That would be devastating for me. Not only it's the only way of looking at anything on Twitter (I invite you to open a thread on mobile. I get 3 modals covering 95% of a screen) but it's also how I follow some accounts via RSS.
Leaving aside why someone is still using RSS in 2023, this is a pretty good user signup strategy. Reddit does it, Instagram does it, probably plenty others. If you block people from viewing stuff without an account... they're gonna make an account.
> Leaving aside why someone is still using RSS in 2023
Because it's superior technology for following posting/news to opening app and praying that algorithm will show me what I wanted? My feeds flow to me at 6:00, via rss2email, and get filtered into a IMAP folder and I can read them at my leisure. Online or offline, with whatever client I have handy.
> this is a pretty good user signup strategy
Nagging only works if I really, really want to see what you hide behind a login screen. For most of the posts on Twitter it won't be worth it.
> Leaving aside why someone is still using RSS in 2023
I got this article via my RSS client; it's the best way to consolidate everything I follow from YouTube videos to things that hit the front page on HN, all in one place.
Then I can browse through doing my morning coffee.
Did they change that thing where they want you to log in in order to be able to see Twitter? That was the reason I used Nitter, but I haven't been getting that login popup lately.
Goodbye all methods of accessing Twitter outside of their apps. They took down their API and bypassing this move via internal API's or scraping output via a headless client (thinking of ways forward for Nitter) will surely be seen as intentional to violate this. So, I guess this is the end then.
The whole point of Nitter is to not give a shit about what Twitter thinks. It's built by screen-scraping the frontend (and using its internal API endpoints) for this reason so it is immune to changes to the official API.
Nitter will be fine and will gain more relevance as a result of this.
That's a fundamentally different situations. YouTube clients are for consumption only, meaning there's no value to YouTube in them and only revenue loss in terms of adverts not being shown. YouTube however does nothing to prevent content creators from using third party tools for creating, editing, uploading, and organising their videos. They'd be crazy too.
Twitter users are a mix of passive consumers and active content creators and the most prolific and high value content creators tend to use third party clients and platforms. Seeing as though those people are the entire reason you have all those returning eyeballs on Twitter for advertisers to monetise in the first place you really want to do everything you can to make their experience as best as it can be.
On top of that, the proportion of Twitter's user base that were using apps like Tweetbot or Twitterrific is by all accounts minuscule, so the impact on overall advertising revenue can't be huge. And given how many of those users appear to have been prolific tweeters whose content attracts others to the platform I'd say it's more than offset. There are also media reports that Tweetbot and Twitterrific had to pay for some API V2.0 features.
There's no way this decision went through a proper business case analysis and was modelled for its impact on revenues. I'm guessing it's just Musk being capricious as usual and having nobody able to push back.
The big affected third-party clients would gladly have incorporated the ads into the timeline, if only twitter actually included them in the api response.
Or they could have made a promoted tweets api and mandated in their terms of service that third party clients showing a timeline must include promoted tweets every now and then.
> As much as it sucks, YouTube has the same clause and it makes a lot of sense for companies who monetize on ads.
I wonder why we couldn't just get something like: "If you create a third party UI, you must include the following ad web component in the interface: https://github.com/... and the supporting mechanisms for that (user ID/cookies/whatever)"
But instead, many companies attempt to disallow third party clients and any reverse engineering in general, whereas the few that do allow it don't think about the possibility of monetization in third party clients (legally enforced), or just have to deal with such configurations not being supported.
And if the current ad technology doesn't work that way, then what prevent us from making it work that way? Why should the party that displays an ad always be the same one that's benefiting from it financially? Why couldn't I have some third party UI for a popular site that solves my personal gripes with the UI, while still showing ads on the behalf of that company that owns the original platform, so I don't get my socks sued off of me?
The biggest reason is that there's value in owning the user experience. Before streaming video took over, cable providers tried to put TiVo out of business by offering their own (crappier) DVR products and gating TiVo and DIY products like MythTV behind a flaky, poorly-supported product called CableCARD.
If you own the user experience, you can push users into _your_ most profitable offerings. And it works shockingly well.
It's very unfortunate their business models forbid this. The third party client I use for Reddit is great! (redditisfun)
It'd be so much better if we just paid a small sum to own our accounts on those platforms.
How much would it cost? Like a Netflix subscription? That'd be worth it.
I guess one reason why that isn't possible is that the platforms only work if everyone* is there, irregardless of income. If there's a subscription fee not everyone will afford it, especially young people who are (arguably) culturally more influential.
