I think (and have been saying this a bunch lately) that he's right about ActivityPub and Mastodon, and that "a universal timeline" is actually a really good way to put words to it. I was a Mastodon hater for years, but having used it for the past month or so with an actual community of people (really: the whole community I interacted with on Twitter before), I have to admit it: the ActivityPub people were right about this. It's easy to see the potential, and how it pulls in the writing we were all doing before there was Twitter while keeping most of what Twitter was good for too.<p>I'm expecting this to be the second-dumbest thing I ever predicted badly (I dismissed MP3s, too!)
I've been thinking about social media a lot lately and how it has changed my life. I'm only in my early 30's, but I think many others my age grew up online and when the internet felt smaller, but in a different way. I made life long friends through these means. But something I've noticed is that as everyone has come online, I have made fewer friends. What I personally miss is the small niche communities. These don't seem to exist anymore. I made several friends on sites like What.cd and found many artists I would have never come into contact otherwise (even speaking with many). Even friends on sites like Imgur when it was smaller, but never once it grew. The global social media is cool and has aspects that are nice to it (e.g. being able to talk to power), but its same power is its greatest downfall (you can't speak to your audience when your audience is everyone, filled with different priors (how we interpret words), and different willingness to act in good faith).<p>I see everyone talking about Twitter and how it needs to be replaced. But I want to know how we remake these smaller communities. That's what I miss about the internet. There are clearly size thresholds for these. Finding them is often hard and word of mouth. But what I want to know is how we make these flourish and bring personhood back to the internet. We should have both types of communities. But I don't think methods like Mastadon or Reddit really facilitate this. I think many even have seen this change as HN has grown. There are several people that I recognize their names but as the community has grown we have too seen a change in content, culture, and how we speak to one another. For good or bad. But I do think it is nice to have small communities as well that do develop their own cultures. Maybe I'm just old now though.
See also Paul Haddad's situation[1] (creator of TweetBot):<p>> I really want an official public statement. We have a large number of sub. renewals for year 3 of Tweetbot coming up in a couple of weeks. If we're permanently cut off I need to know so we can remove the app from sale and prevent those. Which obviously I'd rather not do.<p>[1] <a href="https://tapbots.social/@paul/109690528614720936" rel="nofollow">https://tapbots.social/@paul/109690528614720936</a>
I never relied on Twitter's API, since building stuff with it is akin to building your castle on other people's land. You're always going to be a tenant, and the API gatekeepers play landlord and can rugpull you without notice.<p>But I'm looking into Nostr[0] as an alternative, aswell as ActivityPub which seems to be working well these days.<p>Dorsey's Bluesky Social[1] looks promising too, but it's a very late move since Twitter should have been a protocol from the outset.<p>[0] <a href="https://nostr.com/" rel="nofollow">https://nostr.com/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol)" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluesky_(protocol)</a>
I'm still waiting to hear any kind of official word, but it looks pretty bleak.<p>Without Tweetbot, Twitter is almost impossible to use. Checking in on <a href="https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/" rel="nofollow">https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/</a>, the alternate UI, it's almost usable, but still missing like 8 of the most important features that made Twitter useful to me.<p>I have been posting sometimes on Mastodon but still primarily on Twitter, waiting to see how things turned out. But if Tweetbot at least isn't restored, I will switch roles and will likely try out Mastodon for a while, posting just a little on Twitter.<p>The problem is, most of the "Fediverse" right now is a big echo chamber (kind of like Voat was when Reddit had its weird issues a few years back, or more charitably like a community like HN is... it's not always bad as long as people are aware of it). So it's not the same kind of community as Twitter had.
End of an era.<p>I like that he sees that ActivityPub should be so much more than Mastodon. "a truly universal timeline" of various things on the internet.<p>For that to happen we can't limit ourselves to just Mastodon, but start building alternative takes.<p>Yes, some aren't viewable on other clients, but that's fine, then they just show a link, but at least you can reply/reblog/like items.
