Ask HN: Can we ban Twitter links, please?
This used to be just annoying in the past (because of the overall low quality of such sources), but now it's gone too far. Twitter won't let you see the content without logging in anymore. At least this is what I see when I open a Twitter link and scroll down: https://i.imgur.com/E0h2CtQ.png
There are many free blog posting platforms out there that don't annoy users like that and — needless to say — are in a much more readable format. All it takes is a couple of minutes to sign up...
I think such a HN rule could help in promoting common decency on the web.
EDIT: A couple of posters made valid points against an outright ban. Someone suggested flagging paywalls/credential-walls. How about lowering the score for Twitter-link submissions (something like: 1 vote counts 0.5 votes)?
132 comments
[ 123 ms ] story [ 3933 ms ] threadIt's a common complaint that decent websites don't get surfaced on Google - well given so many valuable links are going to cloaked sites such as NYT, it's no wonder?
My main problem with Twitter is the UI, which is bad in general and terrible for long posts (threads). The second problem is the "culture" of posting outrage and low quality content in general, often full of typos (due to Twitter being a mobile-centric platform). Requiring credentials is just the last straw.
So I think a stronger deterrent is needed. If not a ban, lowering the score for Twitter-link submissions (each vote counts 0.5 votes)?
Either use an extension to redirect you to a site like nitter.net, manually adjust the URL yourself, or just don't click on Twitter links at all.
My suspicion is they do it hoping that people who click it will also follow them on Twitter.
In my experience tweets are almost never submitted by the tweet's author.
Other people seem to think that HN users are submitting links to tweets that they themselves authored, and that's generally not the case, so there seem to be a lot of misconceptions flying around.
Just write a blog post already!
But I guess for better or worse, the Twitter Threads get people more internet points!
https://sensepost.com/blog/2009/twitter-killed-the-infosec-b...
-snip- There’s something liberating about saying “here’s a link”, as opposed to taking the time to formulate your thoughts into a full blown posting.
We were curious if this twitter-effect was real, imaginary or only applicable to lazy people like us.. Thanks to python-twitter and a few lines of script we can look at the the blogging habits of some info-sec superstars (and maybe confuse correlation and causation to jump to conclusions while we at it). -snip-
This is the reality of reading twitter on mobile if you aren't logged in/using their app though.
It's more than just a horizontal line. There are icons and buttons in every post, that is, every couple of sentences. Hover-over popups that obfuscate content. Distractions and irrelevant click-bait content on the side and on the bottom. Embedded media (images, videos) behave poorly. Obfuscated external links. Cookie/sign-in banners that take more space than on other websites. I could probably go on if I took another look, but seeing how Twitter is now forcing me to log-in, I can't.
And I think just about every remotely popular blogging platform works properly on mobile, it's not 2005 anymore. Ads might be a problem on some, I'm not sure. But I bet even with ads it's not as bad as Twitter overall. For testing I opened a Blogspot link now with no adblock and there was just one unobtrusive ad on the side, way better than Twitter in terms of readability.
This is actually my problem with that website and the main reason I hate Twitter threads. Twitter doesn't let me open anything in a new tab properly, sometimes (like last week) opening images in posts doesn't work for days, and I stopped using the site because after about a month the notifications stopped showing anything new, I literally had to scroll through my own profile and manually look for answers to my posts! In the best case this is an unreadable mess where everything has to be unfolded like a messy origami; and sometimes this reloads the site, sometimes it doesn't, either way it comes with at least a second of loading time.
I'd like those threads if they were as readable as comments here on HN. But Twitter seems to test how inaccessible they can make their main content without people leaving.
On the other hand I think apps that unroll threads are the worst. All the spammy answers just saying "@threadreaderapp" or something like that - THAT is the worst in my eyes.
Nothing against blog posts, I'd also prefer a blog post over a Twitter thread.
Agreed, I wish Twitter would just crack down on that and ban bots like that.
I'm almost convinced that people just post the @threadreaderapp unroll for engagement.
As a reader, I actively seek the threadreaderapp posters and follow these links to improve the reading experience. Or just go to nitter since I discovered that it's a thing.
What to do?
We can copy that information to our own site and post a link to that, but the guidelines ask us to post original sources.
