[HN Gopher] The Shit Show
___________________________________________________________________
The Shit Show
Author : chazeon
Score : 344 points
Date : 2023-01-15 21:14 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (furbo.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (furbo.org)
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I guess everyone griefs differently, but I find making a parallel
| between the death of your mother and your website being shutdown
| particularly distasteful.
| samwillis wrote:
| This is a moving post, I wish Craig and everyone else effected by
| these events the best, onwards and upwards!
|
| If these people _who pioneered the use of Twitter_ and
| fundamentally steered how it developed through their community
| contributions turn their experience to Mastodon and the
| Fediverse, big things will come.
|
| From the ashes of one thing can be built the future.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| It should be liberating, no more working under ever worsening
| constraints, someone just ripped off the band-aid and made the
| hard choice for them. Didn't want to let go? Not sure of how
| much effort and support to continue putting in? Problem solved!
| The answer is zero. Zilch. Nada. Enjoy the free time!
| paxys wrote:
| Loss of the product itself, however hard, can be dealt with.
| It's the loss of the community that really stings.
| [deleted]
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I'm still waiting to hear any kind of official word, but it looks
| pretty bleak.
|
| Without Tweetbot, Twitter is almost impossible to use. Checking
| in on https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/, the alternate UI, it's
| almost usable, but still missing like 8 of the most important
| features that made Twitter useful to me.
|
| I have been posting sometimes on Mastodon but still primarily on
| Twitter, waiting to see how things turned out. But if Tweetbot at
| least isn't restored, I will switch roles and will likely try out
| Mastodon for a while, posting just a little on Twitter.
|
| The problem is, most of the "Fediverse" right now is a big echo
| chamber (kind of like Voat was when Reddit had its weird issues a
| few years back, or more charitably like a community like HN is...
| it's not always bad as long as people are aware of it). So it's
| not the same kind of community as Twitter had.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| Twitter was never one community though, of course. The amount
| of interaction I had outside my bubble was really minimal. I
| could see other people shouting at each other if I wanted to,
| but of course I could do that without having an account.
| nerdchum wrote:
| I remember Voat! It started off with great intentions, just to
| be a more free speech version of reddit and at the end was just
| posts about Michelle Obama being a man and Qanon.
|
| It was an interesting case study in how free speech can decline
| to a lowest common denominator type situation.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| I've been using Mastodon for the past couple of months for most
| of the people I follow, but prior to that I had been using
| Twitterific for Twitter because it was so much better for how I
| used it.
|
| Up until a couple of days ago I was still using Twitterific to
| keep up with those who hadn't yet made the jump (mostly non-
| tech-adjacent people/communities), but with the iOS version now
| being dead my usage has seen a nosedive. For now I still check
| every so often with the Mac version since it's still
| functional, and if that dies then I'm going to try to figure
| out alternatives for aforementioned communities (probably
| Discord, but we'll see) and drop Twitter altogether. I have no
| interest in the stock client/site whatsoever.
| smitty1e wrote:
| We have standards, sir. The show was upgraded to a "Crap
| Cabaret".
| thih9 wrote:
| The brand is losing so much credibility among developers, I guess
| we'll see even fewer products with Twitter API as a core feature.
|
| I know this has been a trend for the last couple of years but
| this kind of lack of communication seems like a milestone.
| ArmandGrillet wrote:
| Well-written and touching post. To switch off this API used by so
| many long-time users on the same day "For You" appears as the
| default option on Twitter triggers me. The "For You" timeline is
| only for Elon: it will drive engagement, extremism, and all the
| things social networks have been accused of driving for years now
| in order to make more $.
|
| Some folks here have been comparing the crypto/Web3 and
| ActivityPub craze recently but I see a massive difference. A
| billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I
| thought was my social backyard. Crypto and NFTs did not impact
| how I use my bank accounts, Elon ruined in a quarter a very
| special place I had crafted over a decade.
|
| Mastodon is not great right now, the UX needs to vastly improve,
| but all for-profit social networks have always disappointed in
| the long run. Looking back, few technologies have kept the same
| degree of greatness over the past 15 years: emails, torrents, RSS
| feeds... only tools no corporation fully controls. I hope
| ActivityPub can join that list fairly soon.
