this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023

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Twitter silently removes login requirement for viewing tweets (techcrunch.com)

submitted 2 years ago by L4s to c/technology

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Days after requiring users to log in to view tweets on the web, Twitter has silently removed these restrictions.

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

Finally. The other day while I was on a call with my girlfriend, she received an emergency alert on her phone (in the US) and wasn't able to read it / find the message for some reason. Fearing the worst, I rushed to the city's emergency Twitter account to see any updates, only for twitter to ask me to f-ing log in.

What a terrible feeling to have while going to the password manager, hands trembling with fear trying to sign in to the bloody & now-bastardized platform. Thankfully, it was just something related to bad weather.

[–] paintbucketholder 71 points 2 years ago

It's absolute insanity that something like government emergency alerts get broadcast via an unregulated, privately owned, privately run for-profit service that answers to absolutely nobody.

One would hope that this episode would bring about some rethinking, but realistically, the reaction now is probably going to be "whew, crisis averted, let's change nothing and continue exactly as before."

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I wonder where city municipal Twitter accounts will move to for emergency communications now that Twitter is quickly becoming useless and irrelevant.

[–] WestwardWinds 19 points 2 years ago

I'd really love if state actors moved from Twitter to something like NOSTR. The server relays would be cheap for municipalities to run and manage and it wouldn't be tied to a private corporation. Kinda like how some EU countries had schools and departments move away from Office to FOSS alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

ActivityPub or whatever BlueSky calls theirs could end up being the perfect protocols for truly Public online spaces, managed by governments in the same sense that they manage public meatspace

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why it is a bad idea to offer public services on a for profit platform: A case study

[–] Buddahriffic 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, I've thought for a while now that these social media sites (along with utilities) should be publicly run rather than by for profit private companies (or publically traded).

Too bad we don't really have a healthy public domain to run things like that. The fediverse is trying to do that by reducing the admins' power, but it's still a bunch of private instances that act public at the whim of their admins.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

True but the difference is the ability to choose what you deem best. The government could simply run their own instances with their own rules (the german public television runs a mastodon instance for example) and supply information/services as they see fit.

It is irrelevant what other instance owners do or think about it because the instance owner is in control.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Why wouldn't you/her just call the emergency number your city has? That's incredibly easy to look up, probably a little faster than searching through Twitter.
Or even check the cities website, for that matter.

Idk, to me that's like going to Facebook to call the police. Why would you do that?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You're right that it's probably easier (and more reliable) to call the city's emergency number. At that time, I knew that the Twitter account existed and had nearly-realtime emergency updates which is why I chose to check there. I'll check the city's website now to bookmark it for later - thanks for that idea :)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

I wasn't ragging on you, that was just how I was thinking of it. I know it's easy to think "outside of the box" when your mind is racing. Checking Twitter ain't nothing, check this out:

I woke up from a nap and my apt was burning down around me. My downstairs neighbor started an electrical fire while he was out of the house. The flames were shoulder high. My brilliant mind ran into the kitchen, past the fire extinguisher, and grabbed a pot off the stove to fill it with water.

Thinking out side the box in an emergency lol

[–] FlyingSquid 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

My city just had a major storm which killed power and cell data for a ton of people. Even when the power was back on, you couldn't use your cell phone except on WiFi because the towers were still down. Phone calls just wouldn't get through. Even texts often didn't get through- the pharmacy texted me on Monday to tell me my pills were ready and I went there yesterday to ask why they weren't ready yet.

Would being able to see information on Twitter solved these problems? Of course not, but it might have at least kept me informed.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Same thing, man. Go to the source. Why are you relying on a middleman like Twitter?

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[–] Bushwhack 53 points 2 years ago (3 children)

What’s Twitter?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Mastodon alternative

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

Why isn't it just federating though? Do I have to create an account just to read the Twitter instance?

[–] Izzy 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Except it's like... completely centralized and controlled by a single entity? Absolutely absurd if you ask me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

BlueSky, Mastadon, and now Threads apparently.

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[–] T156 53 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

Not that much of a surprise that they would. Why would anyone bother joining and using Twitter if they can't see what it is that they're signing up for, or justify why they should join in the first place?

[–] mariom 25 points 2 years ago

Instagram almost works that way. Sometimes you can see a bit of content, but not much, even if you have direct link from friend.

I do not have account - just of the reasons you mentioned - I cannot justify if there's anything interesting for me.

[–] FlyingSquid 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't know, it seems to work for Pinterest.

[–] NocturnalEngineer 19 points 2 years ago

I've been avoiding Pinterest URLs for so long, couldn't even tell you what the site is now. The login requirement definitely made me proactively avoid them and just treat all their links as spam in the search results.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

TBF nowadays the move has a certain logic. By keeping your content private you keep it away from search engines and LLMs. Twitter does not rely on search engines to drive traffic to it, and it's a large, already established platform (current efforts to drive it into the ground aside). If any platform should be able to go private, they should.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I hate this "silently", "quietly" words in the titles. They try to make it sensational, but they get it stupid. I mean, what is the usual sound of removing login requirements?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think it just means that they didn’t make an announcement about it. Usually major changes like this are associated with some sort of announcement, update, changelog etc. so when they’re not, it’s considered to be making a ‘silent’ change.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

idk it usually sounds like this https://www.myinstants.com/en/instant/windows-31-startup-tada/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Elon has transitioned all the coders from MX Blue to MX Red just for this change.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Yes, especially since Twitter doesn’t have a PR department any more and thus there wouldn’t even be a way for them to publicly announce anything.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Doesn't seem to be the case for me.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

Same. Direct links to tweets seem to work, but going to a user’s page still presents a login page. I’m also not seeing Twitter embeds on sites loading properly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah, also not working for me. I'll be emailing my local municipality to ask them to use some other platform for sharing news and events, as a matter of accessibility.

Twitter isn't even close to ideal or professional enough to post important updates on.

[–] StaticElectricity 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I still can't see any tweets without logging in.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

They did it so silently that it’s not even real.

[–] Captain_Patchy 17 points 2 years ago

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

IME it only works for the initial tweet; can't see any replies or suggested tweets. Might just be enough to keep their search traffic up, but it's still enough that I don't think people should link to Twitter anymore.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They got the people who would make accounts to make them

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah I tried to look at some rocket league players tweet about something yesterday and it wouldnt let me so I just left... I don't want a twitter account I just want to view some juicy drama now and again.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

If their API limit for any user was genuinely temporary then that's good. Twitter is a major source of information that many people use and may not have an account for it.