OT: Twitter Feed Going Away

[Ian]

Just an FYI - it appears Elon Musk has decided to remove access to Twitter's API and is going to start charging $150 a month starting on 2/9. As a result, the Twitter feed will be going away, as I'm clearly not going to be able to pay that.

Kind of stinks, but "It is what it is". I'll try and find a way to replace it as it's been a useful tool to learn about breaking news, reports, interesting information, etc. I think it's ludicrous to not at least offer smaller sites a more reasonable plan if he's decided to start charging for access, but that's apparently not going to be the case.

I'll probably replace it with a general one, but the removal of the API access will take away the ability to select/deselect who you want to appear in it - which was one of the features I know most people liked, despite the fact some of the people you weren't following got retweeted into it. Otherwise, it worked really well. Unfortunately, once it's shut off, the bird icon at the top will disappear, as will the "Customize" button.

So barring a change on his part over the next few days, that's what's going on. Before anyone goes there, I don't want to get into anything in this thread about Twitter and free speech, etc., that's not the point of this. It's just to let people know ahead of time about a change that I have no control over that is coming.

 

[VectorPrime]

Musk is such a miserable dipshit who has only ever failed upward and I'm glad to see him spend $44 billion for the privilege of spending 80 hours a week trying and failing to do tech support on a money blackhole. It's like a Twilight Zone episode.

 

[Ian]

Musk is such a miserable dipshit who has only ever failed upward and I'm glad to see him spend $44 billion for the privilege of spending 80 hours a week trying and failing to do tech support on a money blackhole.

I'm more annoyed that these larger companies are essentially killing off small publishers. Things like this is why so many smaller sites are dying off because they're making it horribly difficult to compete with bigger sites. You can have all the programming skills in the world, but if you don't have the budget to access some of these tools, it just makes the landscape that much more challenging.

 

[VectorPrime]

I'm more annoyed that these larger companies are essentially killing off small publishers. Things like this is why so many smaller sites are dying off because they're making it horribly difficult to compete with bigger sites. You can have all the programming skills in the world, but if you don't have the budget to access some of these tools, it just makes the landscape that much more challenging.

Reddit has basically killed the traditional message board format aside from legacy sites that have been around for ever. Like here. And I HATE IT. Reddit is just nonsensical to read I'm sorry, I understand the different ways to sort things but it is never in simply sequential order it actively works against that.

 

[sb1]

That's too bad. I knew about the change and how it impacts 3rd party apps other than the official Twitter one but I didn't know it also impacts a site's ability to have a live twitter feed.

I wonder if Google will bring back the live twitter feed from back in the day. I'm sure they'll pay...

 

[Ian]

Reddit has basically killed the traditional message board format aside from legacy sites that have been around for ever. Like here. And I HATE IT. Reddit is just nonsensical to read I'm sorry, I understand the different ways to sort things but it is never in simply sequential order it actively works against that.

We're a dying breed as it is - and I've read elsewhere that both Xenforo and vBulletin are both feeling it. I've started looking into developing my own board software at some point just for the sake of being able to not get into a situation where there's an exploit and there isn't an update available. It's just a mess in general, and unlike the late 90s, early 2000s, smaller publishers have zero chance to get off the ground and the ones who have hung on keep getting pinched. Just incredibly irritating.

 

[Ian]

That's too bad. I knew about the change and how it impacts 3rd party apps other than the official Twitter one but I didn't know it also impacts a site's ability to have a live twitter feed.

Yeah, all of that comes via their API. I mean, I get it, he's doing it to kill off all the people abusing it. But instead of shutting them down individually (because he doesn't have the staff to manually remove them all), he's unfortunately hurting smaller publishers and creating collateral damage.

 

[Rob0729]

I don't get the strategy here. All they are going to do is get less people looking at Twitter which will only decrease their ad revenue generation. how many people access Twitter on Patsfans Twitter feed that wouldn't access Twitter any other way? And how many thousands of other sites that offered a Twitter feed get more eyeballs to Twitter that wouldn't have viewed it otherwise.

Musk wants to monetize traffic and users without thinking of the big picture where most of their revenue comes from advertisers who pay for site traffic.