| postmeta wrote:
| I think he reached peak ad hominem: "a prick" "Space Karen"
| "King Shithead" "shitty person" "arrogant bastard" "billionaire
| bozo" "a clown"
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Insulting people who've done you harm is not an "ad hominem";
| he's not debating Musk here.
| tptacek wrote:
| None of these are ad hominem arguments.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| A billionaire attacking somebody else as "Pedo Guy" was peak
| hominem plus outrageous power imbalance, and the post you're
| replying to doesn't hold a candle to that. Plus Musk really
| is "a prick" "Space Karen" "King Shithead" "shitty person"
| "arrogant bastard" "billionaire bozo" "a clown". Truth is the
| best defense against libel.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| What's wrong with Mastodon's UX? It's basically Twitter from
| ten years ago. The whole federated thing is a bit confusing but
| you can just use the default mastodon.social instance and not
| think about it.
| tptacek wrote:
| You cannot in fact just use mastodon.social, because they
| haven't been accepting signups since the great Enmuskening.
| mikenew wrote:
| I admit I don't use Twitter or Mastodon very much, but
| Mastodon's UX seems pretty decent these days. At least 50% of
| the time when I click on a Twitter link something breaks.
| Either the page doesn't load or a video won't play or whatever.
| And that's to say nothing of the "SIGN UP FOR TWITTER" bullshit
| that pops up whenever you click on anything.
| hhh wrote:
| The 'For You' is the behavior i've had for a while. I'm happy
| to be able to go to the Following tab. I'm tired of seeing 'X
| follow' etc.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| you've been able to switch for a while but it wasn't obvious,
| i kinda stumbled upon it one day.
|
| i find the new tabs at the top of the screen take up too much
| space and they scroll down when i go through my timeline. (i
| browse on my laptop via firefox, no idea what the mobile
| experience is like)
| input_sh wrote:
| You were able to switch to "latest tweets" before as well.
| The control was top right next to "home" label, the icon
| looked like stars.
|
| The only thing that truly changed is "latest tweets" got
| renamed to "following" and it now takes up more vertical
| space (53 pixels to be exact) completely unnecessarily for
| something you're quite unlikely to click on on a regular
| basis.
|
| Change for the sake of change. Doesn't actually have an
| impact on anything.
| warinukraine wrote:
| > A billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I
| thought was my social backyard.
|
| I think Elon Musk is a horrible person, but... this one is on
| you, right? You thought that a company's service was your
| social backyard? That's on you.
| leokennis wrote:
| I imagine you believe the money you keep with the company
| known as your bank is yours as well right?
|
| Just because it's a company doesn't mean they get to behave
| like assholes and then put the blame on their users for being
| gullible or ignorant.
| kaashif wrote:
| I disagree somewhat with what that guy said but your
| "counterpoint" is ridiculous.
|
| Bank deposits are yours! If the bank collapses and can't
| give them to you, there's FDIC insurance so the government
| will get you that money.
|
| This is nothing at all like Twitter and only weakens your
| argument.
| warinukraine wrote:
| It's mine because the law says so.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| And you're defending the antics of a childish billionaire and
| blaming the damage on the people he hurt. That's on you.
| warinukraine wrote:
| I'm defending the right to own property, which is something
| really fundamental to the way we organize our society.
|
| ... and when you say "the people that were hurt"... If you
| leave your wallet on the street, it might be stolen and you
| might be hurt. I'm not blaming the victim; someone stealing
| your wallet is wrong even though you left it on the street.
| It's not your fault, I'm not blaming you, I blame the thief
| for the theft. On the other hand there's something that you
| could've done that would've avoided it - don't leave your
| wallet on the street.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > I'm defending the right to own property, which is
| something really fundamental to the way we organize our
| society.
|
| No one is trying to "steal" twitter in this thread, we
| are saying he used his "property rights" to unnecessarily
| hurt others.
|
| You're the one who is saying this is just peachy keen and
| "that's on you".
|
| You're defending the harm.
| aktenlage wrote:
| Nah, you are defending _something that is based on_ the
| right to own property (and do whatever you like with it),
| but may nevertheless be shitty behavior. Just because
| something is legal and the legal basis is important (in
| your opinion), doesn 't necessarily mean it is ok
| behavior.
|
| E.g., being rude isn't forbidden, the freedom of speech
| is important, so is the right to express your
| personality. But lecturing the affected person about
| these rights may not be the best reaction when they have
| been insulted by someone.
