9 ms·
I used Twitter for over 10 years without an account then suddenly in 2022 that was completely disrupted and no longer an option. Reddit is now this way too. Bu
by kemotep 22d ago
I used Twitter for over 10 years without an account then suddenly in 2022 that was completely disrupted and no longer an option. Reddit is now this way too.
But I find it ridiculous that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. get used by government agencies and local businesses to post announcements and these sites are increasingly if not completely unusable without being logged in (and in some cases requiring an app instead of the site). Even Bluesky has this problem!
Sometimes this information is really important! And I even if I did have an account I may not have access to log in on every device (or even want to).
It’s absurd that social media can become this like critical communications platform for severe weather alerts or business hours or anything but the sites hosting it are completely hostile to allowing you to see it.
Sites like this are a bandaid on a gangrenous foot. Thanks for allowing me to see links from twitter but it isn’t a sustainable solution clearly.
- anotherpaul 22d agototally agree, businesses that only have Facebook or Instagram are basically hidden from me. I can not see their opening hours, nor the menue, if it is a restaurant. I understand why the businesses use facebook, its easy, but its also a bit sad.
- a_imho 22d agoIncreasingly access is hidden behind mobile apps too, which in turn requires succumbing to app stores and handing over the keys to 2 giant US companies. For slopware and social media, fine. Some would even argue it is a blessing in disguise. However on the government level it is totally unacceptable. E.g. why should anyone and especially non US citizens accept the Google/Apple TOS in order to file their taxes, access their health recds or schedule a gov appointment?
- GPerson 22d agoMy phone can’t even open most of the apps since it’s so old. Reddit does not load (this actually helped me a lot).
- CTDOCodebases 22d agoIt's all by design to. People call for social media regulation without realizing that it is by no coincidence these companies have been able to grow so large. The security state has been outsourced to private industry.
- fuzzfactor 22d ago>suddenly in 2022 that was completely disrupted To some decision-makers their idea of "disruption" is limited to enshittification more than anything else.
- arjie 22d agoThe governments go where the people are. If they post on their own sites it’s the equivalent of “on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’”. But government information should definitely be first source on their site with federation elsewhere.
- andrepd 22d agoThe problem is not governments or people posting there. The problem is platforms/utilities not being treated as such.
- phforms 22d agoYeah, "first source" is the key here. The information should be available openly and independently of any 3rd-party platform. In a broader sense, I believe that every person who publishes on the internet should have a standard way to keep their profile data (accounts, posts, etc.) in a secure, user-owned vault that is independent of any company or institution and platforms should have to pull data from that place (in a restricted, user-controlled way) instead of from their own servers. Platforms should be exchangeable, profiles should be entirely user-owned. But of course, this is just a dream and hard to realise technically and economically (incentive-wise) with our current systems. Decentralised protocols are a step in this direction, but unfortunately still too technical/complicated for most people to really "own" or host their data themselves.
- tharmas 22d agoAnd you have to have a phone number to login to these sites (Authenticate). Even On-line Banking, you need a phone number to log in. And in my country Mobile contracts are hideously expensive. Its all part of the plan: the Digital Control Grid. Just wait till the Genius Act kicks in with Stable Coins. Programmable money is coming.
- rplnt 22d agoSimilarly, society decided at some point that linkedin, a completely private and constantly hacked social network, is a must-have when looking for work (not any work, but for a lot of jobs it applies). Just give them all your private data and we'll have a look.
- y-c-o-m-b 22d agoMakes one miss the days when Craigslist or Monster (and its clones) were legitimately the best places to find employment. I've always loathed LinkedIn due to their poor security and their data mining practices, starting from day 1. I haven't used LinkedIn in over 10 years and only used it briefly to connect with old colleagues. I never had a problem getting work without it. Due to AI, scammers, and infiltration by countries like North Korea, LinkedIn seems to be the only other source outside of "networking" to get hired these days though, unfortunately. At this point nothing would make me happier than to see Meta, X, LinkedIn, and their friends collapse. They are a cancer and only amplify the enshittification of everything.
