Twitter starts limiting how many tweets you can post per day(forum.cktn.de)
forum.cktn.de
Twitter starts limiting how many tweets you can post per day
https://forum.cktn.de/t/twitter-starts-limiting-how-many-tweets-you-can-post-per-day/493
415 comments
I haven't tweeted in months and just tried it:
> You are over the daily limit for sending Tweets.
What absolute shitshow is going on at Twitter?
> You are over the daily limit for sending Tweets.
What absolute shitshow is going on at Twitter?
Starting today a lot of people are seeing "You cannot follow more people at this time"
firing the folx who run the ship seems to be going swell
firing the folx who run the ship seems to be going swell
I'm seeing that, too. Can't follow anyone today.
There are limits documented on Twitter's website, but I'm nowhere near reaching them.
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-follow-lim...
There are limits documented on Twitter's website, but I'm nowhere near reaching them.
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-follow-lim...
It's hilarious how Twitter 10x'ed the amount of ads they push yet you can't follow the occasional promoted account even if you legit want to. Somebody should tell advertisers they are wasting all that money.
I've deleted my account because of that. Twitter was overrated anyways. Time to try some new social media apps!
Who is folx?
Urban Dictionary gets it spot on: http://folx.urbanup.com/17008949
> The letter ‘x’ is an orthographic symbol that has become synonymous with gender inclusivity.”
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a40314411/folx-meaning...
TIL
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a40314411/folx-meaning...
TIL
It’s a silly internet spelling of “folks” that’s been around for three decades - don’t overthink this.
Ah, folk (or folks) that would make sense. I thought that was always a non-gendered term but I'd better not question it.
Folks is non-gendered, that’s why the “folx” terminology is seen as pandering / virtue signaling / etc. by many, many people. Re: Latinx.
A full tweet would be many times your personal daily average. We can't have you suddenly start spamming. (/s)
Yes it's clearly an outage and seems to effect not only posting but also notifications (not getting any) and DMs (I can't even load my DM page).
I tried to tweet today for the first time in weeks and it said I had hit the limit.
Luckily, 0 is also my personal limit for tweets these days.
I got an error that I can't follow any more people (I follow around 3000 people), never got this before. Twitter is becoming an absolute shit show of product and company.
Twitter wasn't all that stable before Musk.
That's a wild exaggeration. I would experience occasional hiccups once or twice a year. I'm usually pretty active, tweet or reply a few hundred times a month.
[deleted]
then paying $42 Billion Dollars for it was probably a mistake.
The value in Twitter wasn't/isn't the tech, it's the user base
What year are you talking about?
All of them, I guess.
"Twitter back online after suffering longest global outage in years" (2022, before Musk fired everyone.) https://nypost.com/2022/07/14/twitter-down-as-social-media-g...
"Twitter’s massive outage may be over, company says ‘no evidence’ of hack" (2020) https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21518367/twitter-down-ou...
"Twitter Suffers Widespread Hour-Long Outage on Mobile Apps, Web" (2019) https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/twitter-suffers-worldw...
"Twitter is down again for some" (2018) https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/20/twitter-is-down-again-for-...
"Twitter is down for some users" (2017) https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/19/twitter-is-down-for-some-u...
Partial or total failures of Twitter isn't some new phenomena.
"Twitter back online after suffering longest global outage in years" (2022, before Musk fired everyone.) https://nypost.com/2022/07/14/twitter-down-as-social-media-g...
"Twitter’s massive outage may be over, company says ‘no evidence’ of hack" (2020) https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/15/21518367/twitter-down-ou...
"Twitter Suffers Widespread Hour-Long Outage on Mobile Apps, Web" (2019) https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/twitter-suffers-worldw...
"Twitter is down again for some" (2018) https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/20/twitter-is-down-again-for-...
"Twitter is down for some users" (2017) https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/19/twitter-is-down-for-some-u...
Partial or total failures of Twitter isn't some new phenomena.
It's February though, and we've seen at least two outages in the past 3 months, and arguably a lot more generally buggy instances where specific features have been broken (very often without postmortems or any kind of acknowledgement).