|
| I think the main point to discuss is not the rights, but
| whether the owner of a company should act more
| responsible, even if he is within his rights. And that's
| also the point of the OP.
| kome wrote:
| > "For You" appears as the default option
|
| The "for you" was already the default option, if anything they
| made easier to switch to the "following" that before was kinda
| hidden on top and hard to find.
|
| p.s.: i dislike musk since it was cool to like him.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I'm bullish on Mastodon with the influx of users. It's
| _different_ than Twitter, but it's pretty awesome in its own
| right.
|
| Hopefully the different model will create something new and
| amazing. Twitter had amazing elements, but it's sunset has
| arrived!
| IngvarLynn wrote:
| [flagged]
| bfgoodrich wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| graycat wrote:
| [flagged]
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Maybe, just maybe, HN isn't for you?
| Lammy wrote:
| [flagged]
| xupybd wrote:
| A Karen is a personality type. They are not imputing the gender
| on Elon but the personality. By applying the insult to men they
| are de-gendering the insult.
|
| Not that I like the term Space Karen.
| Lammy wrote:
| It became an insult because people hate women who stand up
| for themselves. It can't be de-gendered.
| adventurer wrote:
| That's not what a Karen is or why people use it.
| w0mbat wrote:
| The "Space Karen" slur is lame. Elon is the manager in this
| situation, and if you're complaining to the manager, you're the
| Karen.
| harrego wrote:
| See also Paul Haddad's situation[1] (creator of TweetBot):
|
| > I really want an official public statement. We have a large
| number of sub. renewals for year 3 of Tweetbot coming up in a
| couple of weeks. If we're permanently cut off I need to know so
| we can remove the app from sale and prevent those. Which
| obviously I'd rather not do.
|
| [1] https://tapbots.social/@paul/109690528614720936
| neilv wrote:
| To the people who were already warning of things like this, in
| the '80s and '90s, all the cries lately of "I let some rich guy
| _own my social network_ ; how could I have known that would be
| abused" might seem a bit /r/LeopardsAteMyFace.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| It's like when you exclaim "jesus christ" and are unwittingly
| paying tribute to some assholes. I won't say his name anymore
| either.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| He has every right to be mad but this post comes off as petulant
| and juvenile.
| rdlw wrote:
| Well yeah, his life's work was destroyed at someone's whim with
| the flick of a switch.
|
| How many people would be gracious? Why should anyone be?
| roarcher wrote:
| His "life's work" is a fresh coat of paint on someone else's
| creation, which is of questionable value to begin with. And
| using his mother's death as a comedic prop in a public rant
| doesn't exactly engender sympathy.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| This is what happens when you rely on a service you have no
| control over. It'll happen now, it'll happen later, but at
| some point, somebody is going to decide they make more money
| turning the thing you rely on off.
| killdozer wrote:
| Everyone should be a cold emotionless machine that pumps out
| code, just like me.
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| > Space Karen
|
| > billionaire bozo
|
| > comparisons to his Mother's death
|
| Yeah, I had a hard time getting through it. At least, I don't
| get the point the author is trying to make.
|
| Is this _really_ a surprise given the direction social data has
| gone in the past decade or so? APIs will only remain public as
| long as they are useful.
|
| Elon sees an upside to making the API at twitter more private,
| in order to maintain control over Twitter's direction. You can
| argue as much as you want for, or against this, but don't add
| noise and make me rake through it.
| unpopular42 wrote:
| Same thoughts. Someone's got to get emotions under control
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| > petulant and juvenile
|
| Who does that remind you of?
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| Haha space man bad
| brap wrote:
| This is a pretty childish take.
|
| It's a business, it doesn't owe you anything. Calling the CEO
| "Space Karen", "King Shithead" and such is just cringe, it's a
| childish tantrum. Acting like not mentioning his name will
| somehow affect him, one of the richest and most influential men
| alive, is laughable.
|
| Be an adult. You took a bet relying on a third party business,
| and that bet didn't pay off. You are responsible. Take the L and
| move on. Sorry.
| waynecochran wrote:
| Was the Twitter API taken down intentionally or is this a bug? If
| intentional was it announced ahead of time? If its a bug, has
| this happened before -- looks like in happened in July 2022
| (https://api.twitterstat.us/history?page=3)?