Couldn't they launch a paid ad-free tier that grants API access? i.e. the user pays for the ad-free experience, and the 3rd-party apps would only work for those users who have paid. I can't think of any companies who have done that but it seems like a reasonable solution.
Twitter never included ads in the feed api, so the clients where just showing the data twitter fed them.
You could expose the apis (or embed the ads into the feed api) that fill the ad spots and report back engagements with those ads, then state in TOS that clients not allowed to remove the ads from the feed and impose design rules on how they are presented to users.
You could do what Adsense does and create a library for clients to embed into their applications.
However I can see client devs wanting a slice of the adrev pie or a discount on their api charges if they were forced to included ads.
Imo it’s just easier to forbid 3rd party clients, that you get to control the experience (including ads) however you want / move fast changing things up, without having to go though the process of making sure 3rd party clients are on bored with the changes
You can't run an advertising business period. Advertising is always on borrowed time. Even if you have some sort of magical solution that will literally force people to watch ads, their effectiveness will still fade over time as people develop resistance to them (see "banner blindness" for prior art), so in the short term you can compensate by including more ads but there's only so much ads you can include before users leave completely because the ads-to-content ratio is too high.
It's time we have less toxic and actually sustainable business models.
I think the real problem here is the way it happened. Apps just stopped working about a week ago. There was no communication from Twitter whatsoever until this TOS change, and I wouldn't really call this "communication either"
It might make sense to stop supporting third party clients, but announce that something like that will happen instead of doing it unannounced and then ignoring all questions about it. It's their API, so they can do with it whatever they want, but this is really a dick move.
Being pessimistic, I say Reddit will do this eventually. Either on the eve of finally following through an IPO, or a few years post-IPO as the stock price languishes while activist investors angrily shake their fists. Reddit has increasingly rolled out more features that are only accessible through their official app and new mobile/desktop web UI. That makes 3rd party app users more of a liability even though these users are often the main content creators on Reddit that drives traffic. Reddit rode on the mobile network growth in its early years without having to commit a full team on mobile dev, and now the time for payback has come.
Back in the day https://m.twitter.com worked great everywhere: Lynx, Links, Dillo, Emacs, a toaster, everwyhere. Even under low bw places. Now Twtr's turd without Ublock Origin it's unusable. Also, no JSless clients, so bye legacy users with underpowered smartphones and desktops/laptops.
Another walled garden closing up holes in the fence. I understand the reasoning from an advertise-driven business perspective, but it won't help Twitter in the long run. Many of their power users providing engaging content will seek out other venues to interact with their audience on their own terms.
I already see many of them having a great time in the Fediverse and new apps and tools are popping up like mushrooms, providing a much more compelling and diverse ecosystem. Give it a few years and I predict many more have grown sceptical towards platforms that eventually change for the worse, and has sought out more open systems.
65 comments
[ 51.1 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31351013
"use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications"
Goodbye, nitter(?)
What are the odds that this whole imbroglio happened because their third-party APIs broke and they can't figure out how to fix them?
The slack convo leak would have been the same either way.
It really has a strong smell of protect-my-ego.
That would be devastating for me. Not only it's the only way of looking at anything on Twitter (I invite you to open a thread on mobile. I get 3 modals covering 95% of a screen) but it's also how I follow some accounts via RSS.
Because it's superior technology for following posting/news to opening app and praying that algorithm will show me what I wanted? My feeds flow to me at 6:00, via rss2email, and get filtered into a IMAP folder and I can read them at my leisure. Online or offline, with whatever client I have handy.
> this is a pretty good user signup strategy
Nagging only works if I really, really want to see what you hide behind a login screen. For most of the posts on Twitter it won't be worth it.
What do you propose instead?
> Reddit does it, Instagram does it
One website known for its hilariously broken performance and a Facebook subsidiary. Nothing anyone should look up to.
Better question is: why not?
Gen Z? Or just not familiar with the technology? Protocols don't die just because the newer generation doesn't understand them.
- IG it's crapware and unusable with tons of propietary JS.
At least for me - I leave. Or in the case of reddit, occasionally use old.reddit.com, which does not block without an account.
I got this article via my RSS client; it's the best way to consolidate everything I follow from YouTube videos to things that hit the front page on HN, all in one place.
Then I can browse through doing my morning coffee.