This is a moving post, I wish Craig and everyone else effected by these events the best, onwards and upwards!<p>If these people <i>who pioneered the use of Twitter</i> and fundamentally steered how it developed through their community contributions turn their experience to Mastodon and the Fediverse, big things will come.<p>From the ashes of one thing can be built the future.
Well-written and touching post. To switch off this API used by so many long-time users on the same day "For You" appears as the default option on Twitter triggers me. The "For You" timeline is only for Elon: it will drive engagement, extremism, and all the things social networks have been accused of driving for years now in order to make more $.<p>Some folks here have been comparing the crypto/Web3 and ActivityPub craze recently but I see a massive difference. A billionaire has spent the last 3 months shitting on what I thought was my social backyard. Crypto and NFTs did not impact how I use my bank accounts, Elon ruined in a quarter a very special place I had crafted over a decade.<p>Mastodon is not great right now, the UX needs to vastly improve, but all for-profit social networks have always disappointed in the long run. Looking back, few technologies have kept the same degree of greatness over the past 15 years: emails, torrents, RSS feeds... only tools no corporation fully controls. I hope ActivityPub can join that list fairly soon.
Great post. I hope we see a multitude of new clients for Mastodon. In the meantime, if you're someone like me that is dipping their feet into Mastodon but isn't ready to leave Twitter fully yet, then you might be interested in a browser extension I developed[0] which puts Mastodon posts in your Twitter timeline.<p>[0] - <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-chirper/lgiffpmohlpjlkclpmelkkfmjnlpafne?hl=en-GB&authuser=0" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mastodon-chirper/l...</a>
Sorry to break it to you Elon but you really did spend $44 billion on the next MySpace. There's nothing you can do about it now. All we ask is that you please stop trashing your Tesla brand. Oh!!! and by the way recommend to the BOD to make Tom Zhu CEO of Tesla. You can stay at Twitter.
I’ve had the Mastodon client downloaded for a while now but haven’t really got round to switching over to it.<p>I think this is the push I really need. Space Karen has done me a favour.<p>I sure as shit won’t be going back to Twitter’s dumpster fire of a native client.<p>Edited timelines, promoted tweets and user preferences that randomly reset themselves to the most annoying settings.<p>Nope.
Twitter has been crippling their API long before "Space Hilter" took over.<p><a href="https://tidbits.com/2018/08/20/twitter-cripples-third-party-clientsagain/" rel="nofollow">https://tidbits.com/2018/08/20/twitter-cripples-third-party-...</a>
Cry me a river. Build something based on a third party platform and expect possible consequences like this as its vagaries and ownership details change. Most of the post reeks of self absorption and naval gazing. Yep, some billionaire that for the moment isn't quite popular among the glitterati of social justice and elite media bought a major social network only to change it in ways you don't like. It happens, adjust. It might be fashionable to pour shit on Musk but nothing new or horrible happened here as far as the world of tech is concerned. Twitter was treading shit with all kinds of bad policies long before space man came along to apply his own brand of convoluted management..
The brand is losing so much credibility among developers, I guess we'll see even fewer products with Twitter API as a core feature.<p>I know this has been a trend for the last couple of years but this kind of lack of communication seems like a milestone.
Noob question: what demographics is or was Twitter popular with? I remember is as something like the FB news feed, and used mainly by grownups, vice university students. Since then, I haven't met anyone who suggested to follow it, or encountered it outside the context of news articles (especially lately). Or the occasional link here to a long-form post split up into tweets. Is this like Whattsapp that's popular in some countries but not others? I'm in East coast USA.
I removed the official Twitter app from my phone a few weeks back. I was leery about the amount of extra data that could be slurped up from my device and sent back to...well, wherever. And so I reinstalled an old version of Tweetbot that I had paid for, and was really quite happy with the experience. It was a bit cumbersome, didn't give me nearly as many stats, and lacked push notifications.<p>But, it was helping to wean me off my constant doom-scrolling. And now that Tweetbot no longer works, I am even less inclined to reinstall Twitter on my iPhone, and I'm opening the Mastodon app more often.