I don't think people are surprised to see a website go down; they're surprised to see a website go down often enough that it no longer seems like a particularly noteworthy event. I opened this thread to see what people were saying about the policy change and instead saw people complaining about a service outage, and my response was not, "huh, what on earth is going on at Twitter?" It was, "eh, seems about right."
Twitter always struggled with outages, but they shouldn't be the expected result whenever new features/changes are launched.
I don't think people are surprised to see a website go down; they're surprised to see a website go down often enough that it no longer seems like a particularly noteworthy event. I opened this thread to see what people were saying about the policy change and instead saw people complaining about a service outage, and my response was not, "huh, what on earth is going on at Twitter?" It was, "eh, seems about right."
Twitter always struggled with outages, but they shouldn't be the expected result whenever new features/changes are launched.
I would argue more than two. 2FA was broken globally for a bit, AIUI, and in some geographies is still broken. That’s effectively an outage for 2fa users. There’s also a lot of general flakiness which you wouldn’t call and outage, but are very much a return to the Failwhale Era.
In the past 3 months there’s been no outage? And I use Twitter every day.
There was just one in December:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/28/twitter-down-outage/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/technology/twitter-outage...
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/28/twitter-down-outage/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/technology/twitter-outage...
Yep, and the event today certainly counts as an outage. I'm being charitable and only counting today's outage and December's (so two), but there's a strong case to be made that I should also be counting things like:
- Spaces going down
- 2FA breaking for a nontrivial number of users and (as far as I know) never getting fixed
It's silly for anyone to claim that Twitter hasn't been less stable over the past few months than it usually is.
----
What makes an "outage" harder to define now is that Twitter basically gives no statements about them and no postmortems. There hasn't been any acknowledgement from Twitter about pretty much anything stability-wise since Musk took over. Which is another way that Twitter today is tangibly different from how it used to operate, but:shrug:
The end result is that "outages" end up being a lot more blurry, and we get conflicting reports from Musk and from other workers about what happened, if we get reports at all. A system breaks and stops working randomly? Twitter's head of safety says it's temporarily down as part of a planned migration. Musk lies and says it never went down at all. Either way, you're not getting a record you can look up later on an uptime page.
But the site does seem to be struggling more often than it used to.
- Spaces going down
- 2FA breaking for a nontrivial number of users and (as far as I know) never getting fixed
It's silly for anyone to claim that Twitter hasn't been less stable over the past few months than it usually is.
----
What makes an "outage" harder to define now is that Twitter basically gives no statements about them and no postmortems. There hasn't been any acknowledgement from Twitter about pretty much anything stability-wise since Musk took over. Which is another way that Twitter today is tangibly different from how it used to operate, but:shrug:
The end result is that "outages" end up being a lot more blurry, and we get conflicting reports from Musk and from other workers about what happened, if we get reports at all. A system breaks and stops working randomly? Twitter's head of safety says it's temporarily down as part of a planned migration. Musk lies and says it never went down at all. Either way, you're not getting a record you can look up later on an uptime page.
But the site does seem to be struggling more often than it used to.
Service disruption for a few countries now constitutes an outage?
Uh, yes. That's pretty much an outage by definition. Everywhere I have ever worked (and to be clear, that list includes AWS, Dropbox, and Microsoft -- not tiny startups -- amongst others) would consider that to be an outage.
I’ve been using AWS for 11 years and never heard them refer to service degradation or disruption as an “outage”. Unless it was totally down.
So maybe internally they name things differently but not what they tell customers.
So maybe internally they name things differently but not what they tell customers.
We're squabbling over definitions that change nothing about my main point. If you're arguing that an "outage" means that Twitter needs to go totally down for everyone, then outages are pretty rare. A fair number of the articles above being linked to prove that pre-Musk Twitter had the same problems mostly don't qualify as outages under that definition -- Twitter's 2020 outage didn't result in the entire site going down for everyone. The 2019 outage mostly centered on the US and Europe.
So whatever you want to call that; if you want to say that those events were "disruptions" -- fine, but it is still the case that Twitter has been experiencing "disruptions" at a higher rate than it did in the past, and that those disruptions have involved less communication with users both during and after the events.
