5 ms·

Always been like that. Twitter, Instagram, ... None of those platforms have usable UX if you're not logged in.

by teiferer 1y ago

davedx 1y ago
False. You used to be able to read Twitter fine without being logged in
- teiferer 1y ago
  When was that? Already pre-Elon it was terrible.
  - input_sh 1y 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 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - as1mov 1y ago
      Here's me complaining[1] about the login walls way back in 2021, this was before the Elon takeover. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28268365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28268365 Edit: Some more posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28281472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28281472
      - the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
        That's a completely unrelated issue. Once someone sent you a link to a tweet, you could read it.
        as1mov 1y ago
        Is it unrelated? From the parent comment: > 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. I don't want to nitpick stupid shit like this mate. But my point was to emphasise that Twitter had been going downhill before the takeover. (And fact that it was always a toxic cesspool regardless of who owned it, but that's a different matter altogether)
      - Carp 1y ago
        Interesting; if you'd have asked me when Elon took over I'd have said something around 2020-2022. Probably why everyone assumes it's a result of him
      - derbOac 1y ago
        Both are correct, at least according to my memory: you used to be able to read tweets without an account, but that stopped, and it stopped before Musk took over. There were similar trends at other social media sites that happened around the same time.
  - estimator7292 1y ago
    Sorry, are you actually five years old? Until just a few years ago Twitter was entirely open. You could view any and all public tweets, replies, threads. All exactly like you were logged in. Their APIs were open and you could literally plug the entire stream of all tweets from all users on the actual planet in real time into your own application.
    - callamdelaney 1y ago
      Actually, you definitely could not plug the entire stream of all tweets from all users in real time into your own application (without huge cost). You only would ever see a subset of tweets via twitters API's and search results, if you wanted the full thing you had to pay for 'the firehose' which was very expensive.
    - Izkata 1y ago
      No, I'm with GP: Most of the time I'd just get errors and retries that don't work, even years before Elon. I also never had an account there and assumed it had something to do with that.
    - nwsm 1y ago
      From UI perspective you are right, but not for APIs.
      - embedding-shape 1y ago
        The APIs definitly used to be open enough that you could hit a "Generate token", hit one endpoint with cURL and then receive a firehose of all public tweets from that moment on, no reviews or validation at all, all you needed was an account + token. I think this is a huge reason for the initial popularity, because it was trivial to build really fun experiences on top of that, until they cut it off for whatever reason (guessing money, one way or another). At the same time, you could also view tweets without being logged in, and you saw replies too.
        Aurornis 1y ago
- T3RMINATED 1y ago
  [dead]
Zolomon 1y ago
This is not true, this change is a recent phenomenon, I believe it came into effect sometime around 2021-2023 (maybe earlier even). I believe it changed when OpenAI showed the value of data. Before, there was no problem using Instagram or Twitter while not logged in. Now there is a dark pattern that forces you to create an account, or log in.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  People already knew the value of data long before LLMs were popularised and web scraping has been a thing since the very beginnings of the web. Why you’re describing isn’t a recent phenomenon. Not even remotely. Facebook has never allowed people read only views to their platform. And Expert Stack Overflow like Quora used the same dark patterns you described too.
  - hnlmorg 1y ago
    Getting down voted for stating a fact. Just goes to show how short some people’s memories are.
    - Timon3 1y ago
      You're getting downvoted for stating falsehoods. > Why you’re describing isn’t a recent phenomenon. Not even remotely. The big platforms were accessible without login a few years ago, now they're not. That is literally a recent phenomenon. > Facebook has never allowed people read only views to their platform. In the past, I've often looked at Facebook posts without logging in.
      - hnlmorg 1y ago
        > You're getting downvoted for stating falsehoods. I'm getting downvoted because people are either to young to remember the web in the 00s, or just misremembering what the web was like. > The big platforms were accessible without login a few years ago, now they're not. That is literally a recent phenomenon. I gave examples of big platforms that weren't accessible without a login. And modern platforms were also heading this way long before LLMs existed. Redit and Twitter didn't restrict their API use because of LLMs. Meta haven't locked down Instagram because of LLMs. they do it because they need people locked into their ecosystem. LLMs are just the latest way to scrape data, but the practice isn't new. Search engines did it before. And before then, it was just people leeching off other people's work. This is a tale as old as the web. And I remember it well, having been both a web developer and user of the web since 1994. Lets also not forget all the attempts that Microsoft took to try and control the internet and how AOL had their own walled gardens too. Yahoo had a plethora of cool features, most of which weren't available without a Yahoo account. And so on and so forth. Walled gardens are not a recent phenomenon. > In the past, I've often looked at Facebook posts without logging in. You're misremembering. Literally the only reason I have a Facebook account because I needed to check someone's profile and couldn't without signing up. This was back in the early to mid 00s (I can't recall exactly when, but it was long before Facebook was a household name. Back when MySpace was still cool and before Twitter was launched) For example this archived page from Facebook. Notice how there's no way to advance without signing up? https://web.archive.org/web/20070630190243/https://register.facebook.com/findfriends.php https://web.archive.org/web/20070630190243/https://register.... --- I know people want to blame AI for everything that goes wrong these days be that simply isn't the reason that platforms lock down. They do it because thats how you make money. You either: 1. lock down and charge people for access or 2. lock down and sell your user data (or, depressingly too often, both) Giving people free and anonymous access isn't profitable. It wasn't before and it still isn't now. AI hasn't changed that. What AI has changed is the increase in invasive bot detection on sites that don't monetise anonymous access.
agos 1y ago
Instagram explicitly tells you need to be logged in. Twitter/X just appears to be broken
robot-wrangler 1y ago
Obviously wrong. The typical user-hostile thing isn't this dumb, you'd see a teaser that's probably vaguely sexual and get some "sign up for the full experience" prodding. Literally any 2-person startup that's a week old would do better than this at being thirsty and awful

