> I'd happily donate 10x more to Ivory as an open source project than you'd make from selling it to me as a closed source app

Tweetbot apparently cost $6/year, so are you saying you would donate $60/year if they released an open source Mastodon client? Are there other open source apps you donate to?

I'm genuinely curious how people approach payment/donations for open source software, I'm not trying to pull some gotcha on you. I don't donate to any open source projects, but I feel that I probably should.

i'm donating 5$/mo to no less than five open source patreon/opencollective right now

I would donate $10 per month to a decent open source Mastodon client, at least while I was using it regularly (and would have done so for Tweetbot).

I donate to a number of open source projects, a decent number of them regularly. I am lucky enough to be able to afford to buy software when I need to and donate to projects I think are worthy of support. It makes me extremely happy every time I am able to donate to an open source project instead of buying software. It makes me sick every time I capitulate and end up renting softare. Software subscriptions can die in a fire.

I'd encourage you to donate if you can afford to, but if you can't, that's ok.

A world dominated by open computing platforms and software is such an exciting prospect that it's worth putting a bit of money and effort into. And if that doesn't pan out, at least you helped the maintainers a little!

Linux Weekly News ended up with this kind of model. A long time ago back in 2002, LWN was about to shut down, but those of us in the Linux community found it had tremendous value and asked for options to pay, as well as options to pay more. Here we are 2 decades later and LWN is still around! Sometimes it pays to let your users help out financially.

What's the saying? First they came for the moderation, but I didn't care because they weren't moderating me. Then they fired employees so as to not have to pay severance or whatever but I didn't care because I don't work at Twitter. Then they came for the API and there was noone left to speak for me...

Twitter and Elon have already done quite a bit of damage to the company, platform, and reputation. This is just a continued pattern, and it is disappointing.

* * *

Some spoke out. But many were in the sickos-yes-yes.png camp of being absolutely gleeful. And a much larger number were indifferent or in the wait-and-see camp.

ITT comparing 3rd party api limits to nazi germany

what does the International Telephone & Telegraph company have to do with this thread?

In This Thread.

Twitter needs more lebensraum for its own APIs.

That was a good one

The damage to Twitter has been devastating to the org, but I'm sort of interested to see Elon run Twitter by himself. Like a musical busker playing all of the instruments at once. Maybe a bit of The IT Crowd "reality imitating art" [1] with Twitter running off a box on his bookshelf somewhere as nostalgia after most participants have vacated.

"Whats the box with the flashing lights?" "Oh, that's what's left of Twitter."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

I agree that people have held out way too long. My more nihilistic interpretation is that taking any of Twitter's functionality for granted was a mistake. It's a publicly traded business, and if you didn't want big money to ruin the experience, you shouldn't have put faith in money in the first place.

YouTube is on a similar precipice. People think it's irreplaceable because YouTube displaces every competitor. In truth, Google has simply monetized the distribution of video content so well that nobody else has a reason to compete. Streaming video on a competing platform is almost always a shitshow. But, eventually YouTube will fail or implement a heartbreaking change that forces everyone off. Maybe Larry Ellison will make a bid for it, and we'll complete the Lex Luthor arc for American billionaires. Either way, it's another "too big to fail" service that is sure to fall apart at some point.

If you want to avoid situations like this, take ownership of the media you like and don't let your voice rely on other people's platforms.

Honestly, it was partly my faith in money that made me comfortable with Twitter as a public company. They (gradually and often reluctantly) learned that if they wanted to be a viable business, they had to provide a reasonably safe place for a lot of people. For purely pecuniary reasons, they also thought they needed to be a good partner to people building things related to Twitter.

All that has gone by the wayside, of course. Part of the problem here is that Musk had so much money he could afford to burn tens of billions of dollars on a weird personal fixation. [1] A problem that the market has happily started to correct, [2] but perhaps not soon enough to save Twitter.

[1] One possible explanation is here: https://defector.com/i-was-almost-elon-musks-twitter-voice

[2] He even set a record! https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148634966/elon-musk-guinness...

They didn't learn much of anything, though. Twitter lost money when they played nice, and they lose less money when they play mean and lean. Either way Twitter was bloated and overvalued, but anything bought with wealth leveraged against Tesla shares can't be worth much in the first place.

No, they really did learn things. For example, consider the racist mobbing of Leslie Jones in 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jul/18/leslie-jones...

Twitter learned that they really had to take harm reduction more seriously if they didn't want to be known for things like that. I believe that their improvements there were part of what set them on the path to their later profits: https://www.netcials.com/financial-net-profit-year-quarter-u...

And as far as losing money goes, their "lean and mean" approach isn't doing so well. Ad revenues are reportedly down ~40% as the same time Musk is going to have to come up with billion-dollar interest payments.

Ad revenue can be down 40% if your overall paid workforce was reduced by ~85%. It wasn't working out for Twitter either way, if they wanted to be profitable then something had to change.

As an impartial non-Twitter user, I think it's safe to say that neither version of Twitter was healthy for it's platform or users.