Whatever words you want to use for that are fine, I don't really care about that debate. It's still the case that Twitter as a service has been running into technical issues more often than it used to.
We're comparing a world where Twitter being inaccessible for a single hour was viewed as its worst service failure in years, and the current world where people can be blocked from sending Tweets for an entire day and that's not viewed as really all that newsworthy of an event.
So whatever you want to call that; if you want to say that those events were "disruptions" -- fine, but it is still the case that Twitter has been experiencing "disruptions" at a higher rate than it did in the past, and that those disruptions have involved less communication with users both during and after the events.
Whatever words you want to use for that are fine, I don't really care about that debate. It's still the case that Twitter as a service has been running into technical issues more often than it used to.
We're comparing a world where Twitter being inaccessible for a single hour was viewed as its worst service failure in years, and the current world where people can be blocked from sending Tweets for an entire day and that's not viewed as really all that newsworthy of an event.
> but it is still the case that Twitter has been experiencing "disruptions" at a higher rate than it did in the past, and that those disruptions have involved less communication with users both during and after the events.
Twitter is under scrutiny more now than ever. If so much as an icon doesn’t load first attempt then people can it form or broken.
In the fact before musk bought Twitter. If it didn’t load for 10 minutes in singapore but it did every else no one really cared. Now people are like. OMG ITS DOWN!!!
So no we aren’t squabbling over words. You just can’t redefine outage because you’re upset at Twitter being owned by a twat.
Twitter is under scrutiny more now than ever. If so much as an icon doesn’t load first attempt then people can it form or broken.
In the fact before musk bought Twitter. If it didn’t load for 10 minutes in singapore but it did every else no one really cared. Now people are like. OMG ITS DOWN!!!
So no we aren’t squabbling over words. You just can’t redefine outage because you’re upset at Twitter being owned by a twat.
Didn't even noticed. Using Nostr network since a good while now.
Rather than start a new thread, I'll just mention that Twitter revised its API policy changes (the relevance to this thread should be obvious): https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1623467615539859456
Key points:
- Free API continues until Feb 13 instead of sunsetting tomorrow
- $100 paid tier grants access to Ads API, which is where promotion and scheduling of Tweets happen. So this will become a necessary but minor expense for brands, influencers, and third parties that cater to them.
- Free API access will continue to be available but users will be limited to 1500 tweets/month.
This actually strikes me as a rational compromise that will bring in a few million $ a month in revenue with significantly disrupting the development/research/comedy bot ecosystem. Bad for spammers and shit-tier brands, both of whom deserve to suffer anyway.
Key points:
- Free API continues until Feb 13 instead of sunsetting tomorrow
- $100 paid tier grants access to Ads API, which is where promotion and scheduling of Tweets happen. So this will become a necessary but minor expense for brands, influencers, and third parties that cater to them.
- Free API access will continue to be available but users will be limited to 1500 tweets/month.
This actually strikes me as a rational compromise that will bring in a few million $ a month in revenue with significantly disrupting the development/research/comedy bot ecosystem. Bad for spammers and shit-tier brands, both of whom deserve to suffer anyway.
> This actually strikes me as a rational compromise that will bring in a few million $ a month in revenue with significantly disrupting the development/research/comedy bot ecosystem.
A few millions a month is peanuts compared to what Twitter actually needs, which is measured in billions per year. Was it worth the negative publicity and reinforcing the image that Twitter is unsteady and that policy is changed day to day by a flailing attention-addicted teenager? The end result might sound reasonable, but the process to get there was anything but.
A few millions a month is peanuts compared to what Twitter actually needs, which is measured in billions per year. Was it worth the negative publicity and reinforcing the image that Twitter is unsteady and that policy is changed day to day by a flailing attention-addicted teenager? The end result might sound reasonable, but the process to get there was anything but.
100$/Mo is a lot for most and Twitter is relatively easy to scrape and script.
I'd imagine this move will probably not earn Twitter any considerable amount of profits as Twitter is weirdly heavy app and new lazy web scrapers/bots will drain all of those 100$ sales.