If federation was a worthwhile goal (in one's mind) after "the bozo took over Twitter" then it is quite obvious <i>nothing</i> fundamentally has changed such that federation would have been a noble goal as a foil to previous Twitter management. Seriously - if more personal sovereignty is the goal then complaining about Twitter only after new management is admitting that the primary quality you don't like <i>is the new management.</i><p>In reality the argument for federation is as I've already said - more personal sovereignty, less centralized, corruptible, overlord control. Twitter is certainly doing much better now than before, and that doesn't mean federated communities online still are not, in principle, superior.<p>If someone wants to use crypto to do justify sentiment like this, they'd be mocked here, but this is much better? It goes to show that people denouncing different approaches often aren't doing it because those approaches lack coherent justification, but because those approaches are related to aspects of technology some people don't like and don't care to examine.<p>There are plenty of reasons to lampoon the majority of approaches 'crypto' takes to 'solve' problems - that doesn't mean one shouldn't lampoon carefully and thoughtfully. Likewise, there is reason to justify federated platforms, but a dislike of Elon Musk's politics will not be the true driver.
This situation is heart breaking for us who have a lot of attachment to this API. I built a research thesis around data mining the firehose, and that work got me my first data mining job. I made hundreds of valuable connections. However, the API really died years ago when requirements of ad-based revenue meant neutering many endpoints. It's been on life support since. Recent events really were about pulling the plug.<p>But Mastodon excites me the way I used to be excited about social. There's possibility again to turn it into the things we gave up on a decade ago. I look forward to a new wave of innovation here.<p>And yes, I refuse to say the name of the company or the owner at this point. I agree with the author. It isn't deserved.
Does it federate your identity to others servers automatically yet?<p>Or is it still the case that if you piss off the server owner/they decide to call it quits without allowing migration, that all your data is gone?\<p>It's a glaring flaw really.
Yikes, and here I thought Twitter is the best it's been in years now that people can share meaningful information again. I guess greed and pet projects trump accountability these days.
We’ll see how this plays out, but I think Twitter has grew despite sabotaging developers. I’ve left Twitter in 2011-2012 because of their API changes, and that made me salty so I decided to not use their platform. So they lost me as a user, but that certainly didn’t matter much.<p>In my opinion, you can only push it so far. You rely on some of the “power” users to run a platform. In HN, think of it of people that post, comment and visit the most. The rest of the users are mostly “followers”. These “power” people make and set the trends.<p>This is the last nail in the coffin. These people will find new territories and hopefully they’ll learn this time that they need to own the platform, and not just their contributions. If successful, this will make it hard for any future centralized platform to see the light again.<p>If success, this will probably take Facebook and other social media networks too. This will make it even harder (or easier?) for governments to control narrative or even understand what’s going on.<p>I’m optimistic today for the future. Thank you Elon Musk!
Hate on "space karen" all you want... but we all know that if he hadn't bought it, the company would still be a bloated carcass incapable of delivering features, its c-level would be dancing to the tune of every 3 letter agency, and its moderation teams would be openly enforcing left wing dogma while granting media friends a total exemption.<p>There never would have been an exodus to other protocols had the awful people responsible for all of the above not gotten what they deserved. They would still be relishing exactly the position and behavior they now openly hate musk for: petty tyranny.<p>All in all, a positive development. Twitter didn't fall as predicted, tons of incriminating evidence is coming out, and people who are used to always getting their way are now hearing what an unconditional "no" feels like from the other side, for the first time in their lives it seems.
Was the Twitter API taken down intentionally or is this a bug? If intentional was it announced ahead of time? If its a bug, has this happened before -- looks like in happened in July 2022 (<a href="https://api.twitterstat.us/history?page=3" rel="nofollow">https://api.twitterstat.us/history?page=3</a>)?
It's like when you exclaim "jesus christ" and are unwittingly paying tribute to some assholes. I won't say his name anymore either.
To the people who were already warning of things like this, in the '80s and '90s, all the cries lately of "I let some rich guy <i>own my social network</i>; how could I have known that would be abused" might seem a bit /r/LeopardsAteMyFace.
It’s not even clear that they “pulled the plug”, could just be a temporary outage. Wish Musk would announce his thoughts on the future of the API, though.