4 ms·

Maybe instead of trying to get rid of services that provide a more convenient access to X to non-logged-in users, they should realize that there is a real marke

by rob74 18d ago

Maybe instead of trying to get rid of services that provide a more convenient access to X to non-logged-in users, they should realize that there is a real market behind these services - users that will likely never sign up to X, but who want to read/watch some content without the incessant nagging and limitations that X subjects non-logged-in users to?

pluc 18d ago
Reddit says hello
- forestingfisher 18d ago
  And Reddit has also started blocking signed out users in my region.
  - immibis2 18d ago
    And demanding ID!
  - vova_hn2 18d ago
    They are now telling me that I need an account to use old.reddit.com (the only usable version of Reddit UI). Needless to say, I have stopped visiting Reddit completely.
    - boston_clone 18d ago
      Perhaps more frustratingly, if you bite the bullet and browse the "new" version on your mobile browser, the page will eventually become non-responsive and have ~60% of your screen covered by a bottom banner that prompts you to download their app to continue. It's like they are actively trying to kill their userbase.
      - immibis2 18d ago
        Like most big tech companies now, they are actively trying to kill their non-contributing userbase, where contributing means viewing an ad for every second post. They know that perhaps 5% of the non-contributing userbase they kill will become contributing userbase, while the other 95% will just leave, and this trade seems good to them.
      - saratogacx 18d ago
        On mobile, uBO has been able to get around the "use our app" block. It took a week or two for the filters to get updated but now it is a non-issue. Tested in Firefox and Vivaldi on Android.
        boston_clone 17d ago
        Unfortunately, it seems uBO on Safari/iOS needs to get with it! The native “hide distracting items” feature does allow you to select and remove it, though.
    - pred_ 18d ago
      FWIW, Old Reddit Redirect manages to somehow still be usable without a user.
      - immibis2 18d ago
        You're being A/B tested.
      - jwilk 18d ago
        They do this by setting cookie "redesign_optout=true" for www.reddit.com (and then using that domain).
      - suslik 18d ago
        For me it requires login even with ORR.
- RKearney 18d ago
  Didn't Reddit ban open access to their APIs and kill third party viewers/apps as well by charging outrageous amounts for continued API access?
Waterluvian 18d ago
They clearly realize it and are doing something to stop it. I understand the idea of imagining this as an underserved market they could do something about. Twitter worked that way. X intentionally doesn't want to, and wants to guard its monopoly over the information is controls. It's like paywalls. Some news companies share free news as a sort of loss leader. Others say, "if you aren't going to pay we simply don't want you here."
swed420 18d ago
> users that will likely never sign up to X, but who want to read/watch some content They probably don't want their echo chamber leaking to the wider internet, because external discussion of the content would reveal it for the siloed thought bubble that it is. Consider X now requires personal information to sign up, and after handing that info over, signups are often still rejected with no explanation given. Yet another tell they're very interested in maintaining that echo chamber.
- deleted 18d ago
  [deleted]
- asveikau 18d ago
  > signups are often still rejected with no explanation given That's pretty odd. When I google this, there are claims that this is to prevent spam accounts. Obviously, if you choose not to take them at their word, one can read all sorts of odd reasons into it.
  - swed420 18d ago
    That exchange might be believable if bots didn't exist on X, but they absolutely do, hence the search for other explanations. Considering who owns it, it'd be weird if they didn't want a carefully curated echo chamber of sanitized thought.
    - asveikau 18d ago
      To be clear I agree that another reason is pretty likely. I'm just phrasing it neutrally since I don't know.. Above all I'm saying it's weird. I'm used to thinking of twitter and all the others in the same category as wanting to drive user metrics up at the expense of a lot of other priorities. Preventing new accounts seems to run counter to expectations.
- abletonlive 18d ago
  HN and Reddit are much more of an echo chamber than X is.
JsonDemWitOster 18d ago
Excuse my pedantry but "market" implies a possible audience/demographic to _sell_ to. If a user can't be arsed to sign up for Twitter (an action that costs nothing, AFAIK), what makes you think they will pay for read-only access to tweets? Speaking only for myself, well, no. If Elon doesn't want non-users to be able to read tweets then that's simply one section of the internet I'm swearing off. I'll get my news from actual news sites and I have plenty of hot takes on my own to last me this life and the next.
- mitxela 18d ago
  If a user can't be arsed to take the car for a test drive what makes you think they'll buy it? They won't, that's why dealerships don't give away free cars but it's still a market.
tencentshill 18d ago
Do they not understand you can still serve ads to non-logged-in users? They can still be tracked nearly as effectively with fingerprinting.
- frankacter 18d ago
  I assume the limit is related to 3rd party AI scraping training.
pwg 18d ago
> without the incessant nagging and limitations that X subjects non-logged-in users to That is directly the result of the evil pull of advertising. "Logged in" users are more valuable than "non-logged in" users to advertisers (because logged in ones are identified) and so what you are seeing as "nagging" is Shitter (formerly X, formerly Twitter) desperately trying to increase its ad revenue at your expense. You are watching enshittification right before your eyes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
- rob74 17d ago
  Actually you can write "Xitter" ("x" is pronounced "sh" in the standard transliteration of Chinese and many other languages, although most of them are not really widespread, like Basque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_alphabet and Maltese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_alphabet).
arjie 18d ago
That’s not a market. You are not exchanging anything of value. It’s a public service. One might as well lament that Ferrari doesn’t offer cars to the millions of people who would gladly take one for free.
- hightrix 18d ago
  It's unfortunate that this is not a downvoted comment on a "hacker" news website. The internet used to be treated as a public service.
xyst 18d ago
As if the new owners of twitter give a shit about its sustainability. It is all about capturing the platform to change the conversation around 2024 US presidential election cycle and US politics. It’s effectively become a political propaganda machine owned by billionaires
- pessimizer 18d ago
  [flagged]
  - mitxela 18d ago
    He wasn't forced to sign the original agreement to buy it. He was forced to uphold the agreement he already signed.
wffurr 17d ago
ISTR in the old days Twitter was easy to read when not logged in, much like Mastodon or Bluesky are now. But once they captured market share, and this happened before Musk!, they started gradually ramping up the pressure to log in or use the app to view tweets. One can only assume Bluesky would go the same way were it to gain significant market share. One can even imagine a particular Mastodon instance going that way, were it to be popular enough and run by profit-minded people.