For some context, currently there are two ways to scrape/automate twitter outside of the official API since it's a heavy JS-only web app:
- run a real script-controlled browser (using something like Playwright/Selenium/Puppeteer).
- reverse engineer their backend graphql API.
The former is super easy to do but since it runs a full web browser it's expensive resource-wise as it loads everything a normal web user would load (unless configured explicitly not to). The latter is much more efficient but not accessible for most developers as Twitter's backend is pretty complex.
I'd imagine this move will probably not earn Twitter any considerable amount of profits as Twitter is weirdly heavy app and new lazy web scrapers/bots will drain all of those 100$ sales.
For some context, currently there are two ways to scrape/automate twitter outside of the official API since it's a heavy JS-only web app:
- run a real script-controlled browser (using something like Playwright/Selenium/Puppeteer).
- reverse engineer their backend graphql API.
The former is super easy to do but since it runs a full web browser it's expensive resource-wise as it loads everything a normal web user would load (unless configured explicitly not to). The latter is much more efficient but not accessible for most developers as Twitter's backend is pretty complex.
Isn’t GraphQL self describing?
Not necessarily. There are so many ways to obfuscate it and generally public facing graphql endpoints have introspection and all of those convenience features disabled.
To add, Twitter's backend has a bunch of layers on top of it. I did a bit of reverse engineering for my blog article on scraping Twitter [1] and there's a bit of magic token/header generation involved.
Good resource if you'd like to learn more about how the whole backend works is Nitter [2] which implements most graphql functions in Nim (it's very readable even if you don't know Nim).
1 - https://scrapfly.io/blog/how-to-scrape-twitter/#scraping-pro...
2 - https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
To add, Twitter's backend has a bunch of layers on top of it. I did a bit of reverse engineering for my blog article on scraping Twitter [1] and there's a bit of magic token/header generation involved.
Good resource if you'd like to learn more about how the whole backend works is Nitter [2] which implements most graphql functions in Nim (it's very readable even if you don't know Nim).
1 - https://scrapfly.io/blog/how-to-scrape-twitter/#scraping-pro...
2 - https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
Paying for an API like that might make sense a few months ago.
It makes no sense whatsoever seeing what twitter have become.
It makes no sense whatsoever seeing what twitter have become.
As a regular lurker, Twitter hasn't really changed in the last few months besides launching a few new features and doing a fresh start on some banned accounts.
I'm just curious but what is that unchanged state to you? Because I have a twitter account that I never use and I tried using it a few weeks ago only to be greeted by spam robots, malware robots, "sexy women" sending cryptic messages that want me to do something.
I saw very little human engagement in my few minutes on twitter.
I saw very little human engagement in my few minutes on twitter.
I'm not sure what to say. I've used Twitter since 2010 and can't recall ever seeing any of that. The only spam I've seen in the last 1-2 years is when I search for a recent news event and sort by latest. Then there have been nude photos. Unfortunately, search on Twitter has never been any good.
My feed consists of 200 people and _most_ tweets seem to get around 5-20 replies. The closest thing you can come to spam are "fake" accounts that comment on political posts. It became big news a few years ago when it was revealed that the largest political party in Sweden were behind some of them. I don't think there's much you can do besides block them since they are real people with fake accounts. But it's only on political posts so I rarely see them.
My feed consists of 200 people and _most_ tweets seem to get around 5-20 replies. The closest thing you can come to spam are "fake" accounts that comment on political posts. It became big news a few years ago when it was revealed that the largest political party in Sweden were behind some of them. I don't think there's much you can do besides block them since they are real people with fake accounts. But it's only on political posts so I rarely see them.
Maybe that's the problem, that I never used my account. So I get whatever twitter is trying to recommend to me to get my feed started. And it's mostly shit.
"sexy women" sending cryptic messages that want me to do something
You seem uniquely qualified to solve this mystery.
You seem uniquely qualified to solve this mystery.
Twitter appears to be adopting a mindset of "move fast and break things", which includes testing in production. Some of the new features eventually turned out fine, but they definitely didn't get everything right on first try.
The Twitter before last year seemed more careful about changes that could disrupt users and businesses, as is appropriate for a company with millions of users. The current Twitter don't seem to mind as much.