- mk89 21d agoI think stackoverflow jobs was better than all the alternatives we ever had or have now (which are ridiculous). If there is one thing I miss on the internet is indeed stackoverlow jobs. Crazy that it didn't work out. LinkedIn is the Facebook of people who don't want to be on Facebook but want to post Facebook kind of stuff.
- tuesdaynight 22d agoIt's frustrating, but we need to accept that we are not the kind of user that these platforms want. I stopped using Reddit for the same reason, and I accepted that I'm not the best user for them. For my luck, Reddit is not used as the main communication channel for government agencies
- account42 21d agoWe actually don't need to accept that. When they become big enough for network effects to become inescapable they need to be treated as utilities more than random private companies.
- tuesdaynight 21d agoAre you saying that they should be regulated or controlled by the government in some ways?
- inigyou 21d agoThey already are. For example they're not allowed to kill people or publish child porn
- tuesdaynight 21d agoOkay, so I imagine they must agree that age verification is good as well
- alyeska2 22d agoEven worse, it's hard or impossible to even have an account with any shred of privacy. I've tried to create pseudoanonymous accounts on both Bluesky and Twitter and then had them be instantly banned before I ever used them. Not even doing anything real privacy like TOR or a VPN, just trying to create an account without revealing my personal phone number. Ironically, their attempts to crack down on bots means real people like me can't access the sites, while the scammers, propagandists and shills will put in the work to register accounts.
- filoleg 22d agoJust to clarify, what do you mean by "without revealing my personal phone number"? Did you use a voip number (e.g., Google Voice/Twilio/etc.) instead? Or somehow no number at all? Or a secondary (real) phone number, and Twitter somehow determined it wasn't your primary personal phone number? Not pushing back against what you said, just trying to understand what factually happened.
- Melatonic 21d agoCan you use Google voice still without providing another phone number ?
- alyeska2 22d agoIt's been years since I tried making a Twitter account, I believe at the time it sometimes required a phone number to sign up but other times it was optional (some A/B test). I think Bluesky didn't require a phone number to sign up, just an email. Maybe I'm misremembering though and it forced a phone number so I had to provide a fake one or a voip one.
- inigyou 21d agoRight now X requires either a phone number, or email + phone hardware ID.
- omoikane 22d agoBluesky didn't require phone numbers back when it was invite only, and then there was a period of time after they allowed everyone to create accounts where users need a phone number to verify. That requirement might have been replaced by a captcha according to: https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/2762 https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app/issues/2762 But I didn't try to create an account recently, maybe they went back to requiring phone numbers.
- nomilk 22d agoFrom Musk in Dec 2022 (right after purchasing Twitter): > we should not be prohibiting read-only scroll Seems Musk agreed Twitter shouldn't require an account just to view the site. Wonder why the change of mind. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNkSQ42jg4&t=50m47s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNkSQ42jg4&t=50m47s
- account42 21d agoLikely the realization what AI companies (themselves included) are willing to pay for that data.
- angoragoats 22d agoI learned from experience at least a decade ago that you should not take anything he says seriously or as an assertion of fact. Countless examples[0] prove that this is the case. [0] https://elonmusk.today https://elonmusk.today
- nomilk 22d agoMusk is aggressively optimistic on what can be achieved and by when, but rational on product decisions. Musk stating that read-only scroll should be allowed seems very sensible (I think we all agree on that). But he (or someone he delegated to) clearly changed their mind. Intrigued to know why. Occam's razor would probably suggest that allowing scrapers to host twitter posts elsewhere costs them ad revenue, so they make it difficult.
- assagr 22d agoHe thinks Twitter data is valuable for AI training. He also blocks archive.org. Grok 4.0, before it deteriorated, had a phase when it was good at writing tweets. The feature was used by Musk sycophants but it becomes boring soon. Since Grok is closed now too and Cursor is pivoting to octocnt (GitHub clone), nobody knows where things are heading.
- numpad0 22d ago
- giancarlostoro 22d ago> Reddit is now this way too. Which is why OpenAI formed a partnership with reddit, in exchange for access to OpenAI's models, OpenAI gets access to reddit's data, and access to reddits live feed. The reason X and Reddit started forcing accounts is to prevent or add barrier for web scraping, and forcing companies to pay for access to the data.