 

[Pape]

I don't get the strategy here.

The strategy here is "paid too much for twitter" and is trying to squeeze every nickle out of it grow its revenue any way he can...

 

[Ian]

I don't get the strategy here. All they are going to do is get less people looking at Twitter which will only decrease their ad revenue generation. how many people access Twitter on Patsfans Twitter feed that wouldn't access Twitter any other way? And how many thousands of other sites that offered a Twitter feed get more eyeballs to Twitter that wouldn't have viewed it otherwise.

Musk wants to monetize traffic and users without thinking of the big picture where most of their revenue comes from advertisers who pay for site traffic.

I know where he's going with this. He doesn't care about any of that. Musk wants everyone on the app, and his goal is to have everyone on the app doing everything, he's going to be adding the ability to make payments, etc. He wants it to be the "everything" app.

So he doesn't care about other sites, third-party applications, etc. Again, I get it, doesn't make it any less annoying.

 

[captain stone]

If it means having to no longer see the garbage from Dan Orlovsky and his kind, then Thanks Mr Musk!

 

[Ian]

If it means having to no longer see the garbage from Dan Orlovsky and his kind, then Thanks Mr Musk!

Or breaking news from Mike Reiss, Adam Schefter, the team's official feed, etc. It's definitely a loss, @captain stone.

 

[captain stone]

Or breaking news from Mike Reiss, Adam Schefter, the team's official feed, etc. It's definitely a loss, @captain stone.

Not to me; not by a damn sight.

If there's anything newsworthy about the Patriots, it'll be posted in one of the threads here or have a thread created for it, so nobody's gonna miss nuthin'... The Adrian Klemm hire is a perfect example of that.

Thanks again Mr Musk!

 

[Ian]

Not to me; not by a damn sight.

If there's anything newsworthy about the Patriots, it'll be posted in one of the threads here or have a thread created for it, so nobody's gonna miss nuthin'... The Adrian Klemm hire is a perfect example of that.

Thanks again Mr Musk!

LOL, you realize a lot of people, myself included, spot those Tweets in that feed before they post them here, right? Basically means the possibility of not being able to see it as quickly - and post it here - now greatly increases.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

Somewhat confused. If I subscribe to Reiss, Miguel, etc. on Twitter I get to see their tweets anyway.

 

[bobbutts]

We're a dying breed as it is - and I've read elsewhere that both Xenforo and vBulletin are both feeling it. I've started looking into developing my own board software at some point just for the sake of being able to not get into a situation where there's an exploit and there isn't an update available. It's just a mess in general, and unlike the late 90s, early 2000s, smaller publishers have zero chance to get off the ground and the ones who have hung on keep getting pinched. Just incredibly irritating.

Learn how to use mod_security. Really useful if there's an exploit problem and you have no help from the vendor.
Also have some simple emergency contingencies in place like setting the db to read only or being able to toggle a switch to have cloudflare throttle/bot check the users.

 

[Ian]

Somewhat confused. If I subscribe to Reiss, Miguel, etc. on Twitter I get to see their tweets anyway.

If you have the Twitter app open on your phone, yes. But if you're on here reading threads and something came up, you wouldn't see it until you got back on your phone.

Again, Musk wants you on your app 100% of the time - not on here.

 

[Ian]

Learn how to use mod_security. Really useful if there's an exploit problem and you have no help from the vendor.
Also have some simple emergency contingencies in place like setting the db to read only or being able to toggle a switch to have cloudflare throttle/bot check the users.

I'm with you, and I already have that. The issue would be if there was an exploit in their code (the only issue with 3rd party software that hackers would have access to the code vs a custom one where they wouldn't know how I did it), and I have the various security features enabled in Cloudflare for the rest.

 

[Kontradiction]

It was just a matter of time when big advertisers began returning to the platform in late December/early January. It sucks for you, Ian, but it’s smart business by Twitter.

 

[Ian]

It was just a matter of time when big advertisers began returning to the platform in late December/early January. It sucks for you, Ian, but it’s smart business by Twitter.

Big Tech wins. Small guys lose. It is what it is.