[HHad3]

tl;dr this adds a clause to forbid reserve engineering and bypassing "technical limitations"

> You agree that you will not work around any technical limitations in the software provided to you as part of the Services, or reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits.

[car_analogy]

This is equivalent to a newspaper forbidding you from clipping out the articles, or a car manufacturer forbidding you from looking under the hood.

It's preposterous that we allow any kind of legitimacy to 'contracts' such as these, that seek to at once control us and keep us ignorant in relation to items and services that fill our homes.

But instead of explicitly forbidding such clauses, we're actually writing them into law with anti-circumvention and reverse-engineering (i.e. examining how stuff works) restrictions. It's obscene.

[willis936]

Any illegal clause of a contract can't be enforced. However, it can be litigated and I don't want to be litigated by a tech company.

That's the real sword of damocles: not the illegal contracts but of the combination of concentrated wealth and its ability to selectively enforce its own rules.

[marcosdumay]

As an end user, let them come. Suing me over some illegal clause on an illegible contract with all of the evidence of not being open to evaluation before I entered it is a sure losing proposition.

But if I was thinking about buying something from them as a company, I would take that line very seriously.

[noir_lord]

> It's preposterous that we allow any kind of legitimacy to 'contracts' such as these

Big chunk of US GDP depends on IP, that IP is disproportionately in the hands of big corporations, big corporations can legally bribe, sorry lobby US politicians, we get anti-consumer legislation exported world-wide as a result.

[indigochill]

Good news! There's a Twitter alternative that's open source and practically requires you to look under the hood: Mastodon.

In the general case I agree with your sentiment and this is why I believe open source and self hosted alternatives are important, because they are the escape hatch from all the problems inherent in corporate platforms.

[darkerside]

The word you are looking for is analogous, not equivalent.

[car_analogy]

No, equivalent. It may relate to a different, more intangible object (website vs. car), but it strips away the same rights.

[darkerside]

In what sense is it equivalent? Legal? Ethical? Moral?

[car_analogy]

Equivalent in the rights it takes away. 'Rights' in a moral, not legal sense - they may not be codified in any law. In the same way one's right to free speech is said to be curtailed, regardless of if their specific legal system recognizes such a right.

[jgerrish]

I wonder if diff is considered a "reverse engineering tool"

I wonder if User-Agent "spoofing" is a "work around".

That's what they do, you focus on one level, the magicians use misdirection.

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."

Slow golf clap.

This is not a criticism of Twitter. There are issues with these platforms and different values, but social media gives untold millions a voice, and the alternative is a monopoly.

[bbrks]

Does that vague "bypassing 'technical limitations'" clause also cover tweeting messages more than 250 characters by screenshotting your notes app I wonder?

[omoikane]

I thought this question was meant as a joke, but after seeing the long chain of replies I am not so sure.

(I think it would be silly if this "technical limitations" clause is intended to ban all communications longer than 280 characters, unless they also intend to ban threads of posts summing up to more than 280 characters)

[coldpie]

Obviously not, no.

[dtx1]

What makes it obviously so?

[coldpie]

Simple logic? Twitter is not going to consider posting images of text to be a violation of their TOS. Duh.

[oauea]

Obviously they do. To quote their TOS:

> You agree that you will not work around any technical limitations in the software provided to you as part of the Services, or reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software, except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits.

Go to twitter right now and try to post a message containing 300 characters. You can't do it. It is a technical limitation. Now make a screenshot of that text and post it. You just worked around a technical limitation and are now in blatant violation of their TOS.

[jolux]

What’s more likely here: that Twitter intends to ban people for posting screenshots of text, or that this clause doesn’t apply to that?

[pbasista]

> not work around any technical limitations ... reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the software

If I understand correctly, Twitter users and whoever else who agrees with these ToS surrenders their right to explore how Twitter software works, reverse engineer it, etc. ... "except and only to the extent that applicable law expressly permits".

While all the other people who are not in any contractual relationship with Twitter are free to do all these things.

It is interesting to see that people who use services like Twitter actually have _less_ rights in some areas than other people who are not using these services.

