[meigwilym]

There's some irony in that Twitter have moved on from the 140 character limit, and now cutting off SMS. Both were core features of the platform when initially launched, so that it coupled nicely with mobile/cell phones (obviously in the pre smartphone era).

[gojomo]

Similarly ironic: that Twitter essentially now requires a phone number for continued use of their service – by freezing all new users' accounts, soon after minor activity, until a phone number is provided. But, they won't let you use that phone endpoint for reading/posting.

[yepguy]

That infuriated me last year when I finally tried to create a Twitter account.

During registration I was given a choice between providing an email address or a phone number. I provided an email address, only to immediately have my account locked until I provided a phone number. Well, I wouldn't have given my email address if I knew a phone number was required anyway! It wouldn't even let me visit my account settings to delete my account, and I never got a reply when I emailed Twitter support.

[jo6gwb]

I had a similar experience. In my case they allowed my account to be opened without a phone number as I requested that they delete the account because I didn't want to provide my phone number. I deleted my account soon afterward anyway.

[mlindner]

That's pretty interesting. I've had a twitter account that has no phone number and no email for a very long time. It's never been blocked.

[Avamander]

If you've had the account for very long it's probably grandfathered.

[mikemac]

Be careful, my 10 year old account was permanently suspended without warning and support is no help; I suspect it's because I didn't have a phone number on my profile.

[djsumdog]

I had one account that got locked because of that and it took a lot of digging to find the right support link, but eventually I made a support request saying I didn't want to give them my phone number and violate my privacy and they finally unlocked that account. It wasn't easy though.

[3fe9a03ccd14ca5]

On the flip side, the experience is remarkably similar now to what it was a decade ago. It’s materially the same, which is rare for unicorns of this time.

[Dunedan]

For me, an occasional reader without a Twitter account, the experience became much worse in the past decade. That's because Twitter switched of RSS feeds and when opening links to individual tweets nowadays there is this ubiquitous "Something Went Wrong, Try Again" on first page load.

[pests]

If I'm not mistaken that "Something Went Wrong" is their web API keys being throttled...

[heleninboodler]

If this happens to a client attempting to load a single page in isolation (which it does, a lot), you are a failed web site. They may be a very successful mobile app, but as a website, they've failed miserably.

[ikt]

I get this a lot and just assumed it was because I'm using a VPN.

[inapis]

I get this a lot if i’n using a VPN or an ad blocker like pi-hole.

[clarry]

I get that every single time unless I'm in private browsing mode. Clearing cookies and local storage makes no difference..

sigh

[dannyw]

It's absolutely absurd that this happens for a site as big as Twitter.

[rakoo]

I use nitter.net as an alternative frontend, it's better in every way

[djsumdog]

I love nitter and threadreaderapp. They make reading Tweets tolerable. The stock UI is just a confusing cluster fuck of Web 5.0 bloated webpacked Javascript bullshit.

[rakoo]

There is absolutely nothing the original UI offers that I want, it's all bloated all I want is the content. Unfortunately when I'm looking at a tweet I want to see the whole conversation with replies and such, but nitter doesn't show it, only some of the threads that start at the given tweet, so if I want to read it all I have to click everywhere and open 10 tabs. I wish there was a frontend that loaded the whole conversation in one go, the way HN or old reddit do

[arkitaip]

Twitter is getting worse on a monthly basis. Just the fact that they have begun adding random tweets and accounts to follow while you're trying to read an existing conversation makes everything more confusing and toxic.

[prawn]

On desktop, I use https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/ which handles multiple accounts, doesn't have ads and keeps everything in the order I expect. Only thing I wish it had but doesn't is the ability to paste in an image screenshot rather than save and upload from a folder.

[ken]

10 years ago, did you have to tap "no" through 2 separate alerts to view a tweet in your web browser rather than the app?

[paxys]

In some ways that's the problem with Twitter. A decade ago people used to post what they ate for lunch and any random thoughts that entered their head. It was true "microblogging". Now it's mostly politics and bots, and the service itself hasn't evolved at all to handle them.

[inapis]

I’ll disagree. Twitter’s default experience leans towards politics but with some effort you can curate your twitter experience to focus only on topics you care about. My feed is pretty much only about tech, programming, creators and people building products. I have learned way more from people who are sharing their knowledge on twitter than any other platform. People working with companies creating all sorts of products or value are overwhelmingly active on twitter.