| rideontime wrote:
| for 9 hours, and it was acknowledged. hardly comparable.
| mattwilsonn888 wrote:
| If federation was a worthwhile goal (in one's mind) after "the
| bozo took over Twitter" then it is quite obvious _nothing_
| fundamentally has changed such that federation would have been a
| noble goal as a foil to previous Twitter management. Seriously -
| if more personal sovereignty is the goal then complaining about
| Twitter only after new management is admitting that the primary
| quality you don 't like _is the new management._
|
| In reality the argument for federation is as I've already said -
| more personal sovereignty, less centralized, corruptible,
| overlord control. Twitter is certainly doing much better now than
| before, and that doesn't mean federated communities online still
| are not, in principle, superior.
|
| If someone wants to use crypto to do justify sentiment like this,
| they'd be mocked here, but this is much better? It goes to show
| that people denouncing different approaches often aren't doing it
| because those approaches lack coherent justification, but because
| those approaches are related to aspects of technology some people
| don't like and don't care to examine.
|
| There are plenty of reasons to lampoon the majority of approaches
| 'crypto' takes to 'solve' problems - that doesn't mean one
| shouldn't lampoon carefully and thoughtfully. Likewise, there is
| reason to justify federated platforms, but a dislike of Elon
| Musk's politics will not be the true driver.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > complaining about Twitter only after new management is
| admitting that the primary quality you don't like is the new
| management.
|
| This rings very true. The move to Mastodon isn't likely to
| translate into "...but why do we need speech owners at all".
| Unaccountable and unjustified concentrated power is simply not
| a concern to most. Once the dust settles, business as usual
| will kick in. It'll either be a feudal lordship of mastodon
| instances, or a brand new dickhead in a leather jacket.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Can't think of mastodon as a competitor to twitter. I gave it a
| shot and it feels like discord for twitter.
| [deleted]
| sysadm1n wrote:
| I never relied on Twitter's API, since building stuff with it is
| akin to building your castle on other people's land. You're
| always going to be a tenant, and the API gatekeepers play
| landlord and can rugpull you without notice.
|
| But I'm looking into Nostr[0] as an alternative, aswell as
| ActivityPub which seems to be working well these days.
|
| Dorsey's Bluesky Social[1] looks promising too, but it's a very
| late move since Twitter should have been a protocol from the
| outset.
|
| [0] https://nostr.com/
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol)
| tptacek wrote:
| I think (and have been saying this a bunch lately) that he's
| right about ActivityPub and Mastodon, and that "a universal
| timeline" is actually a really good way to put words to it. I was
| a Mastodon hater for years, but having used it for the past month
| or so with an actual community of people (really: the whole
| community I interacted with on Twitter before), I have to admit
| it: the ActivityPub people were right about this. It's easy to
| see the potential, and how it pulls in the writing we were all
| doing before there was Twitter while keeping most of what Twitter
| was good for too.
|
| I'm expecting this to be the second-dumbest thing I ever
| predicted badly (I dismissed MP3s, too!)
| pbronez wrote:
| If you want to help make the Fediverse happen, there appears to
| be a serious need for energy and ideas in the standards effort.
|
| I have a thread going here
| https://hachyderm.io/@PeterBronez/109688815511361197
|
| But the upshot is, get involved with:
|
| https://www.w3.org/community/socialcg/
| riffic wrote:
| The Fediverse has already happened. It's about to celebrate
| its 15th year in a handful of months.
|
| https://fediverse.party/en/post/fediverse-14-years-in-2022/
| samwillis wrote:
| I was sceptical too, but at this point I would say 75% of the
| people I followed who I really got value from have moved over.
| But not only that, the conversation has become better, more in
| depth and less fleeting.
|
| I just hope the last few people I follow on Twitter who I
| really enjoy following move over too. But unfortunately that's
| "Space Twitter", so we will see...
| zenmacro wrote:
| Are there any guides, tools, apps, etc to try out ActivityPub?
| hummingn3rd wrote:
| Martin fowler made a guide from his own transition to
| mastodon https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-
| mastodon.html
| warinukraine wrote:
| May I ask what was your original argument against Mastodon?
| tptacek wrote:
| I looked at in terms of the "Fediverse", a coherent
| decentralized social network, with lots of instances
| cooperating to make one intentional thing. I'm still not
| bullish about that. But once you use it, you see that it's
| basically hyper-interactive RSS.
