Maybe to using Twitter on a sustained basis, sure. However I imagine there’s a decent-if-not-majority chunk that accesses tweets via Google/friends/news articles/etc

I ha[d] a bookmark folder with about a dozen twitstreams — no login/acct. I'm not signing up. Too bad nitter is broken, as well.

With all the public officials on Twitter (and FaceBook) publishing "public-facing" information, I'm surprised both are allowed to be/remain walled gardens.

To do my business taxes this year I had to DEMAND paper form acceptance, which was begrudgingly accepted once I went, in person, to the tax authorities [they want you to provide all sorts of tracking JUST TO FILE STATE TAXES, under the auspices of "two factor authentication"].

As a technosophisticate that intentionally avoids email and doesn't carry a cellphone... I weep for what my public-interfacing world will yet become.

There are tons of usages of Twitter which don't need an account. All those Twitter links on this site for isntance. Some of them provide interesting input, however the urge to participate in those threads is low, as the need to follow those authors. The browser I use for HN is not signed in to twitter. Neither is my phone, where I sometimes get Twitter links in messages from friends.

Tons of people I share news with don't have Twitter - now I just wont bother, and I'm assuming it's the same for many others who used Twitter as some sort of middle man for that.

e.g. I now [MUST] ignore all HN posts linking to Twitter (as I do not have an account, and nitter is broken by recept API changes).

I have friends who have used Twitter for years to get status updates and read the occasional thread without following, so no, it is not "fundamental".