I doubt that Twitter is interesting enough for people who just want to view
Goodbye all methods of accessing Twitter outside of their apps. They took down their API and bypassing this move via internal API's or scraping output via a headless client (thinking of ways forward for Nitter) will surely be seen as intentional to violate this. So, I guess this is the end then.
https://twitterrific.com/beyond
https://twitter.com/tapbots/status/1614041474567372804
Nitter will be fine and will gain more relevance as a result of this.
The fact that it was like that until now was bad for Twitter’s revenue.
Twitter users are a mix of passive consumers and active content creators and the most prolific and high value content creators tend to use third party clients and platforms. Seeing as though those people are the entire reason you have all those returning eyeballs on Twitter for advertisers to monetise in the first place you really want to do everything you can to make their experience as best as it can be.
On top of that, the proportion of Twitter's user base that were using apps like Tweetbot or Twitterrific is by all accounts minuscule, so the impact on overall advertising revenue can't be huge. And given how many of those users appear to have been prolific tweeters whose content attracts others to the platform I'd say it's more than offset. There are also media reports that Tweetbot and Twitterrific had to pay for some API V2.0 features.
There's no way this decision went through a proper business case analysis and was modelled for its impact on revenues. I'm guessing it's just Musk being capricious as usual and having nobody able to push back.
Or they could have made a promoted tweets api and mandated in their terms of service that third party clients showing a timeline must include promoted tweets every now and then.
Even if they implemented it correctly you wouldn't really trust a 3rd party to show your ads and risk strikes on your account.
you have to make sure you only show certain companies ads next to certain content, or they will pull out.
therefore you need to control the client. only show tier 2 ads next to nsfw content, etc.
they also aren't going to show certain promoted tweets on certain hashtags, topics, etc.
Doesn’t HN have a policy against this sort of thing?
I wonder why we couldn't just get something like: "If you create a third party UI, you must include the following ad web component in the interface: https://github.com/... and the supporting mechanisms for that (user ID/cookies/whatever)"
But instead, many companies attempt to disallow third party clients and any reverse engineering in general, whereas the few that do allow it don't think about the possibility of monetization in third party clients (legally enforced), or just have to deal with such configurations not being supported.
And if the current ad technology doesn't work that way, then what prevent us from making it work that way? Why should the party that displays an ad always be the same one that's benefiting from it financially? Why couldn't I have some third party UI for a popular site that solves my personal gripes with the UI, while still showing ads on the behalf of that company that owns the original platform, so I don't get my socks sued off of me?
If you own the user experience, you can push users into _your_ most profitable offerings. And it works shockingly well.
The only outlier, Reddit, is massively unprofitable.
You can't run an advertising business while inviting competitors to use your content for free.
It'd be so much better if we just paid a small sum to own our accounts on those platforms. How much would it cost? Like a Netflix subscription? That'd be worth it.
I guess one reason why that isn't possible is that the platforms only work if everyone* is there, irregardless of income. If there's a subscription fee not everyone will afford it, especially young people who are (arguably) culturally more influential.
If it also reduces the incentives to implement dark patterns to boost "engagement" and collect personal information, that's just cherry on top
You could expose the apis (or embed the ads into the feed api) that fill the ad spots and report back engagements with those ads, then state in TOS that clients not allowed to remove the ads from the feed and impose design rules on how they are presented to users.
You could do what Adsense does and create a library for clients to embed into their applications.
However I can see client devs wanting a slice of the adrev pie or a discount on their api charges if they were forced to included ads.
Imo it’s just easier to forbid 3rd party clients, that you get to control the experience (including ads) however you want / move fast changing things up, without having to go though the process of making sure 3rd party clients are on bored with the changes
It's time we have less toxic and actually sustainable business models.
Exactly. Clubhouse also has a total ban on third-party apps.
Discord only allows bots to live on it's platform and has a ban on direct third-party apps.
It might make sense to stop supporting third party clients, but announce that something like that will happen instead of doing it unannounced and then ignoring all questions about it. It's their API, so they can do with it whatever they want, but this is really a dick move.
1st you change your ToS
2nd you communicate the change
3rd you block third party apps
This is just a shitty move.
https://tosdr.org/
(tomorrow)
Twitter: Oh hey, we have a minor update to our TOS.
I already see many of them having a great time in the Fediverse and new apps and tools are popping up like mushrooms, providing a much more compelling and diverse ecosystem. Give it a few years and I predict many more have grown sceptical towards platforms that eventually change for the worse, and has sought out more open systems.