The Twitter before last year seemed more careful about changes that could disrupt users and businesses, as is appropriate for a company with millions of users. The current Twitter don't seem to mind as much.
I'm seeing this accidental glimpse into a future where the only content on Twitter is paid content as a gift. I've had trouble quitting Twitter, but it looks like Twitter's got no problem quitting me.
DMs are erroring for me, and the Android native app just tweets into the void. This issue seems to be roughly aligned with the announcement that paid accounts will have a 4000 character limit. As expected, status.twitter.com suggests Twitter is, in green-colored text, operational.
DMs are erroring for me, and the Android native app just tweets into the void. This issue seems to be roughly aligned with the announcement that paid accounts will have a 4000 character limit. As expected, status.twitter.com suggests Twitter is, in green-colored text, operational.
> As expected, status.twitter.com suggests Twitter is, in green-colored text, operational.
As is well-known, no service will ever switch its status page to red unless people moan about it on Twitter first. So, well, you can see the problem.
As is well-known, no service will ever switch its status page to red unless people moan about it on Twitter first. So, well, you can see the problem.
Some companies are a lot more transparent than others. The last couple places I've worked had no such red tape (pun intended I guess).
Same for me, I wasn't "addicted" to Twitter, but I did spend an amount of time on it that I often regretted.
Elon managed to completely cure this in a few months. Between the constant bugs, the erratic changes, the slowness of the site, getting logged out randomly and being banned at one point for what I can only see as me tweeting a link to my mastodon account, I don't even have the site in muscle memory anymore.
Thanks Elon!
Elon managed to completely cure this in a few months. Between the constant bugs, the erratic changes, the slowness of the site, getting logged out randomly and being banned at one point for what I can only see as me tweeting a link to my mastodon account, I don't even have the site in muscle memory anymore.
Thanks Elon!
I got a weird message about "you are following people too much, only 4000 allowed" . I think I follow like 30 people or so lol. They are definitely looking into limiting people who aren't cash cows. They are overlooking the thing that makes twitter twitter, but keep accelerating that spiral.
I have the same issue lol. Tried to follow someone and it won’t let me.
A lot of non-knowledgable folks expected twitter to immediately collapse after firing half their engineers. Instead, this is what that kind of failure looks like. Functionality starts to become flaky, some non operational entirely. You can't rely on the status page anymore. Innovation rapidly plateaus. Quality of service suffers on the whole.
Rome didn't fall in a day.
Rome didn't fall in a day.
The claim that Twitter would collapse immediately never made any sense. Most engineers tend to design software so that they can take holidays. There might be a handful of Ops people who may be need to be available 24/7 but even in a website the size of Twitter those probably number fewer than a few dozen.
Were there prominent engineers making this claim or just the mainstream media that doesn't understand systems engineering?
> Rome didn't fall in a day.
Freenode didn't either, but this Twitter thing seriously gives me the same sort of vibes.
Freenode didn't either, but this Twitter thing seriously gives me the same sort of vibes.
At first, it might even increase stability because deploys are a big source of outages, and now there are a lot fewer deploys happening.
But the risk of a major outage -- one that the remaining engineers are ill-equipped to handle -- grows. There are way fewer people paying down tech debt, and the ones still trying to deliver features are now doing so in a minefield.
But the risk of a major outage -- one that the remaining engineers are ill-equipped to handle -- grows. There are way fewer people paying down tech debt, and the ones still trying to deliver features are now doing so in a minefield.
> Rome didn't fall in a day.
the expression is "Rome was not built in a day."
When dealing with issues like "the Sack of Rome", they pretty much did take place on particular days
http://web.archive.org/web/20180318005947/https://www.histor...
the expression is "Rome was not built in a day."
When dealing with issues like "the Sack of Rome", they pretty much did take place on particular days
http://web.archive.org/web/20180318005947/https://www.histor...