|
| (Maybe you see the two at the same thing; I don't.)
| warinukraine wrote:
| > I looked at in terms of the "Fediverse", a coherent
| decentralized social network, with lots of instances
| cooperating to make one intentional thing.
|
| So what was your original argument against this?
| tptacek wrote:
| That it will never cohere. (That's about as much as I
| want to say about this right now; this gets boring pretty
| quickly.)
| pmarreck wrote:
| OK, I have to ask- What exactly was your argument against
| MP3's? They literally let you transfer music with an order of
| magnitude less data than it took on the CD! Was it an
| audiophile argument, or...?
|
| I was lucky enough to live in a freshman college dorm (a music-
| focused dorm, no less!) circa 1997-1998 when Napster was still
| a thing right after MP3's were a thing, and that shit was
| _amaaaaazing_
|
| I mean given how much people love music, I never had any doubt
| that MP3's would be revolutionary
| count wrote:
| Napster didn't start until 1999 :) I remember downloading
| mp3s on Napster, and then using my parallel port to transfer
| them to my Diamond Rio MP3 player. All 4 songs at a time!
| riceart wrote:
| Before Napster there was FTP.
| williamcotton wrote:
| The first MP3 I downloaded was from IRC and played back
| on the Fraunhofer Institute MP3 player. Old timers will
| remember that if you caused your screen to redraw at all,
| say by scrolling a window, the audio would skip. The
| first song? Bob Dylan - Stuck in the Middle With You...
| which is actually by Steeler's Wheel.
| pmarreck wrote:
| It was probably just FTP through the school's network then,
| but I distinctly remember sharing MP3's like it was the
| Wild West
| tptacek wrote:
| In the set-associative cache that was my brain in 1998, MP3s
| occupied the same slot as XDCC'd Amiga mods. But much bigger
| files. I was carrying around giant folders of CDs at the
| time. Also: you had to listen to them... on your computer? I
| had a whole discrete stereo system. Why would I want to
| listen to music through game speakers?
| dom96 wrote:
| Great post. I hope we see a multitude of new clients for
| Mastodon. In the meantime, if you're someone like me that is
| dipping their feet into Mastodon but isn't ready to leave Twitter
| fully yet, then you might be interested in a browser extension I
| developed[0] which puts Mastodon posts in your Twitter timeline.
|
| [0] - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-
| chirper/l...
| godelski wrote:
| I've been thinking about social media a lot lately and how it has
| changed my life. I'm only in my early 30's, but I think many
| others my age grew up online and when the internet felt smaller,
| but in a different way. I made life long friends through these
| means. But something I've noticed is that as everyone has come
| online, I have made fewer friends. What I personally miss is the
| small niche communities. These don't seem to exist anymore. I
| made several friends on sites like What.cd and found many artists
| I would have never come into contact otherwise (even speaking
| with many). Even friends on sites like Imgur when it was smaller,
| but never once it grew. The global social media is cool and has
| aspects that are nice to it (e.g. being able to talk to power),
| but its same power is its greatest downfall (you can't speak to
| your audience when your audience is everyone, filled with
| different priors (how we interpret words), and different
| willingness to act in good faith).
|
| I see everyone talking about Twitter and how it needs to be
| replaced. But I want to know how we remake these smaller
| communities. That's what I miss about the internet. There are
| clearly size thresholds for these. Finding them is often hard and
| word of mouth. But what I want to know is how we make these
| flourish and bring personhood back to the internet. We should
| have both types of communities. But I don't think methods like
| Mastadon or Reddit really facilitate this. I think many even have
| seen this change as HN has grown. There are several people that I
| recognize their names but as the community has grown we have too
| seen a change in content, culture, and how we speak to one
| another. For good or bad. But I do think it is nice to have small
| communities as well that do develop their own cultures. Maybe I'm
| just old now though.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Most of the old niche groups (IRC groups, imageboards, forums,
| etc) I used to spend time on just migrated into private spaces
| once social media became a de facto public space on the
| internet. These places usually live as Discord guilds, Matrix
| spaces, Telegram group chats, private fora, Patreon groups,
| alternate networks (such as: mailing lists, Gemini, Freenet,
| Urbit, etc.)