Twitter has been profitable in the recent past and could be again. Drama was not necessary.

I think your claim on profitability is flat out wrong. If you think that's the case, what are the exact numbers you are imagining that would make Twitter profitable?

Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019. Down in 2020, and 2021 is hard to fairly assess.

This feels like the same thing with Gawker and the HBO show Silicon Valley.

It feels like people with money are shutting down, neutering, avenues where they receive criticism.

Since much of the money for the buyout came from the Saudis and the Chinese, it feels like the people behind this are more concerned with subduing Twitter than turning a profit. Maybe why they had to make it private, it’s illegal to run a public company into the ground.

Agree 100%

Elon has always slashed customer service and PR in the companies he runs.

Twitter for all it's warts, was still a haven for public accountability when traditional customer service avenues fell short.

Not surprising that following an unprecedented consolidation of wealth (2020), we see someone take that opportunity to dismantle that.

Social media has been the driver of an enormous level of democratic empowerment, an unprecedented new degree of bottom-up communication. I think society hasn't experienced such a structural shift to political power distribution since the printing press's arrival in the West. Unlike China, the West had no central authority, so what was printed and distributed could not be properly suppressed.

The counter-reaction to this, I believe, is the increased concentration of wealth and push toward monopoly and control.

If democracy prevails, I believe social media, like Youtube, Reddit etc will drive a level of cultural, scientific and technological enlightenment to equal the Renaissance.

If autocracy prevails, if the whole world falls under the dominion of a single authority, we will all end up in one single shithole country.

>Since much of the money for the buyout came from the Saudis and the Chinese,

ooooo, I like the dark place you're taking this. I didn't give one iota about Twitter before the Musk debacle, but I have been enjoying the shit show since it started. I can't stop paying attention into just how much of a future Business 101 case study this will become. I remember when everyone said how Reed Hasting navigated the Netflix debacle of trying to separate the DVD side of the business as a future case study. I feel like Musk saw that and said, "hold my beer! I'll show you how to ruin a company's brand!!!"

What happened to Silicon Valley that was in the same vein as Gawker’s destruction?

I also do not think Musk understands just who the primary userbase on many of these 3rd party apps were -- many of those pesky advertisers/brands that he seems to be both courting and at war with exclusively use api apps for tracking posting/responding and integrations.

Interesting, do instgram and facebook etc allow third party clients?

No, but unlike Twitter their advertiser tools are at least halfway decent.

One of the tools used is Buffer [0], and they seem to support both Instagram and Facebook, and it seems that they are going to continue with Twitter as well.

[0]: https://buffer.com

Note: They seem to support "Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google Business Profile"

Buffer's support for non-business Instagram is "set a reminder for you to post by hand" because Instagram removed scheduled posting ability a good long while back. I suspect their non-business Facebook support is similar.

I know I was a heavy user until (uh) 5? years ago when Instagram and Facebook posting was nerfed into uselessness.

Buffer's not a third-party client (in the sense of Tweetbot etc.), though.

You can't consume or publish to a personal Facebook profile or an individual Instagram account; it's restricted to Facebook Business Pages, Groups, and Instagram Business accounts.

It does compete with the Meta Business Suite, though.

Those aren't the same APIs that were turned off for third party clients though, correct?

Who knows? Probably someone who got fired, that is.

Disabling APIs won't win you any friends

My understanding is they didn't turn off the APIs, they disabled API keys for any large clients

Which 3rd party apps specifically were used by marketers and are now banned?

Having worked with many PR/Marketing/Media brand teams I do not know of one group that utilized twitter client in any of their workflows -- they all used a mix of third party clients for reading and other integrations/clients for posting and managing conversations and ad work. Sure much of the API surface area for latter still works but there was a goodly portion of impacted folks on these clients that were the same people that were on the same teams that impact ad spend and brand usage.

I've never seen a PR/Marketing tweet from any of the bespoke artisanal apps (tweetbot, twitterific etc) Hootsuite, buffer are web apps, not for "ride or die" iOS nerds

One of the big ones Buffer [0] do not believe that they will be impacted this may not be an issue [1]

[0]: https://buffer.com

[1]: https://twitter.com/buffer/status/1616418191718207488

It would appear that Elon understands his paying customer's after all. Cynical interpretation would be that he just made Twitter API access more scarce and therefore valuable.

Still, mine is just a guess.

edit: Come to think of it, didn't FB eventually moved from super open API to.. friend and family model?

IIRC, FB was originally public-first before (lawsuits). Not API, just default privacy settings.

It wasn't just pay for fewer ads though it was supposedly going to be pay for algorithmic upranking, extra say with reports and in polls, and many other things.

Sidenote, as an Ivory user i'm quite pleased with it. Getting an invite can be a bit challenging, currently. Following @[email protected] for invites is how i got mine, fwiw.

edit: https://tapbots.social/@ivory/109683219720510229 though it seems they intend to get Ivory out ASAP due to how this decision has impacted their business. So maybe waiting for Invites won't be needed for long

No more invites. Their TestFlight allocation is full.