It was presumably a play on the expression, not something they thought was the common expression.
not everybody reading the word play would know the reference, it's useful to tell them.
and while plays on words are great, when they're counterfactual it gets confusing what is mean, and becomes unclear if the author knows what's being said, and Rome did fall in a day, 6 times
and while plays on words are great, when they're counterfactual it gets confusing what is mean, and becomes unclear if the author knows what's being said, and Rome did fall in a day, 6 times
That is not what is meant by the phrase “the fall of Rome”, which refers to the end of the western Roman Empire.
It's like quitting smoking. If you're very good at quitting smoking, because you already quit 6 times, it means the first 5 times you haven't really quite. If Rome fell 6 times it also means at least 5 times it didn't fall for good and thus it took more than a day to fall for good.
but the phrase is "Rome was not built in a day", nobody says Rome did not fall in a day
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=rome+did+not+fall+in+a+day&...
If you want to make the case that Rome did not fall in a day, that's fine, you may have even made the case in your comment. I was just commenting on using the stock phrase wrong and expecting it to resonate.
For example, I can say "An apple a day sends you straight to the doctor." If I said that, most people would recognize that I had twisted the original phrase, and could decide if they wanted to engage with what I wrote. But if I wrote, "just like an apple a day, gluten every day will send you to the doctor", I'd expect more pushback from people, "hey, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense"
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=rome+did+not+fall+in+a+day&...
If you want to make the case that Rome did not fall in a day, that's fine, you may have even made the case in your comment. I was just commenting on using the stock phrase wrong and expecting it to resonate.
For example, I can say "An apple a day sends you straight to the doctor." If I said that, most people would recognize that I had twisted the original phrase, and could decide if they wanted to engage with what I wrote. But if I wrote, "just like an apple a day, gluten every day will send you to the doctor", I'd expect more pushback from people, "hey, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense"
> When dealing with issues like "the Sack of Rome", they pretty much did take place on particular days
I’d took much more than one of those for Rome to fall. Which was the point.
I’d took much more than one of those for Rome to fall. Which was the point.
That wasn’t the fall of Rome, though, not really. There’s a reasonable argument that the fall of Rome started in the first century BC, when the Republic destabilised, culminating in Marius, Sulla, Caesar and friends, and ended in the 15th century AD or so.
In fairness, I have yet to see a first party status page that reliably detects all outages.
Too many bonuses and SLA contracts depend on the “status” for it to be a reliably self reported metric.
When I was in one of these positions, I negotiated bonuses to allow for some failures specifically to avoid this type of conflict of interest. I think it’s also mentioned in the seminal SRE book published by Google.
When I was in one of these positions, I negotiated bonuses to allow for some failures specifically to avoid this type of conflict of interest. I think it’s also mentioned in the seminal SRE book published by Google.
Many intentionally don't show outages. Amazon is generally quite picky about what is considered an AWS service outage
Of course they are picky, because they have SLAs that say outages cost them money. This speaks to the need for independent monitoring/auditing to ensure that companies are being honest about the metrics that they provide. Right now, no one can hold them accountable for lying on their status pages, because every customer must make their own case that there even was an outage. Worse, there’s no truly independent party to make them accept such evidence, so you are ultimately dependent on them deciding to come clean.
I'll give credit where it's due, Shopify's status page is pretty reliable at showing downtime as it happens.
Github is good, though I suspect that will change given the amount of issues they run into daily: https://www.githubstatus.com/history
This website is the real status page for me
One of the worst things about the "new Twitter" is that the "old Twitter" provided so much surplus to the world in terms of the open source work their engineers did, all the design frameworks, the neat technical blogs, the sponsored events and whimsical nature of the company. It felt very much in the original spirit of Silicon Valley. It was a fine, if slightly underperforming company who had ~infinite runway to fix things as they had billions of dollars in the bank and were roughly break-even profitable.
"New Twitter" feels like the worst version of private equity LBO capitalism. Suddenly the rationale for every decision is entirely extractive finance; load the company with debt to juice your shareholder returns, fire everyone who can't be proven to be profitable, break your leases, close your offices, kill all perks, cease all meetings of your employee affinity groups, make sure nobody is working on projects that don't have a straight-line to revenue growth, squeeze every dollar out of your users, monetize any surplus that you were previously providing while relying on inertia to keep your users through the much worse user experience.
