Elon's Twitter

[Dave_LF]

Just tried to refresh twitter, and it prompted me to log in instead. I did and it failed. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that part of me hopes it's just dead.

[N.E. Brigand]

Can you see them as RSS subscriptions? I've never tried but I think someone mentioned it.

I don't really know what an RSS subscription is. Is that a phone thing? I only ever access the internet from a desktop or laptop.

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN has now posted a story: "Twitter isn’t letting users view the site without logging in."

"It was not immediately clear whether the change was an intentional policy update or a glitch, both of which have been common at Twitter since Musk took over the platform. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. ...

Twitter’s leadership is urging advertisers to return to the platform after many fled over concerns about increased hate speech, layoffs and general questions about the company’s direction. Musk has also sought to grow subscription revenue by offering a blue verification checkmark for users who sign up for its Twitter Blue service.

The restriction on public access to Twitter could be an effort to grow the platform’s user base, which has always been significantly smaller than social media rivals like Facebook and Instagram."

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Talking Points Memo also has a short commentary about this change, including:

"A numbers of readers have written in this morning to tell us that Twitter no longer allows you to see any of the content on the platform unless you log in. Logging in is pretty simple of course. But you need an account. And many of you don’t have one and don’t want one."

I figured I was pretty unusual in reading Twitter without an account, but I guess not.

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There's also a short piece at Tech Crunch, noting:

"Like many of Twitter’s recent changes, this could easily backfire. If tweets aren’t publicly accessible, search engine algorithms could rank the site’s content lower, meaning that fewer people would be directed to the site from Google. Also, it’s just kind of annoying."

[River]

It's also dangerous. I'm not sure my local emergency services are paying for a blue check and people do refer to Twitter for information during storms and natural disasters.

[N.E. Brigand]

I can still see tweets that V shared on the forum earlier this week. I wonder what happens is one does so now. Will they be visible?

[Frelga]

Good question. I did notice going back to older posts that some of the tweets that were linked simply don't exist anymore. Most likely, the account has been canceled or deleted.

[N.E. Brigand]

If I click on a tweet that was previously posted at the Hall of Fire and is still visible, or if I click on the name of the tweeter of any such tweet, that click takes me to a page with a box telling me I need to sign in: https://twitter.com/i/flow/login

If I click to close that box, I'm takes me to Twitter's main page: https://twitter.com/

That page features various algorithmically selected tweets, mostly from verified posters. If I click on one of those tweets it takes me to the sign-in page.

Wait, I found one exception, this tweet from President Biden:



But if I click on Biden's name to view his feed, I get a "something went wrong" page with a "retry" option: https://twitter.com/POTUS

On Biden's page I can see links to other accounts, like those for Justin Trudeau and Raphael Warnock. But clicking on them brings up the sign-in page again.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Frelga]

This seems like a very stupid move. He gets ad revenue from people scrolling through the timeline and reading ads, so let's limit people doing exactly that.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

For a so-called genius, he doesn't seem to be very smart.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Frelga]

V, I can no longer see the tweets you link even if I click on them.

Possible explanation of today's cluster failure, although it came without a link to source.

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[Dave_LF]

It’s stupid if he sees Twitter as a place to make money. If he feels like he’s already got enough cash and instead sees it as a place to *spend* money to spread his brand of propaganda and silence opposing voices, maybe it makes sense.

Twitter isn’t the only platform putting up walls. I see claims the tech companies are all suddenly worried about competitors using their online content to train AIs for free. The mention of scrapers in the announcement could indeed be a reference to that.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It is really sad that one man's hubris could destroy such an important resource.

[Túrin Turambar]

It is really sad that one man's hubris could destroy such an important resource.

I agree.

I suspect the driver for this decision has been the urge to push more members to subscribe to Twitter Blue. So far the changes haven't been enough to shift people to other platforms, but will this do it? It's the first of Musk's changes that will actually have an impact on my experience on Twitter, for example.

[Frelga]

Well, what's the point of paying Twitter to promote your tweets if no one is going to see them?

PS since Musk's Twitter adventure began, I'm finding that the most likely explanation for everything is, "No, he just really is that dumb."

[Túrin Turambar]

Well, what's the point of paying Twitter to promote your tweets if no one is going to see them?

Yep. This is the strange thing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

NYT's request for comment about Twitter's new "throttling" policies "was returned with a poop emoji."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/01/busi ... -musk.html

[Dave_LF]

Another possibility I’ve seen is it’s a cover story for the fact that they finally managed to break the software and don’t know how to fix it.

[Frelga]

The going theory is that they didn't pay the Google bill, couldn't finish migrating before they got cut off on the 1st, and that limiting the number of tweets per user while the various services and front ends keep trying to load the tweets resulted in a sort of self-inflicted DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attack where the flood of traffic overwhelmed the already fragile infrastructure.

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