- ModernMech 22d agoNotably this was called a “temporary emergency measure” by Elon Musk — yet another promise he couldn’t keep https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-now-needs-users-sign-view-tweets-2023-06-30/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-now-needs-users-s...
- sailfast 22d ago“Temporary emergency” should always be considered skeptically - especially when it comes to government. They almost always stay permanent.
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]
- ibejoeb 22d agoI'm fine with the criticism, but what's the solution? And what makes this a uniquely Elon problem when the rest of the social media industry does the same? There was backlash when the models learned computer programming from open source repositories, so I wonder if the same applies to casual speech.
- kelvinjps10 22d agoBecause it worked without an account before Elon came to Twitter and changed it?
- 22d ago
- tmp10423288442 22d agoShould governments not have posted announcements in newspapers back when they were widely read, even though they require paying to read them?
- aboardRat4 21d agoNewspapers never required logging in to buy a copy.
- inigyou 21d agoYou had to pay for a copy though and that's worse
- aboardRat4 18d agoGeez, it's much better. A copy of a newspaper is usually cheaper than printing the same articles 9n paper, and you don't need to bother with printing, and you have a hard copy automatically. And zero digital trace, which beats everything said above.
- inigyou 21d agoNewspapers were regulated.
- jm4 22d agoThe Reddit thing is disappointing. I stopped being a user a long time ago, but their links often show up in search results. I started noticing I couldn't see the page without logging in. I ended up blocking Reddit in my search results. It's not worth it.
- cpt_sobel 21d agoAt least for now Reddit doesn't require neither phone number nor email address (I think)
- Seattle3503 21d agoIn practice you wont be able to comment if you don't provide email. Though, you will be able to view.
- jm4 21d agoI just don't want to be logged in. I used to be an active user. It sucks up too much time and there's a lot of toxicity. I finally got off when they blocked third party apps. Their official app is horrible and the website has enough annoyances that I don't want to use it. I was content to click on the occasional search result though. Now that they finally took that away I'm done.
- inigyou 21d agoIt requires email now. It used to not. And if you don't want to be shadowbanned you also need phone, and if you want to view NSFW you need government ID.
- cpt_sobel 16d agoThe NSFW part definitely depends on where you live, Switzerland doesn't require it for example
- mxschll 22d agoIn the EU, EU-Alert exists. They can push alarms to any phone with that system.
- jasonfarnon 22d agoThey have Amber Alert here and the other day I noticed it linked to twitter for more information...which I couldn't actually but for a split-second when a pop-up loaded. This is silly. Perhaps govt can reach more people by posting a message to twitter vs their website. But if you're sending a link out, there is no excuse not to link to your website or any number of other open, stable hosts.
- inigyou 21d agoAmber alerts accomplish nothing, with or without twitter links
- account42 21d agoWhich is appropriate only for the extremest of extreme situations like an imminent open war our natural catastrophe.
- cassepipe 22d ago> Even Bluesky has this problem! Bluesky is totally accessible for me without an account. What do you see ?
- kemotep 22d agoPlenty of people restrict their account to require that you too have an account to see their posts. A link to Bluesky often feels like roulette on whether I can see a post or not. It isn’t as egregious as other sites but it’s still restrictive.
- expedited123 21d agoI don't understand why they have this option. Why would anyone toggle this on?
- ghusto 22d agoHere in the Netherlands, WhatsApp has the defacto communication tool. Everyone is expected to have it installed, not just by friends but also municipals and companies. Same level as having an e-mail address. It's a missed opportunity for the digital soverignty the EU says it so badly needs. The code for a government backed WhatsApp competitor is there, in multiple instances even. Launch a WhatsApp clone and put all governement communication through it so everyone has to have it installed, and you have an instant EU-wide userbase. From there, people will naturally start to use it between themselves.
- wldcordeiro 22d agoReminds me of what Brasil did with Pix which of course the outside payment processors have been trying to undo.