by rob74 18d ago

pluc 18d ago

Reddit says hello

forestingfisher 18d ago
And Reddit has also started blocking signed out users in my region.
- immibis2 18d ago
  And demanding ID!
- vova_hn2 18d ago
  They are now telling me that I need an account to use old.reddit.com (the only usable version of Reddit UI). Needless to say, I have stopped visiting Reddit completely.
  - boston_clone 18d ago
    Perhaps more frustratingly, if you bite the bullet and browse the "new" version on your mobile browser, the page will eventually become non-responsive and have ~60% of your screen covered by a bottom banner that prompts you to download their app to continue. It's like they are actively trying to kill their userbase.
    - immibis2 18d ago
      Like most big tech companies now, they are actively trying to kill their non-contributing userbase, where contributing means viewing an ad for every second post. They know that perhaps 5% of the non-contributing userbase they kill will become contributing userbase, while the other 95% will just leave, and this trade seems good to them.
    - saratogacx 18d ago
      On mobile, uBO has been able to get around the "use our app" block. It took a week or two for the filters to get updated but now it is a non-issue. Tested in Firefox and Vivaldi on Android.
      - boston_clone 17d ago
        Unfortunately, it seems uBO on Safari/iOS needs to get with it! The native “hide distracting items” feature does allow you to select and remove it, though.
  - pred_ 18d ago
    FWIW, Old Reddit Redirect manages to somehow still be usable without a user.
    - immibis2 18d ago
      You're being A/B tested.
    - jwilk 18d ago
      They do this by setting cookie "redesign_optout=true" for www.reddit.com (and then using that domain).
    - suslik 18d ago
      For me it requires login even with ORR.
RKearney 18d ago
Didn't Reddit ban open access to their APIs and kill third party viewers/apps as well by charging outrageous amounts for continued API access?