Elon-era Twitter is basically 2000s-era Sears -- and man is it depressing that people are cheering it on.
"New Twitter" feels like the worst version of private equity LBO capitalism. Suddenly the rationale for every decision is entirely extractive finance; load the company with debt to juice your shareholder returns, fire everyone who can't be proven to be profitable, break your leases, close your offices, kill all perks, cease all meetings of your employee affinity groups, make sure nobody is working on projects that don't have a straight-line to revenue growth, squeeze every dollar out of your users, monetize any surplus that you were previously providing while relying on inertia to keep your users through the much worse user experience.
Elon-era Twitter is basically 2000s-era Sears -- and man is it depressing that people are cheering it on.
Hard not to think Musk's entourage and zealotry for layoffs didn't provide cover for the more recent tech layoff sprees.
“2 day a week office requirement = 20% voluntary departures,” Calacanis wrote. “Day zero…sharpen your blades boys."
[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-jason-calacanis-messag...
“2 day a week office requirement = 20% voluntary departures,” Calacanis wrote. “Day zero…sharpen your blades boys."
[1]: https://www.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-jason-calacanis-messag...
Adverse selection. The people who voluntarily go have the most options en are generally the most skilled.
pessimizer(3)
> Rome didn't fall in a day.
But a few hours were enough for Pompeii.
There's always hope :)
But a few hours were enough for Pompeii.
There's always hope :)
Why root for it to collapse? Seems like a bizarre thing to hope for (but I’ve never been on Twitter so I’m coming at this from a distance).
kalleboo summarized it handsomely.
I really dislike seeing (mega-) corps usurping the public domain, and find it highly offensive and dangerous to democracy.
Twitter isn’t the public square, it’s a private revenue stream for Twitter. It shouldn’t be allowed to sway people into believing it’s a free speech platform, nor should it be used as the public space for official announcements by governments and other authorities.
I really dislike seeing (mega-) corps usurping the public domain, and find it highly offensive and dangerous to democracy.
Twitter isn’t the public square, it’s a private revenue stream for Twitter. It shouldn’t be allowed to sway people into believing it’s a free speech platform, nor should it be used as the public space for official announcements by governments and other authorities.
> A lot of non-knowledgable folks expected twitter to immediately collapse after firing half their engineers.
AFAICT at the time, that was more a strawman crea5ed by Musk defenders than the normal criticism/expectation of people who viewed the actions as unwise.
AFAICT at the time, that was more a strawman crea5ed by Musk defenders than the normal criticism/expectation of people who viewed the actions as unwise.
I think a lot of people maybe conflated “immediately become broken” (which it did, pretty much) with “immediately literally vanish” (which was never likely).
> Innovation rapidly plateaus
Twitter shipped more features in the last 6 months than in the last 10 years. And that’s with a quarter of the staff too.
Twitter shipped more features in the last 6 months than in the last 10 years. And that’s with a quarter of the staff too.
Do we count turning on something half-baked, finding bugs, turning it off, it wasn't really off, turning it back on later with 3/4th the promised feature 5-6 feature releases?
Or maybe we're counting a feature that was developed but not released for N (reasonable) reasons, now discounting those N reasons and releasing it anyway as a signal that there's some sort of innovation occurring?
Or maybe we're counting a feature that was developed but not released for N (reasonable) reasons, now discounting those N reasons and releasing it anyway as a signal that there's some sort of innovation occurring?
Like the emergency kill switch that shut down all of Twitter Spaces for the entire platform when Elon was asked a single pointed question he didn't want to answer.
https://fortune.com/2022/12/16/elon-musk-shuts-down-twitter-...
https://fortune.com/2022/12/16/elon-musk-shuts-down-twitter-...
I'm pretty sure you're wrong even just going by (edit: pre-2022Q4) features listed on the wikipedia page[1], and that appears to leave out a number of cool and useful things such as polls and the extensive support for image alt-text.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Twitter
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Twitter
So innovation is just shipping new features? Don't really believe that's a great metric to track something so subjective, I believed innovation had a bit more weight than "let's do something and ship it! Whatever!".
