Because that's how Twitter set it up. As a developer you play by their rules, and you can just about forget negotiating an exclusive deal that would reduce the company's rights and increase yours without paying for it.
You’d have to agree that the current owners are “controlling the defacto public square” a magnitude less than the previous ones. I don’t think asking a tiny % of twitter users to use their products interfaces instead of third parties is very controlling, but shadow banning, and censoring topics is incredibly.
> You’d have to agree that the current owners are “controlling the defacto public square” a magnitude less than the previous ones.
I think they are both controlling, but yes, the current regime appears much more viewpoint neutral.
> I don’t think asking a tiny % of twitter users to use their products interfaces instead of third parties is very controlling, but shadow banning, and censoring topics is incredibly.
Disagree here, because tools are built upon this. So, it might be more accurate to say Twitter 3rd party Devs & Twitter Ecosystem Devs, not users.
I think the viewpoint controlling and censoring is more so; HN does some of the same things I am afraid to see (yes, to a much smaller audience, but same tactics).
- Twitter could have turned the apps into a revenue opportunity (gate API access behind the paid Blue service for users, charge developers per user for API access)
- Twitter apps had the reputation at one point of being “UI playgrounds” — a good place for designers to experiment with different ideas around presentation of the feed; while Twitter didn’t directly benefit from it, these apps provided a massive amount of design iteration that enabled Twitter to steal the best ideas
It would go a long way towards making such a service acceptable ("I'm only paying for Blue for Tweetbot!"). The other option would be to charge developers for per-user access to the API, which developers could build into subscription payments (eg: Twitter could have charged Tapbots $2/user/month for access, so Tweetbot would have to charge their users $31+/year on iOS).
People are the product. If they are using the third-party apps they are producing content on the platform for others to engage with, which drives traffic to the site and allows for delivery of ads to others.
> Do you have a source on your assumption of costs and benefits
We know Twitter is careening towards bankruptcy under his management. There are other factors at play. But the buck stops with him, and the buck is getting fucked.
Uhhh... I mean, the events that came before are what led to where we are today, so it's pretty worthwhile to understand the history of software, tech, and humanity for that matter. This colossal breadth of tech we're using every day has been a development of centuries, and Twitter and its development is a piece of that. Dismissing that history is a disservice to our community and to our future. Yeah, where a feature came from is not of news-headline importance, but it's relevant to us and our understanding of how software and services evolve over time, with involvement from their community of users and fellow industry members.
The people in these comments espousing "history"and want to blame every bad behaviour on the new owner seem to have a very short memory.
Twitter has always given a proud middle finger to third party clients to suit its own strategy. Firehose access terminated to analytics companies after it acquired Gnip:
"...After acquiring Gnip in May of 2014, we decided to bring all data licensing activity in-house in order to better serve our customers and partners..."
When they acquired Tweetdeck in 2011, they started cutting off apps who "'mimic' products, services and experiences that Twitter itself offers"
They banned apps like UberMedia (UberTwitter), twidroyd and UberCurrent over trademarks and having the audacity to offer DM longer than 140 chars. There are dozens of more instances. They have literally never been a platform or ecosystem friendly company. Ever. They used 3rd party apps to gain traction than killed them.
None of the situations you highlight involved a) zero advance warning b) a week of radio silence from Twitter c) lies from Twitter about the behavior of those banned and d) an after-the-fact change to the rules.
I think my thread was probably not the relevant one to ask this question in? I was contradicting buddy's claim that history doesn't matter. I believe it does. I wasn't saying anything about the new ownership or actions thereof.
I'm also not convinced that Twitter (and it's community/prior management which yes already neutered the API) was some holy thing that needed to be protected and we should all care if it destroys itself. Twitter getting a fire under its ass to become better or die off is not the worst case scenario in my mind.
At least as far as I can tell everyone is still using it with rare exceptions. The people most likely to post alarmist and FUDy stuff also tends to be the people least likely to abandon social media for some higher social/moral purposes.
Once enough time passes and we have enough inside information (and less current day emotion) we'll be able to better analyze these decisions and trends from a macro perspective. Twitter encourages debating things immediately with limited information on overall strategy and actual outcomes/consequences, so ironically I'm also critiquing the very thing Twitter morphed the Zeitgeist into, but oh well.
I agree; the haters have politically-motivated brainworms. The actual user experience is a lot better now than when Dorsey was in charge, especially if you live outside of North America.
Musk is actually making HN and Reddit worse because people cannot stop talking about him.
At some point, you have to ask yourself if it's worth typing out and posting something that would be ChatGPT's response to "write a Hacker News comment decrying Elon Musk".
As a pretty avid Twitter user, I'm still enjoying it.
The article is about another part of the twitter ecosystem shutting down. If talk of twitter’s decline annoys you, maybe there are better places to spend your time?
In terms of actual content it's a very marginal difference for the vast majority of people I'm sure.
Slightly more people posting angry outraged tweets != twitter content being significantly worse.
The technical failure complaints/predictions will probably find more purchase on HN, despite the feeds being much of the same.
I'm very skeptical Entertainment Tonight style negative PR for Twitter's business ops is what is bad for Twitter as a product for normal day-to-day users. Note: I'm not talking about what's bad for society, if that's what mattered The National Enquirer wouldn't have topped newspaper sales long ago.
Twitter was not, well, Twitter without the users and developers. Hashtags, replies, threads…users and developers. Not the product managers.
And that’s relevant because: if you’re developing a product today, probably worth thinking about how so many features and practices are an emergent property of how it’s used, and not what you are narrowly planning for.
That last bit about making mistakes but at least decisions are being made is important. Also connects well with what we have seen in the first 6 weeks of Elon Twitter.
