need to know about the lack of free-speech Twitter has. https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-still-throttling-competitors-links-check-for-yourself https://themarkup.org/investigations/2023/09/15/twitter-is-s...

stillatit 11mo ago
That's incredibly damning. The throttling of Substack writers is so cruel, especially considering how much these writers have contributed to Twitter.

modeless 11mo ago

> Update 2: even correcting for the fake views, traffic to Substack links from X is up substantially. (full post reads, signups, etc. also track.) Real traffic is estimated at 3-4x higher than before, after correcting for the preloading. https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916 https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916

stillatit 11mo ago

Since this got so much attention, I feel the need to add that the CEO of Substack is now saying that even accounting for fake views, their traffic from X has gone up substantially. Tweet with graph: https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916 https://x.com/cjgbest/status/1985852384531394916

sunaookami 11mo ago
Here is more from an X developer: https://x.com/dinkin_flickaa/status/1985847269740990717 https://x.com/dinkin_flickaa/status/1985847269740990717 "Fix for false impressions going out in the next build" EDIT: Ah your shared post seems like it accounts for that.

zombot 11mo ago

> the in-app webview What app are you talking about?