|
| I also feel like all this noise about Twitter is just the
| Twitter early adopters realizing what the old IRC and
| imageboard users knew long ago: social media is a semi-public
| space now that everyone is online.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I'm only in my early 30's, but... [as time has gone on ]...
| something I've noticed is that as everyone has come online, I
| have made fewer friends
|
| Welcome to your 30s. You will make fewer friends than you did
| in your 20s.
| api wrote:
| The net was a very different place before, say, somewhere
| between 2010 and 2015. I saw a huge shift then. Everything got
| monetized, weaponized, optimized for addiction, or drowned in
| spam. There's always been bad actors and criminals and trolls
| online too but in the past decade they have either gotten worse
| or become more empowered.
|
| The golden age of the open Internet was really between about
| 1996 when it started to go public and 2010. The net today feels
| like either a ghost town or a hellhole. The only remaining good
| places seem to be niche sites or groups and private forums. The
| fediverse is decent but I am concerned for its long term future
| if it becomes big enough to be a worthy target for spammers and
| trolls.
|
| As for the cause of the decline I can think of a few big
| factors:
|
| 1. Engagement maximizing algorithms give weight to the most
| inflammatory content. These hit the scene big starting around
| 2008. If you forced me to pick one root culprit I would blame
| this.
|
| 2. Thanks to monetized social media "Internet troll" is now a
| career option. You can make money. You can maybe even become
| the President of the United States.
|
| 3. Speaking of politics, I think something changed when enough
| people got online that the net became the major source for
| political opinion. There is now not just money but power to be
| gained by manipulating things online. This attracts a whole
| different level of scum.
|
| 4. Trolls have escalated to the point that people have died.
| Mass shooters post their manifestos on boards now before they
| go on killing sprees. Running a forum today is just not fun
| anymore, especially if it's not narrowly focused and topical.
| Nobody in their right mind would set up something like
| Something Awful or 4chan today.
|
| What happened to optimistic online cyber culture reminds me a
| bit of what happened to the 1960s counterculture. In a few
| years it went from exploration and optimism and art to Manson
| and Altamont. There seems to be a pattern where whenever
| humanity seems to be making a cultural breakthrough we get
| naive and then things go real bad real fast.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> But I don 't think methods like Mastadon or Reddit really
| facilitate this._
|
| Reddit offers two features for supporting intentionally-small
| communities: first, you can restrict posting to accounts that
| have been manually approved (although I think voting is still
| open to anyone with a Reddit account), and secondly you can
| make the subreddit private such that only approved accounts can
| see its contents (which solves the aforementioned voting
| problem).
|
| As for Mastodon, that's a matter of setting up your own topical
| instance and restricting who can make an account.
| shrubble wrote:
| I think that you make an interesting point. Having recently
| become interested in vintage computers I have been spending
| time with the forums at vcfed.org .
|
| To be honest unplugging from the political outrage machine
| helped my mental state...and I might in time make some friends
| on that site...
| nathias wrote:
| they still exist on the fringes, there are forums from early
| web, new forums, new types of tech (defi and crypto has a lot
| of that)
| kristianc wrote:
| > new types of tech (defi and crypto has a lot of that)
|
| I'm sure crypto and Defi has some good people, but a huge
| proportion of them seem to be grifters and scammers who I'd
| want nothing to do with. That wasn't really the case on the
| early web.
| [deleted]
| k__ wrote:
| _" as everyone has come online, I have made fewer friends."_
|
| Probably has to do with your age.
|
| I made many friends in my 20s, most through the internet.
|
| This got less and less as I grew older.
|
| But I know a bunch of people in their 20s who still make
| friends online.
| madrox wrote:
| This situation is heart breaking for us who have a lot of
| attachment to this API. I built a research thesis around data
| mining the firehose, and that work got me my first data mining
| job. I made hundreds of valuable connections. However, the API
| really died years ago when requirements of ad-based revenue meant
| neutering many endpoints. It's been on life support since. Recent
| events really were about pulling the plug.
|
| But Mastodon excites me the way I used to be excited about
| social. There's possibility again to turn it into the things we
| gave up on a decade ago. I look forward to a new wave of
| innovation here.
|
| And yes, I refuse to say the name of the company or the owner at
| this point. I agree with the author. It isn't deserved.
| throwmeup123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ygggvbbjiuygvf wrote:
| [flagged]
| throwmeup123 wrote:
| [flagged]
| okokwhatever wrote:
| [flagged]
| crummy wrote:
| this guy spent 16 years writing and maintaining a Twitter
| client
| antiquark wrote:
| Twitter has been crippling their API long before "Space Hilter"
| took over.
|
| https://tidbits.com/2018/08/20/twitter-cripples-third-party-...
