- cross-posted to:
- technology
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- news@beehaw.org
Days after requiring users to log in to view tweets on the web, Twitter has silently removed these restrictions.
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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.
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.”
I wonder where city municipal Twitter accounts will move to for emergency communications now that Twitter is quickly becoming useless and irrelevant.
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.
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?
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 :)
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
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.
Same thing, man. Go to the source. Why are you relying on a middleman like Twitter?
If the phone isn’t working, how am I supposed to do that?
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Like I said- calls and texts weren’t getting through.
I’m sorry, I’m still not seeing how Twitter fits into this. I’ve never needed to go on Twitter for any reason in my life, especially for info on my meds. I understand you’re providing a use case example but it just seems extremely silly to me.
People are somehow ok convincing themselves that Twitter is an important public utility when it’s absolutely not. Step away, it’s ok you’ll be fine.
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?
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.
I don’t know, it seems to work for Pinterest.
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.
What’s Twitter?
Mastodon alternative
Except it’s like… completely centralized and controlled by a single entity? Absolutely absurd if you ask me.
BlueSky, Mastadon, and now Threads apparently.
🤣
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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?
idk it usually sounds like this https://www.myinstants.com/en/instant/windows-31-startup-tada/
Elon has transitioned all the coders from MX Blue to MX Red just for this change.
Doesn’t seem to be the case for me.
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.
Same here, can’t read anything without logging in.
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.
I still can’t see any tweets without logging in.
They did it so silently that it’s not even real.
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.
Is this across the board? Because my recent experiment failed.
Same for me, still only got to the sign in page