Waterluvian 18d ago

They clearly realize it and are doing something to stop it. I understand the idea of imagining this as an underserved market they could do something about. Twitter worked that way. X intentionally doesn't want to, and wants to guard its monopoly over the information is controls. It's like paywalls. Some news companies share free news as a sort of loss leader. Others say, "if you aren't going to pay we simply don't want you here."

swed420 18d ago

> users that will likely never sign up to X, but who want to read/watch some content They probably don't want their echo chamber leaking to the wider internet, because external discussion of the content would reveal it for the siloed thought bubble that it is. Consider X now requires personal information to sign up, and after handing that info over, signups are often still rejected with no explanation given. Yet another tell they're very interested in maintaining that echo chamber.

deleted 18d ago
[deleted]
asveikau 18d ago
> signups are often still rejected with no explanation given That's pretty odd. When I google this, there are claims that this is to prevent spam accounts. Obviously, if you choose not to take them at their word, one can read all sorts of odd reasons into it.
- swed420 18d ago
  That exchange might be believable if bots didn't exist on X, but they absolutely do, hence the search for other explanations. Considering who owns it, it'd be weird if they didn't want a carefully curated echo chamber of sanitized thought.
  - asveikau 18d ago
    To be clear I agree that another reason is pretty likely. I'm just phrasing it neutrally since I don't know.. Above all I'm saying it's weird. I'm used to thinking of twitter and all the others in the same category as wanting to drive user metrics up at the expense of a lot of other priorities. Preventing new accounts seems to run counter to expectations.
abletonlive 18d ago
HN and Reddit are much more of an echo chamber than X is.

JsonDemWitOster 18d ago

Excuse my pedantry but "market" implies a possible audience/demographic to _sell_ to. If a user can't be arsed to sign up for Twitter (an action that costs nothing, AFAIK), what makes you think they will pay for read-only access to tweets? Speaking only for myself, well, no. If Elon doesn't want non-users to be able to read tweets then that's simply one section of the internet I'm swearing off. I'll get my news from actual news sites and I have plenty of hot takes on my own to last me this life and the next.

mitxela 18d ago
If a user can't be arsed to take the car for a test drive what makes you think they'll buy it? They won't, that's why dealerships don't give away free cars but it's still a market.

tencentshill 18d ago

Do they not understand you can still serve ads to non-logged-in users? They can still be tracked nearly as effectively with fingerprinting.

frankacter 18d ago
I assume the limit is related to 3rd party AI scraping training.

pwg 18d ago

> without the incessant nagging and limitations that X subjects non-logged-in users to That is directly the result of the evil pull of advertising. "Logged in" users are more valuable than "non-logged in" users to advertisers (because logged in ones are identified) and so what you are seeing as "nagging" is Shitter (formerly X, formerly Twitter) desperately trying to increase its ad revenue at your expense. You are watching enshittification right before your eyes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

rob74 17d ago
Actually you can write "Xitter" ("x" is pronounced "sh" in the standard transliteration of Chinese and many other languages, although most of them are not really widespread, like Basque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_alphabet and Maltese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_alphabet).

arjie 18d ago

That’s not a market. You are not exchanging anything of value. It’s a public service. One might as well lament that Ferrari doesn’t offer cars to the millions of people who would gladly take one for free.

hightrix 18d ago
It's unfortunate that this is not a downvoted comment on a "hacker" news website. The internet used to be treated as a public service.

xyst 18d ago

As if the new owners of twitter give a shit about its sustainability. It is all about capturing the platform to change the conversation around 2024 US presidential election cycle and US politics. It’s effectively become a political propaganda machine owned by billionaires

pessimizer 18d ago
[flagged]
- mitxela 18d ago
  He wasn't forced to sign the original agreement to buy it. He was forced to uphold the agreement he already signed.

wffurr 17d ago

ISTR in the old days Twitter was easy to read when not logged in, much like Mastodon or Bluesky are now. But once they captured market share, and this happened before Musk!, they started gradually ramping up the pressure to log in or use the app to view tweets. One can only assume Bluesky would go the same way were it to gain significant market share. One can even imagine a particular Mastodon instance going that way, were it to be popular enough and run by profit-minded people.