- toomuchtodo 22d agoDo you think if government accounts were on Signal, people would install it?
- Fnoord 21d agoSignal is an improvement, but not federated.
- azangru 21d agoSignal requires a mobile phone for an account; so it's not entirely web-friendly. Plus, can you read what's posted to signal without an account?
- Vinnl 21d agoFor now: https://aboutsignal.com/news/signal-login-registration-without-a-phone-number/ https://aboutsignal.com/news/signal-login-registration-witho...
- baxtr 22d agoI think my main communication is probably the last tool that I want to be government backed tbh.
- maxlin 22d agoBlame boundless AI scraping. X would like very much to be more open.
- inigyou 21d agoYou don't think he has the resources to sue the scrapers?
- maxlin 21d agoThat's a false premise - scraping itself isn't illegal, and reasonable also it should not be. But having most of the traffic be scrapers that don't behave well and brute force constantly refetch pages unnecessarily and unintelligently is the issue. So it's just bad behavior requiring reduction of the openness. Like with any open things when people can't behave anymore :(
- Meneth 22d agoThere is a browser addon https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect to view Old Reddit without an account.
- account42 21d agoA workaround that will surely be patched in the next site update.
- baggy_trough 22d agoCreate an account then? Not sure why that's an issue.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 22d agoYou can't make new accounts on twitter. You can only use existing apple or google accounts.
- baggy_trough 22d agoI think you can, if you install their app.
- aboardRat4 21d agoI don't have a smartphone.
- baggy_trough 21d agoThen use one of the other options. It's not really that difficult.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 20d agoThe options are: install the app or register using a google or apple account. Since the former is the same as the latter it all collapses down to: register using a google or apple account.
- aboardRat4 17d agoI have neither a Google account, nor an Apple account.
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]
- charcircuit 22d ago>are completely hostile to allowing you to see it. You say like this like it doesn't literally take like 10 seconds to make an account to see it.
- inigyou 21d agoIt doesn't. Have you actually tried? Recently?
- charcircuit 21d agoA couple years ago was the last time.
- inigyou 21d agoTry it again today.
- Melatonic 22d agoThat's why we really need some kind of non profit or maybe two "social media" sites made with the public good in mind. One could be officially government sanctioned and funded (sort of like Voice of America but internal to the US more so) and have a strict organisation verification policy for local police / government and other quasi public entities (say like transportation systems and energy companies - etc)
- inigyou 21d agoSo HTTP and IP
- pjc50 21d agoI think if you think that technologies which were around for decades before social media took off are equivalent to social media, then it's actually on you for missing what the difference is. See HN classics of "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame" and "you can replicate dropbox with webdav"; at some point you have to stop thinking that it's everyone else who is wrong and work out what they want which you're missing, which is convenience.
- inigyou 21d agoYeah but you have to think about what that convenience actually is. You can't just say "twitter is convenient". Visiting someone's website is actually much easier than visiting their Twitter, so what happened?
- pjc50 21d agoScrolling Twitter is a lot easier than visiting a thousand websites, and it auto suggests new content. In its case, the power of suggestion is used for bad, but it's important. Also, replies and retweets.
- Parodper 20d agoWe're just reinventing moderated Usenet newsgroups.
- wackget 22d agoI wholeheartedly agree on every point. I've felt this way for years. It's scandalous. Many companies also rely on socials as their only effective means of customer service. If you have a problem or want to provide feedback but you don't use social media then you are SOL.
- inigyou 21d agoOr you sue them and (if they did something wrong) they're SOL. But you won't. And they know you won't. Not even small claims.
- account42 21d ago...because the overhead of even small claims is bigger than what you can possibly recover in most regular disputes. There needs to be something like a class action for small claims - government regulators where you can submit complaints with evidence to and if enough people complain about a company the government has to look into it.
- inigyou 21d agoIsn't small claims designed for, well, small claims and therefore low overhead? That's why you can't bring a lawyer. Which is super annoying for a company, because a company has no physical embodiment and has to send a lawyer or other representative just by virtue of being a company.