Always been like that. Twitter, Instagram, ... None of those platforms have usable UX if you're not logged in.

davedx 1y ago

False. You used to be able to read Twitter fine without being logged in

teiferer 1y ago
When was that? Already pre-Elon it was terrible.
- input_sh 1y 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 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - as1mov 1y ago
    Here's me complaining[1] about the login walls way back in 2021, this was before the Elon takeover. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28268365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28268365 Edit: Some more posts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28281472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28281472
    - the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
      That's a completely unrelated issue. Once someone sent you a link to a tweet, you could read it.
      - as1mov 1y ago
        Is it unrelated? From the parent comment: > 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. I don't want to nitpick stupid shit like this mate. But my point was to emphasise that Twitter had been going downhill before the takeover. (And fact that it was always a toxic cesspool regardless of who owned it, but that's a different matter altogether)
    - Carp 1y ago
      Interesting; if you'd have asked me when Elon took over I'd have said something around 2020-2022. Probably why everyone assumes it's a result of him
    - derbOac 1y ago
      Both are correct, at least according to my memory: you used to be able to read tweets without an account, but that stopped, and it stopped before Musk took over. There were similar trends at other social media sites that happened around the same time.
- estimator7292 1y ago
  Sorry, are you actually five years old? Until just a few years ago Twitter was entirely open. You could view any and all public tweets, replies, threads. All exactly like you were logged in. Their APIs were open and you could literally plug the entire stream of all tweets from all users on the actual planet in real time into your own application.
  - callamdelaney 1y ago
    Actually, you definitely could not plug the entire stream of all tweets from all users in real time into your own application (without huge cost). You only would ever see a subset of tweets via twitters API's and search results, if you wanted the full thing you had to pay for 'the firehose' which was very expensive.
  - Izkata 1y ago
    No, I'm with GP: Most of the time I'd just get errors and retries that don't work, even years before Elon. I also never had an account there and assumed it had something to do with that.
  - nwsm 1y ago
    From UI perspective you are right, but not for APIs.
    - embedding-shape 1y ago
      The APIs definitly used to be open enough that you could hit a "Generate token", hit one endpoint with cURL and then receive a firehose of all public tweets from that moment on, no reviews or validation at all, all you needed was an account + token. I think this is a huge reason for the initial popularity, because it was trivial to build really fun experiences on top of that, until they cut it off for whatever reason (guessing money, one way or another). At the same time, you could also view tweets without being logged in, and you saw replies too.
      - Aurornis 1y ago
T3RMINATED 1y ago
[dead]