Also, I would be curious about what this change means to services like nitter.net which offer a custom web interface for Twitter service. Would they be forced to do their reverse engineering without a Twitter account?

[lbotos]

I thought often the clause is "by accessing x content you are agreeing to our terms of service"? I may be wrong, but I can't figure out a a way that you could reverse engineer twitter's software without someone breaking that ToS.

[pbasista]

As long as Twitter's API is publicly accessible, I cannot imagine how making an HTTP request to it would constitute an implicit agreement to any ToS.

[lbotos]

"By accessing or using our APIs, you are agreeing to the terms below." <- https://developers.google.com/terms

"By accessing or using Microsoft APIs, including within a software application, website, tool, service, or product you create or offer to Customers (your "Application"), you are agreeing to these terms and to comply with any accompanying documentation that applies to your use of the Microsoft APIs ("API Terms") with Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft", "we", "us", or "our"). You represent and warrant to us that you have the authority to accept these API Terms on behalf of yourself, a company, and/or other entity, as applicable." <- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/microsoft-apis/terms-...

Again, I'm not a lawyer so this could be unenforceable, but I have to assume everyone does it because it's at least somehow useful.

[pbasista]

I am also not a lawyer. But it seems to me that public usage of any publicly accessible resource can only be restricted by law.

Regardless of what some ToS say, they can only apply to the people who explicitly agree to them. It would not make any sense, in my opinion, to assume that such an agreement is implicitly given by merely using the resource.

Consider, for example, a situation when someone places a bench into a public park for public use. The conditions under which this bench can be used are defined by law in a sense that, as a property it should not be damaged, stolen, etc. But nothing more.

The owner of this bench might create a ToS in which they might state almost anything. For instance, they might have a clause saying that by sitting on this bench you agree to donate $10 to their cause.

But if a person sits on this bench and does not donate, they did not break any law. They merely did not agree to the ToS of this bench and used it, in accordance to all applicable law, as any other publicly accessible bench.

[lbotos]

While the internet may feel like a public park, when you access twitter's API you are connecting to their servers, which are not owned by the state. They are owned by a private entity.

Private entities can make whatever rules they want for their property as long as those rules don't break laws.

Twitter says don't reverse engineer. You reverse engineer. They block you. They can do that. If you actually break a law and cause damages with your reverse engineering, they can consider suing you. They can do that too.

If you are ignorant to the terms in which someone is offering a service to you then you are only exposing yourself to unneeded risk.

[greggsy]

If you scroll further down, they just moved those bits around.

The main difference seems to be a name change from Twitter International “Company” to “Unlimited”, and removed references to super hearts and some other feature I’ve never used or had an interest in.

[Retr0id]

I don't see any references to reverse engineering in the previous version.

[ihuman]

The super hearts, coins, and stars were part of Periscope

[taubek]

I wonder what does this exactly mean. Does this mean that you are not allowed to figure out how some feature exactly work or is it just to forbid you from trying to manipulate algorithms (and exploit them)?

[jackosdev]

Doesn't mean anything, just someone filling in the hours, it'd be faster and more effective to build from scratch, anyone who could reverse Twitter already knows how to make a better clone. The bigger a company gets the more they hire people who work on pretend problems like this.

[progbits]

Or banning things like Nitter which bypasses the technical limitation of Twitter's UI being dogshit?

[capableweb]

If I was in court over that, I'd argue the UI being dogshit is because of the management of the product teams, not because of the engineering department/technical limitations/technical merit (or lack of thereof).

[zgrealist]

That would be in line with Musk/Tesla's whimsical protectiveness of Tesla software. I expect more free speech on Twitter but draconian lockdowns of the IP/API's, push for real names and ramped up data mining of the human cattle.

[dangerface]

They are probably trying to stop people from blocking adverts or in my case removing the annoying popup that wants you to login when you use a vpn.

[wolf550e]

I know of one case of Twitter doing client side validation [1]. Maybe there are more?

1 - https://github.com/qntm/base2048#note