- eudamoniac 22d agoI'm sympathetic, as I also don't have an account, but honestly I don't think requiring a free account that takes 10 seconds to make and needs no personal info constitutes "completely hostile to allowing you to see it."
- inigyou 21d agoTwitter requires your phone number to sign up
- 0xDEAFBEAD 21d ago>Reddit is now this way too. You can still use https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com with no login. It's cleaner and snappier.
- NewJazz 21d agoIs this a cruel joke?
- qnpnpmqppnp 21d agoWhy ?
- inigyou 21d agoOld Reddit now requires login and ID verification
- 0xDEAFBEAD 21d agoNot in the US thankfully.
- NewJazz 20d agoI'm in the USand I have the authwall. Maybe it is a california thing I dunno.
- hutattedonmyarm 21d agoThey're starting to block that and are starting to require logins for old reddit
- ClydeN 21d agoYou can use Old Reddit Redirect [1] to fix it (for now). [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-redirect/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...
- deleted 21d ago[deleted]
- maxehmookau 21d agoI agree. I run a small community organisation and we've come off all social media and created a single website. You want information about us? That's where it is - the website. Nobody should be relying on any social media company to share information widely, and citizens shouldn't be required to sign up for Facebook, X, or anything, to get that information.
- JuniperMesos 21d agoI would support a law requiring official government messages to be promulgated only via channels that do not require an account to view. It's not the most important thing to spend political capital on, but it would have the positive effect of directly interfering with government officials publishing their messages on proprietary login-only social media because it's the most expedient thing to do or it's the only thing they know how to do.
- kitd 21d agoIsn't that just "the World Wide Web"? The reason these sites require login is because they also want to control the resulting conversations, whether for moderation (generous) or selling your data (more likely). Announcements/political campaigning doesn't require feedback in the same way so no reason for them to use X, FB or anything else. Seeing the state of most conversations on X or FB, I'm quite happy with limiting the general public's ability to broadcast to the world.
- nkozyra 21d ago> get used by government agencies and local businesses to post announcements and these sites are increasingly if not completely unusable The US House of Representatives posts their live hearings exclusively on YouTube. This is information that should be ungated and freely available, yet is a pain to acquire or archive because YouTube absolutely does not want you getting to the raw video. I don't understand how this is legal, honestly.
- dghughes 21d agoMy 81 year-old mother has never owned a computer. So yes it's not good to have critical government services only on apps or websites that require log in or subscriptions. Although to her it doesn't matter since she has no clue of these sites. We went through a hurricane in 2022 and that was an eye opener too. Most "land lines" are no longer a line to anywhere it's just a phone connected to the Internet. Anyone with that type phone had no service after 24 hours without power. My 85 uncle still (even now) had an actual land line and it worked no issues. After the hurricane no citizen had any way to communicate. Cell towers failed when generators ran out of fuel. No fuel because gas stations couldn't pump gas without power. My dad passed away just a year earlier he had been on an oxygen generator that needed power 24/7. I don't think he would have survived. I'm not sure if I could even have reached 911. For awareness radio is the best solution but even emergency services radio stations are being decommissioned here in Canada in favour of Internet services.
- dmd 21d agoRe the "land lines", I think the answer to that is not "keep 100+ year old copper infrastructure running" but "make our modern infrastructure as reliable as Ma Bell made it 100 years ago". Of course, neither will happen, so there's that.
- pessimizer 21d ago> "make our modern infrastructure as reliable as Ma Bell made it 100 years ago" Sadly, I don't think that makes sense. Switches have a lot more to do a lot faster when it comes to the internet as compared to a phone. 100 years ago, calls were completed by a person physically moving one or more wires from one plug to another. Better to have an emergency system that will always work - and maybe the only way to keep an emergency system maintained is to use it during non-emergencies. Hard phone lines and radio.
- dmd 21d agoJust a nitpick - by 1926, about 20-30% of Bell exchanges were already automatic, on Strowger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch equipment.
- andunie 21d agoThe solution is clearly one that isn't controlled by any company: Nostr.
- inigyou 21d agoNostr people are like the Voat people the first time Reddit fucked up.