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Can't read Twitter at all without an account

15 points by Michelangelo11 ↗ HN
In the past, you couldn't use almost any Twitter functionality without an account, but at least you could scroll through someone's Tweets. I just tried that a few minutes ago on PG's feed, and it soon cut off and I got this message:

"See more Tweets from Paul Graham When you log in you’ll be able to see every Tweet from Paul Graham."

So it did almost the exact same thing Instagram does if you're not logged in. Anyone else seeing the same thing?

13 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 37.6 ms ] thread
ksaj
To be fair, if you don't even have an account, I wouldn't want you freely combing through everything I've ever posted or commented on for all history either.

One-way communications are not what motivates people to post anything. I would compare it to actively listening in to other people's conversations at a restaurant. Could be done, but that's not the motivation for having conversations at restaurants.

jevoten
And yet Twitter waited until after it got hundreds of millions of users to start limiting visibility. I wonder if it would have gotten so popular if it worked this way from the start? Along with the mandatory phone-number to sign-up (that they still aren't up-front about, letting you sign-up and then auto-locking your account until you provide your phone).

If this restriction was out of concern for their users, they'd let them toggle it.

ksaj
Yes, I agree with that - it should be a user toggle instead of a "walled garden" automagically applied to everyone. Especially after it was determined that posts from the president are Presidential communications, which by default (legally) are public. That suggests you shouldn't have to log in to read everything current and past public servants have posted.

The phone thing is a different issue - one that I've noticed on a lot of other sites. It's always under the guise of 2FA, even if you don't enable that. It's an obvious data grab.

jevoten
> The phone thing is a different issue

It's a different manifestation of the same issue - bait & switch. Get popular, then implement user-hostile features.

pwg
Try the "Thread Reader app" (note, not really an 'app', it is a website)

https://threadreaderapp.com/

I am not affiliated in any way, other than using it sometimes to skim a twitter link.

furgooswft13
Just use nitter.net
taivlam
Or use any other Nitter instance via this page on the Nitter GitHub wiki: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances

However, since that page can be a little outdated (because the wiki page needs to be manually updated), you can also try out this live Nitter instances status page: https://xnaas.github.io/nitter-instances/

Since the main nitter.net instance can be rate limited at times, I highly recommend testing out the other Nitter instances out there and find one that is both consistently online and doesn't get rate limited.

taivlam
nitter.net (or any other Nitter instance) is excellent for desktop. Nitter (instances) should offer RSS feeds, so you don't even have to use a browser to keep yourself up to date on any public Twitter account.

However, even though Nitter instances are much lighter to load in browsers (for both desktop and mobile) compared to the native Twitter webpage, you may also benefit from Fritter, an open source frontend app for Android. (I don't know of any open source alternatives on iOS.)

Fritter homepage: https://fritter.cc/ GitHub repo: https://github.com/jonjomckay/fritter Play Store listing: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jonjomckay... F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.jonjomckay.fritter/

throwawayay02
Good riddance, at least that business decided it was big enough to screw their users while it was only big in the US, that will make it quicker to die out.
mobilio
I've seen it too.

This is one of their "Growth Hacks".

zakki
I still be able to read and scroll Twitter feeds if I clear Twitter’s cookie or disabled cookie .
3rdparty
I was getting frustrated by this, as my main engagement with Twitter is clicking on links to tweets that people share elsewhere - so I used the excellent 1Blocker app on iOS to block all twitter.com cookies. This worked for the past few months to allow nag-free browsing but as of this week it looks like you need to HAVE a twitter.com cookie to browse back through a users timeline.

I get that Twitter is a company with shareholders which needs to collect analytics to sell more ads and make more money, but what a shame that this walled garden is closing in even more.