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Space Hitler? That's the kind of hyperbole that seriously
| undercuts your credibility. Mr. Musk is "Space Mussolini" at
| best.
| threeseed wrote:
| Given how many of us used third party apps I wouldn't say it
| was crippled.
|
| And there are only two examples given: streaming and push
| notifications.
|
| The first as Twitter pointed out was because it was only ever a
| beta feature and even today their own apps don't support this
| feature.
| paxys wrote:
| Yes that is mentioned in the opening paragraphs of the article.
| mkoc wrote:
| Not sure how it is for others, but for me tapbot Tweetbot is
| working again since today; is the API back up?
| cmcfadden wrote:
| Paul mentioned that they had a way to push new API info to the
| clients, so I think they basically just re-registered the app
| as a YOLO thing to see how long until Twitter pulls the plug
| again.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I was able to get an access token, and my timeline loads in
| Tweetbot, but I can't see mentions or activity, and I can't
| tweet from it.
| clouddrover wrote:
| Tweetbot partially works because they're using new API keys:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/15/23556359/tweetbot-twitter...
|
| It's a temporary workaround at best. The new API access is rate
| limited and Tweetbot will likely be banned again.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Imagine being this mad about putting all your eggs in a basket
| you have zero control over, not seeing the massive existential
| risk of that single point of failure, and then whining like an
| entitled Gen Z'er when the inevitable happens
| pxtail wrote:
| Yep, it makes no sense - fueling, empowering someone's private
| property,even voluntarily helping to sidestep/skip platform
| shortcomings to make it dominant player instead of promoting
| open standards and solutions and then surprise, "Pikachu face"
|
| I'm perceiving Asahi Linux initiative in similar way and it's
| astonishing to see people putting countless man-hours for free
| into improving device produced by one of richest companies in
| the world which is known for having full controll on sofware
| and hardware intentionally and steadily making it as locked as
| possible, hostile to OS What could go wrong here..
| Lio wrote:
| I've had the Mastodon client downloaded for a while now but
| haven't really got round to switching over to it.
|
| I think this is the push I really need. Space Karen has done me a
| favour.
|
| I sure as shit won't be going back to Twitter's dumpster fire of
| a native client.
|
| Edited timelines, promoted tweets and user preferences that
| randomly reset themselves to the most annoying settings.
|
| Nope.
| Ciantic wrote:
| End of an era.
|
| I like that he sees that ActivityPub should be so much more than
| Mastodon. "a truly universal timeline" of various things on the
| internet.
|
| For that to happen we can't limit ourselves to just Mastodon, but
| start building alternative takes.
|
| Yes, some aren't viewable on other clients, but that's fine, then
| they just show a link, but at least you can reply/reblog/like
| items.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I just hope we walk before we try to run. It feels like
| Mastodon has been given a colossal opportunity and it feels
| like it's being completely squandered.
|
| I trust that Space Jerk will give Mastodon a very long
| opportunity window but the sooner the better.
|
| Maybe revolution is a good idea and I'm completely wrong. But I
| still find Mastodon so frustrating and unreliable that I am
| just not on social media at all now.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Apparently as a baby I learned to run before walking so I
| want to defend doing it that way.
|
| Running is a bit easier than walking, walking is a process of
| carefully balancing at each step. Running is just falling,
| but you catch yourself before you hit the ground. As long as
| you aren't too concerned with steering, you can easily at
| least run until you find an obstacle. And then you've learned
| about a new type of obstacle!
|
| Even the fastest baby should have trouble getting into
| trouble as long as the parents are attentive -- they are tiny
| and parents have long arms to catch them.
|
| Babies barely have the capability to generate enough kinetic
| energy to harm themselves I'm pretty sure.
|
| Or I dunno, at least I survived. Apply this to your analogy
| as you'd like.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| _me typing out a definition for running that dictates that
| it's not just stumbling recklessly forward in style, all
| for an analogy_
|
| "You're probably wondering how I got here..."