You’ll have to do at least two things -

1. Train the algorithm to drop politics from your feed by actively liking content on other topics.

2. Use Lists to curate timelines on a particular topic.

After this learn to use search and mute filters well. There’s a lot to gain from twitter if you follow and interact with the right people.

[jedberg]

The reddit experience is pretty similar to a decade ago.

[gurkendoktor]

Only if you use the "old" layout, who knows how long that'll last.

[munificent]

It will be a very sad day (for me, at least) when that happens.

[jedberg]

I want to say that my reddit usage will go way down, but I know that's probably not the case.

On the other hand, I know a few of the old-timers at reddit still use old.reddit, so that might help keep it alive.

In theory reddit can rebuild as an alternate front end, or someone else could do it. A good chuck of it is open source. You'd have to do a lot of work integrating the new APIs though.

[MaybeNetwork]

Reddit's new GQL API uses different oauth tokens than the old API uses, and Reddit doesn't issue those tokens to third party apps. Until that changes, you can't build an alternate front end that has feature (or should I say misfeature) parity with the new site.

It's a shame that the most important chunk of Reddit isn't open source any more. I recently found bugs in both the old API (introduced in 2011, detailed at [1]) and in PRAW regarding bulk flair updates. Since PRAW is open source, I submitted a pull request [1], and their bug was promptly fixed. On the other hand, Reddit is no longer open source, so instead of submitting a pull request like in the old days, I'll have to make a submission to /r/bugs or message the current admins and pray that an engineer sees.

[1] https://github.com/praw-dev/praw/pull/1388

[dragonsngoblins]

When the old layout stops I will actually stop using it. The new layout isn't useable for me really.

[tripzilch]

structurally its vaguely similar, but the experience is not the same at all.

[flatTheCurve]

Disagree. Before you could follow people.

Now you have an algorithm of forced political tweets.

[zymhan]

You can follow people. But if the people you follow "like" a political post, then you might see that. You can also tell Twitter to "Show you less" of any kind of post.

[xxpor]

Or just turn off the feature entirely in settings.

[samatman]

I used to think that worked, and at some point it (maybe) did. There were/are also magic strings you can mute.

I think currently your only hope is to use the "latest tweets" timeline, complete with periodically resetting your preference when Twitter decides to change it for you, which is abusive behavior on their part.

I prefer the chrono timeline and no "likes are stochastic retweets" nonsense, so that's a happy convergence for me. Who knows how long it'll last; Twitter seems to despise their users and I'm quite convinced no one in power at the company actually uses the platform.

[flatTheCurve]

Where in settings? I've just checked everything.

[xxpor]

Sorry, it's actually on the timeline. On twitter.com, look at the stars to the right of "Home" right at the top. Click that, then "See latest Tweets instead"

[3fe9a03ccd14ca5]

A twitter-like service whose only ban-able TOS violation (besides obviously illegal stuff) is to post any political content... that sounds amazing! I’d be there in a heartbeat.

[mschuster91]

The thing is, everything is political. Take LGBT people, especially trans people. Their entire right to existence is a hotly debated topic. Same for abortions. Religions. Sport events. Porn preferences. Sex work. Even such utterly mundane things as lipstick.

Take that out and you'd be left with essentially a feed of cute animals and still get fights between people arguing if dogs or cats are cuter.

[ardy42]

> The thing is, everything is political...

That's true, but even more so than your list suggests. It's not just socio-cultural controversies that are political, but even basic elements of the economic status quo. Why do I have health insurance but not my Uber driver? Is my labor worth more than his? Is it OK that Pat Bowlen owns the Denver Broncos, or should the city of Denver own it instead (a la the Green Bay Packers)?

[mschuster91]

Sure, my list was focused on things that at least on the first glance don't appear "political". Your items definitely cross that threshold ;)

[backtoyoujim]

Materially in 2010 twitter was not the bullhorn of a political dictator.

[zymhan]

That's not really relevant to the technical discussion at hand though.

[TLightful]

An asteroid, a mile in diameter, approaches earth and is on course for a direct hit. It exhibits strange gravitational readings.

> Run for your lives!!!!!

> That's not really relevant to the technical discussion at hand though.