[woodruffw]

Twitter seems to be slowly asphyxiating itself in a number of ways: login walls, artificially curated timelines, and turning a blind eye to spam (it seems to be okay as long as it's terrible autogenerated NFT "art"?) all make it a thoroughly unpleasant service to use.

I'm at the point where I'd rather not have it, but it's effectively the LinkedIn of my professional sphere.

[redmen]

Interestingly, I think login walls are to stop spam. It interests me how many design decisions by youtube, for example, were to stop spam and getting rid of fake views and likes. Not directly for the user's experience.

[duskwuff]

> Interestingly, I think login walls are to stop spam.

I don't think that holds up in general, and especially not in Twitter's case. Logged-out users can barely interact with the site -- all of the important interactions (and, in particular, all of the ones that would be concerning from a spam-prevention standpoint) require the user to be logged in.

I'm not sure it applies to YouTube either. The site has very few login requirements, other than for age-restricted videos.

[ineedasername]

You've always had to login to post, so I don't see how twitters increasing push to force logins would impact a preexisting spam problem.

[redmen]

Scraping for one.

[nicce]

You don’t push feature like that for tens of millions to prevent some scrapers who bypass it in few minutes by creating account which is not providing anything to Twitter.

They account requirement is simple there for more efficient data collection.

[redmen]

And Twitter's business model is largely based on data collection?

[nicce]

Actually, yes. They sell data products and ads.

[shiomiru]

It doesn't prevent scraping at all, otherwise nitter wouldn't work either.

[redmen]

???? Firstly nothing prevents scraping. It makes it more expensive.

I ask everyone here to stop telling every word so literal

[saagarjha]

Preventing scraping is kind of the point of "Twitter is increasing the height of the walls around its garden".

[woodruffw]

I'd believe that! It's entirely possible and even likely that they're well intentioned. But they just don't work, because the spam is coming from inside the house.

[xg15]

I don't buy it. You always needed an account in order to post - that's nothing new.

What's new is that Twitter now locks you out just for reading tweets without an account.

[anothernewdude]

> I think login walls are to stop spam

You need a login in order to spam. What a stupid theory.

[wbsss4412]

While I agree with your first sentence, I don’t think your second sentence is constructive.

[redmen]

That's exactly what I said LOL. What's the need for your anger?

[nicce]

Twitter has always required account for posting. The problem is that reading requires now as well.

[thaumasiotes]

> That's exactly what I said LOL

Well, no, it's exactly the opposite of what you said. It's kind of concerning that you can't tell the difference.

A login requirement can't have any effect on spammers, because -- in order to be spammers -- they must already have satisfied that requirement. The only people a login requirement can exclude are, by definition, not spammers.

[redmen]

Ummmm a spammer is a person who must create many accounts to game the system. If there was no login requirement they could spam in other ways, for example voting, on YouTube: views. Scraping is a huge part of spamming. First you need to identify what you are going to do, which audience you are going to go after.

I'm not sure if you are trolling or just being overly pedantic to argue for the sake of arguing or what but it's tiring.

Spammers scrape data and sell it to other spammers who do other actions.

When you come in with an intent to disprove you're going to be looking for holes in what someone says rather than focusing on the value. That's one of the main problems with the web and the world these days.

[thaumasiotes]

> Ummmm a spammer is a person who must create many accounts to game the system.

No, that's not what a spammer is.

> Scraping is a huge part of spamming.

No, it isn't.

[redmen]

edit: to also stop spam.

I wish people would give you the benefit of the doubt instead of finding a single wrong word and then attacking that point.

[chias]

I feel the same way about LinkedIn ;)

[marssaxman]

Good lord. I deleted my linkedin account some 10-15 years ago now, and I've never regretted it. What a ridiculous spam-farm that place was.

[simonswords82]

Totally agree. I have to use it for my sphere of work (financial services) and the first thing I’m going to do when I retire is delete my account there.

[exfascist]

I was going to say this. I tried LinkedIn a few weeks as an intern ~10 years ago (oh man I feel old now) and was extremely underwhelmed.