| bee_rider wrote:
| Haha, fair enough. Hopefully the slightly tongue in cheek
| nature of my post came through.
|
| I've always understood this to be what the expression was
| about, though. Skipping the first step to jump recklessly
| and possibly incorrectly to the second.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Hahah indeed. Hence my ridiculous reply.
|
| Yeah I'm not sure I feel strongly about my own opinion. I
| think I'm just worried that a bunch of engineers, in
| absence of designers and product, are going to do what
| engineers do best: find fun technical problems to solve.
| thejohnconway wrote:
| Just curious, what is unreliable for you? My setup is as
| reliable as Twitter ever was for me (I run my own server).
| Some things are annoying of course, but I'm a little
| surprised techy people would find those rough edges so bad
| they wouldn't use it.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not on the same server as all my Twitter friends and I
| cannot get my timeline to reliably update with everyone's
| Toots and Goots.
|
| It works if I catch up the next morning. But there is no
| reliable ability for real-time Toot Blooting.
|
| In all fairness I took two weeks off. Maybe it's better. Or
| maybe I need to try another server (three tries so far.)
|
| Figuring out what server to pick was ridiculous. I
| eventually decided "just find a really popular one." But
| they were all just crashing out when making an account or
| were closed to new accounts.
|
| I misunderstood what "federated" meant because I also
| learned that it really matters what server you're on. It's
| not like email. The length of your Toot is different, rules
| of what you Toot is different. The stuff on your server is
| a bit more first class than what's on other servers. And my
| Toot Boots didn't Doot Doot or Bloot Flute.
| tomcam wrote:
| How would you un-squander Mastodon?
| Ciantic wrote:
| I feel like it was squandered as well, but I don't blame
| anyone on that, Mastodon core team employed their second
| person last month full-time.
|
| When the next wave comes I hope if Mastodon can't get its act
| together there are commercial offerings that can take the
| wave, and I'm all for it. Cloudflare is building its own
| Mastodon API-compatible server, and Medium put its own
| instance.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This is what I'm super pumped about. Because of the
| fundamentals of the technology, big actors with resources
| to do it properly can make Mastodon awesome, without
| completely capturing the social network.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Micro blog supports ActivityPub
|
| https://help.micro.blog/t/mastodon-and-activitypub/95
| input_sh wrote:
| There's actually a lot of software projects, Mastodon is just
| by far the most popular one.
|
| On top of my head: Pixelfed (Instagram alternative), Peertube
| (YouTube alternative), Pleroma (another Twitter-like
| microblog), Bookwyrm (Goodreads alternative), Funkwhale (like
| a mashup between Soundcloud and a podcast host), Owncast
| (Twitch alternative), Mobilizon (event organizing), lemmy
| (reddit alternative)...
|
| They're all rather tiny and unpolished, having even less
| resources to work with than Mastodon, but you should be able
| to follow a user on any of them from Mastodon. At least in
| theory, haven't tried with all of them.
|
| The annoying thing in my opinion is that you can't have a
| set-in-stone identity and then use different frontends for
| different purposes, kind of like you can on Facebook for
| groups/events/marketplace/stories. You have to have an
| account on all of them to make use of all features, even
| though they're all relying on the same protocol to a certain
| extent.
| ygggvbbjiuygvf wrote:
| It's not even clear that they "pulled the plug", could just be a
| temporary outage. Wish Musk would announce his thoughts on the
| future of the API, though.
| paxys wrote:
| Regardless of how it started, a "temporary outage" that has
| lasted for several days and has received zero acknowledgement
| from the company can now be considered intentional. They don't
| get the benefit of doubt without sending even a bare minimum
| "sorry, we are working on fixing it" tweet.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Can a "temporary outage" be limited only to the most popular
| apps? Can a "temporary outage" affect Twitterrific for iOS but
| not Twitterrific for Mac [0]?
|
| [0] https://blog.iconfactory.com/2023/01/state-of-the-
| twitterver...
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| [flagged]
| servercobra wrote:
| Losing your business like this has to be infuriating, but
| that's always the risk building your business on top of someone
| else's business. However, the writing style completely
| undercuts the message with the name calling. I wonder if Craig
| will still pull the plug now that the API seems to be back up.
| rideontime wrote:
| where have you heard that the API is back up for those who've
| been banned? only thing I've seen is that some have worked
| around their bans by getting new API keys
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