Zolomon 1y ago

This is not true, this change is a recent phenomenon, I believe it came into effect sometime around 2021-2023 (maybe earlier even). I believe it changed when OpenAI showed the value of data. Before, there was no problem using Instagram or Twitter while not logged in. Now there is a dark pattern that forces you to create an account, or log in.

hnlmorg 1y ago
People already knew the value of data long before LLMs were popularised and web scraping has been a thing since the very beginnings of the web. Why you’re describing isn’t a recent phenomenon. Not even remotely. Facebook has never allowed people read only views to their platform. And Expert Stack Overflow like Quora used the same dark patterns you described too.
- hnlmorg 1y ago
  Getting down voted for stating a fact. Just goes to show how short some people’s memories are.
  - Timon3 1y ago
    You're getting downvoted for stating falsehoods. > Why you’re describing isn’t a recent phenomenon. Not even remotely. The big platforms were accessible without login a few years ago, now they're not. That is literally a recent phenomenon. > Facebook has never allowed people read only views to their platform. In the past, I've often looked at Facebook posts without logging in.
    - hnlmorg 1y ago
      > You're getting downvoted for stating falsehoods. I'm getting downvoted because people are either to young to remember the web in the 00s, or just misremembering what the web was like. > The big platforms were accessible without login a few years ago, now they're not. That is literally a recent phenomenon. I gave examples of big platforms that weren't accessible without a login. And modern platforms were also heading this way long before LLMs existed. Redit and Twitter didn't restrict their API use because of LLMs. Meta haven't locked down Instagram because of LLMs. they do it because they need people locked into their ecosystem. LLMs are just the latest way to scrape data, but the practice isn't new. Search engines did it before. And before then, it was just people leeching off other people's work. This is a tale as old as the web. And I remember it well, having been both a web developer and user of the web since 1994. Lets also not forget all the attempts that Microsoft took to try and control the internet and how AOL had their own walled gardens too. Yahoo had a plethora of cool features, most of which weren't available without a Yahoo account. And so on and so forth. Walled gardens are not a recent phenomenon. > In the past, I've often looked at Facebook posts without logging in. You're misremembering. Literally the only reason I have a Facebook account because I needed to check someone's profile and couldn't without signing up. This was back in the early to mid 00s (I can't recall exactly when, but it was long before Facebook was a household name. Back when MySpace was still cool and before Twitter was launched) For example this archived page from Facebook. Notice how there's no way to advance without signing up? https://web.archive.org/web/20070630190243/https://register.facebook.com/findfriends.php https://web.archive.org/web/20070630190243/https://register.... --- I know people want to blame AI for everything that goes wrong these days be that simply isn't the reason that platforms lock down. They do it because thats how you make money. You either: 1. lock down and charge people for access or 2. lock down and sell your user data (or, depressingly too often, both) Giving people free and anonymous access isn't profitable. It wasn't before and it still isn't now. AI hasn't changed that. What AI has changed is the increase in invasive bot detection on sites that don't monetise anonymous access.

agos 1y ago

Instagram explicitly tells you need to be logged in. Twitter/X just appears to be broken

robot-wrangler 1y ago

Obviously wrong. The typical user-hostile thing isn't this dumb, you'd see a teaser that's probably vaguely sexual and get some "sign up for the full experience" prodding. Literally any 2-person startup that's a week old would do better than this at being thirsty and awful