Correct, that's what i meant by following them on Mastodon for invites. For now, you have to wait for invites to become available if you want one.

Challenging is an understatement. The beta invites are sent out in waves of 1000 every so often. It takes less than 15 seconds for all 1000 to be claimed[1].

[1] https://tapbots.social/@ivory/109552637982709508

Keep in mind that "fewer ads" is (and likely will forever be) "coming soon," because Elon promised it before doing the math.

He also complained pretty bad about the "algorithmic" feed when he was in the process of acquiring Twitter. In the past the Twitter website would periodically switch you to it, with some kind of backoff, presumably hoping deeply that you would not notice. Now, it doesn't do that... there is just no URL that goes to the latest feed, you need to select it every time you load the page.

I'm not really a Twitter user, but I can only assume that he thought "I'm going to do things right" until seeing the balance sheet.

Blocking journalists was the last straw for me.

> I'd even have happily paid Twitter to continue using Tweetbot.

I had thought since they first started locking down 3rd party apps years ago that if/when they ever had a "Twitter Pro" or whatever, that allowing subscribed users to use a third party app would be part of it. After all, lots of online service subs eliminate ads in the product, so why not Twitter?

I assumed rational thinking on their part, I suppose.

Yeah, that would have been so incredibly obvious that this whole episode is surely final and clinching proof to anyone still on the fence that he doesn't have a clue what he's doing.

Pitiful.

> After all, lots of online service subs eliminate ads in the product, so why not Twitter?

Lots of online service subs are eliminating the ad-free thing now, because they know they can prove more value of paying users to their advertisers. I don't think the NY Times subscription was ever ad-free, and many publishers are now removing that perk.

But I agree with you. I would've paid for Twitter Blue if it were completely ad-free. This is the main value of YouTube Premium to me.

There's a truly excellent, open-source Mastodon client called Ice Cubes which hit the App Store yesterday. The very first thing I did was donate the maximum possible IAP.

Annoyingly, seems to be Mastodon-specific - can't OAuth to GotoSocial and flat-out refuses to even consider an Akkoma instance. Let's hope they sort that out soon (since both of them support enough of the MastoAPI that other clients work fine.)

They just added GoToSocial support [0], and they are adding support for more instance types [1]

[0] https://github.com/Dimillian/IceCubesApp/pull/135

[1] https://github.com/Dimillian/IceCubesApp/issues/16

Good stuff!

(I wish the FediActivityPub people had spec'd up an API to avoid this kind of multi-implementation-who-supports-what shambles.)

EDIT: Amusingly, I fixed the "cannot login to Pleroma" problem for `madon` this week - Pleroma/Akkoma require form data in the body, not the URL, for POST requests (which is fair since the HTML spec suggests this is the Right Way.)

> But this has destroyed the trust and the user experience of many of the power users who are most engaged with Twitter

As the "author" of some 80,000+ tweets (can't find number anymore), their mobile app was unusable. I've been on TweetBot for close to 10 years I think. TweetBot2 was my first mobile twitter client iirc.

No more mobile twitter for me. Shame. But probably better this way. It really hasn't felt like a fun place for the last 3 or 4 years. More like a cigarette habit you can't shake.

Between this and the blue-check thing it's like he doesn't get that the primary draw of the site is high-volume posters and/or famous people who(se PR teams) post. Like, ease of finding and reading (plus interacting with—responding, rewteeting, et c) posts by famous (or at least Internet-famous) power users is the main reason Twitter's a bigger draw than, say, Mastodon. If people just wanted to read their non-famous pals' posts, they could do that on any chat app.

It'd be like YouTube charging top creators for access (sure, the blue checks aren't "access", but they're a huge discovery-aid and solve problems for Twitter) then also cutting off any 3rd-party tools those creators use to make their jobs easier, which would obviously be a giant WTF. Why on earth would you make things more difficult for the very people providing the content that makes your site worth anything to begin with!

> just wanted to read their non-famous pals' posts

I suspect Elon lives in a bubble where all of his friends are famous or highly desirable in some way. He doesn't understand that most people's friends _aren't_ a brand.

All of the drama of the last three months have helped me finally kick that filthy habit, so thanks, Elon.

> I don't think Mastodon is a good replacement for Twitter at all, but I am going to have to try it.

What exactly leads you to believe it's not a good replacement, especially considering you haven't tried it?

My only issue with Mastodon is the network effect.

There are many accounts I follow on Twitter, relatively popular accounts not friends with 5 followers, that aren’t on Mastodon.

So I’m missing a bunch of what I had. I found new things too, which is great. But it’s still never going to be a 1:1 replacement.

My main entry point to Twitter is their search box (I’m basically a read-only user). Mastodon seems to be resisting multi-instance searching and that makes it more cumbersome for me to use.

If Mastodon isn’t interested in this functionality, it would be cool to see Google add a “mastodon:” search operator that works like their “site:” operator.

What’s wrong with mastodon?