We can ignore it,but that means ignoring a possible source of useful and insightful information.
Or we can post a link to the tweet, and rely on HN users to find a way to read it, such has been suggested elsewhere in this discussion.
But telling HN readers to post on their own blog is a bit pointless.
It really depends on what corner of Twitter you live in. I follow a dozen or so people and see nothing but high quality content.
These threads are extremely and overwhelmingly popular and that surprises me.
These threads always start off like "Here's how to make $100MM in 10 hours" and then multiple sub posts of most generic nonsense I've ever seen.
What's even interesting is people think they get tremendous value out of there and share/re-tweet and go crazy about them.
Am I really stupid or are most people on Twitter who engage with these threads on some kind of hallucinogen(s)?
No. After a while there's a huge modal layer asking me to log in
I am terrified of where we are headed as a society. I get that writing blogs are more time consuming than tweeting but for the consumer - is this content really valuable in the long term?
When you encounter one, go into the comments and there will be an archive.is link.
But sometimes the content is relevant or innovative; not sure it's fair to expect HN to take a principled stance against the platform.
How about a preference that hides Twitter submissions? Half the time I skip them anyway or hit Back before the site finishes loading. If enough readers move along, perhaps it would incentivize publishers to as well.
But if the tweet is highly important, has information people believe is valuable etc - then it gets upvoted towards the top of HN.
An outright ban on tweets also creates a secondary problem; what if there was some single tweet that was extremely important to the HN community. The inability to post it means people miss out on the news/discussion, until later on when it is re-submitted as a news story elsewhere.
This is asked for somewhat regularly as well as banning paywalled sites. It would be wrong to do so.
In general I think it's good to have the primary source be the linked posting. If that's a Twitter thread or an original price of journalism on a paywalled site, and its interesting to the HN community it should be linked here.
What the OP if suggesting is that the only Twitter threads that are submitted are submitted by the Twitter user themselves, that's a tiny proportion of posts. If someone sees a twitter thread that would be interesting to the HN community there is no other option but to post it.
Now an account-level domain filter. That would be a fantastic idea.
Personally, I think it works the opposite. The voting only gives the community so much power. Often the content starts dictating the community, not the other way around. With enough low effort and uninteresting content clogging up the chronological feed, you eventually see core- and power users migrating to other sites or communities. The community is eventually transplanted by those who seek out the kind of content that made the core community leave, perpetuating the new kind of content.
I've seen it happen to a lot of subreddits.
So if you want different content, answer the question: What are you providing?
Last week we had an article about "Why babies cry" on the first page.
Exact title was "Why babies cry in the first three months, how to tell them apart, and what to do"
That is of no significance if the content you want to share is not on those platforms and you did not make the content.
https://nitter.net/about
[0]: https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect
Basically the canonical URL serves as a consistent identifier, and the reader can choose how it opens. By linking to alternatives that you prefer you are depriving the power-user reader that choice to apply their preference.
So I think we should use canonical URLs most of the time (especially for popular sites) because I value viewers preferences more than submitters preferences or a better default.
――――――
¹ — https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect
² — https://github.com/smmr-software/privacy-redirect-safari
There aren't many Twitter submissions, at least on the front page.
Get over it, nobody forces you to click on a Twitter link. There are plenty of other submissions.
Not only twitter, but all social media, paywalls, politics, etc.
Also HN desperately lacking tags: I only interested in couple of tech stacks/protocols and several problem domains/verticals - why do I need sift through all these unrelevant submissions?
And the just isn't enough traffic to make it worthwhile IMO (is scanning a page, or maybe two, of HN to see if anything piques your interest really a chore?).
I avoid clicking twitter links generally, Medium too, but the discussion they bring up can be interesting, and often include links to relevant information from less irritating sources, so I wouldn't want them to simply not be here.
If you do want fully rid of the links yourself, maybe a userscript is a practical answer? Though if you are a Chrome user that option will be less convenient in future as IIRC Manifest 3 will break options like Tapermonkey (a bookmarklet will still work, assuming you don't mind an extra click).
I'm not even exaggerating, that's one of the top posts from the past week. Editors of longreads in ‘serious’ publications love this formula for some mysterious reason.