[ploum]

— Stop linking to Twitter/X !

— But that’s where the information is.

— Stop linking to Twitter/X, here’s a Fediverse link with more information.

— But it has fewer engagement.

— Stop linking to Twitter/X, here’s a Fediverse link with more information and more engagement.

— …

— OK, at some point, you need to recognize that you are the problem.

[FredPret]

Why “stop linking to X”?

Why does posting there make a user a “problem”?

Who’s the judge of what’s a “problem” and what are the criteria, I wonder.

[luuurker]

> Why “stop linking to X”?

As someone without a Twitter/X account, their links are bad. I can only see the first post of a chain, can't see replies, etc. Mastodon is better in that regard.

This has nothing to do with the content of the platform, Musk, etc, btw. It's just the fact that now it's a bit hostile for logged out users/people without accounts. It used to be fine, but now it hides content, which is bad for me.

[BLKNSLVR]

Yep, exactly. Twitter makes no sense at all from the perspective of a non-user. Posts are all over the place, no coherent order.

It only motivates me to avoid the platform.

[RHSeeger]

> It used to be fine

It was always awful, in my opinion. Twitter does a good job at letting people publish "sound bytes"; little bits of what's on their mind. Past that (into longer form and discussion) it has never been good.

[luuurker]

Right, it was never a good platform for longer posts, but before at least you could try to follow the different posts. Now, public links only show one post and that's it.

[timeon]

As someone without account, I was able to read post and comments before. Now I can't even read the post sometimes not talking about comments.

[valval]

It shows you the linked post and its content just fine. If you want to engage in the conversation, you should probably just go through the account creation process which takes anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute.

[KronisLV]

> Why “stop linking to X”?

Clicking on almost any of the UI elements leads to a log in prompt, without showing anything else. For people without accounts (or those who don't want to make one), that's probably not functionally different from dropping a link to some forum that requires registration, albeit in this case I guess at least the main post is visible.

The Mastodon link in comparison has the discussion visible up front, which is nice to see! Now whether the fediverse is popular enough to actually have good discussions, that's a bit harder to say, but at least it's something!

I think Facebook also had similar issues, where it gates a lot of things behind a login prompt, quite user hostile, though also understandable why they'd do it that way.

[valval]

The business scheme is perfectly valid. It’s the same on Instagram as well.

I don’t have an Instagram account and don’t see a reason to create one, but my friends can still link me pictures or videos that I can look at. If I want to engage in any way or read past the couple top comments, I need to create an account.

Showing the user what they came for is a good way to get free advertisement, but requiring them to create an account to actually use the platform is perfectly reasonable.

[hkt]

The UX to people without accounts is actively hostile. That's why.

If someone was telling me to look up information from a print edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from the 1970s, I'd have the same problem: it is an absurd thing to ask of me because there are better, more frictionless ways to obtain the information.

[jasonlotito]

Why stop linking there? X hides threads. If you click a link, you can't see a thread. If you are logged in you can see it, but you can't see it if you aren't logged in. So, you can one little post, and frequently you miss a lot of other information in the replies. See ANY post on where the person is posting more than one single post. Basically, if you link to a post there, the person reading it usually won't get the full story.

Why is posting there make the user a problem? Because, if the user is trying to communicate something, they are choosing a platform that isn't interested in making it effective at communication. A closed off community isn't the town square it claims to be. If you are communication on that site, you can be sure people directed aren't getting the full story.

Who's the judge? Me. I am the judge of what a problem is. So is the parent poster you were replying to. They are also a judge. It's odd that you hand off opinions to others and don't make your own.

[valval]

X can simply be the town square without you. Nobody is forced to participate.

[RHSeeger]

Reading anything on Twitter is (subjectively) miserable. The platform is good only for since thoughts / sound bytes; not long articles (spread across many posts) and discussions. It's _worse_ if you don't use an account so you can't see anything but the first post... but it's awful even if you can see the whole thing.

I don't know who was the first moron who decided to post the first "long form writeup" on a platform that only supports blurbs... but I am absolutely amazed that people thought it was a good idea and followed suit.

[hobs]

1. You will notice Hacker News does not require a login to view content - this simple approach is a big reason why twitter links are looked down upon. The platform used to foster simple sharing, and now does not. It is in effect, telling you to stop sharing things publicly and only with twitter users.

2. Because you are basically linking to a deep link in the dark web.

3. We all get to make our own decisions, and the person calling out shitty websites that you should not bring to the group has my support.

[ktosobcy]

Because you are limited to view only particular single tweet. And if it's a thread (which is just dumb use of the platform itself) you are out of luck.

For better or for worse at least you can view this single tweet now, but right after Musk took over he blocked all access without account which was just annoying.

Imagine if HN would require you to have account browse and read it. That's what's mostly happened to twitter (and happens to the rest of our benevolent overlords/social platforms like fb and instagram, to which regular web migrated with the information :/)