Please explain how the old twitter innovated by your definition
I didn't state anywhere that old Twitter was innovating, that's your strawman to beat :)
there isn't a much better analogy to the interchangeability of bug and feature than this comment.
Indeed. Shipping new changes is actually the reason these glitches are occurring.
I know. What innovation has twitter done in the 5 years prior? Not too much
I can only think of Spaces, doubling the character limit and something about NFTs on profiles.
Wasn't Spaces under the previous management?
That said, I don't know what bar for "feature over the last 6 months" is actually meaningful. The problem with Twitter was never the user-facing product, it was the thing that actually made them money - the ads. Twitter usage exploded under the Trump years while revenue lagged. The product that Twitter should be innovating isn't user facing.
That said, I don't know what bar for "feature over the last 6 months" is actually meaningful. The problem with Twitter was never the user-facing product, it was the thing that actually made them money - the ads. Twitter usage exploded under the Trump years while revenue lagged. The product that Twitter should be innovating isn't user facing.
They just added ads in the tweet replies (as opposed to just the main feed) and will be giving a percentage of the revenue to the person starting the thread.
Someone above was genuinely impressed by allowing alt text on images.
and you believe that right? jesus
If Twitter has issues it’s because Musk is a foolish billionaire who fired too many people. If it doesn’t have issues then it’s just a testament to the brilliant engineers before his tenure. In other words he can’t win. I expect Twitter will have it’s wins and losses (both technical and fiscal) over the next months but I expect that “knowledgeable” folk will continue to have the same conversation each time there is a loss.
Or you could take a step back and rationally access the situation as Musk's ego causing him to be locked into a doomed to fail deal, and his desperate attempts to turn Twitter around failing spectacularly as he almost immediately alienated advertisers.
Instead we have a false dichotomy and more Musk cult of personality.
Instead we have a false dichotomy and more Musk cult of personality.
I don't see what is false about what I said, the conversation has played out literally over and over. One call fails and Musk is an ego-maniac that ruined Twitter, nothing happens for a week and it is "all praise the great engineers he fired". There is such intellectual dishonesty. I have zero loyalty to Musk, I will criticize his mistakes and laud his successes, can you say the same? Calling any pro-Musk sentiment a cult of personality is just another trick to stick to your dogma.
There is no intellectual dishonesty.
Moments after Musk took charge, he enabled the Edit feature. Entire feature length movies where then uploaded to twitter via this feature.
He pushed forward buying twitter blue, essentially making twitter verification useless as a feature.
As I already said, advertisers pulled out almost instantly, causing his financial situation to be practically unsolvable.
The website is still up and running, yes, because servers don't magically explode the next day, but to treat this as intellectual dishonesty is cult of personality. Musk has only hurt Twitter since acquiring it. If all you are capable of is straw manning about the one person you read who meme'd the site would fall down the next day because they've never written a server before, then fuck off.
Moments after Musk took charge, he enabled the Edit feature. Entire feature length movies where then uploaded to twitter via this feature.
He pushed forward buying twitter blue, essentially making twitter verification useless as a feature.
As I already said, advertisers pulled out almost instantly, causing his financial situation to be practically unsolvable.
The website is still up and running, yes, because servers don't magically explode the next day, but to treat this as intellectual dishonesty is cult of personality. Musk has only hurt Twitter since acquiring it. If all you are capable of is straw manning about the one person you read who meme'd the site would fall down the next day because they've never written a server before, then fuck off.
im also not sure you can really correlate the fall of rome to a single oligarch hitman although im sure some of the HN history buffs could correct me.
the whole saga still gobsmacks me to this day. one of the wealthiest men in america tantrum-spends 44 billion dollars on a website, then goes through an agonizing six months pretending he didnt have to buy it and is eventually forced by a judge to complete the acquisition. next, said oligarch fumbles the execution so badly the company basically winds up firing everyone it can and accidentally lock themselves out of the headquarters for the weekend in the process. Eventually the man himself, Musk, desperately pleads for "anyone who writes code" to meet him in the dead of night on the tenth floor of his now empty office only to wind up with midlevel managers pledging their fidelity as the vichy scramble to find their place in the new order and various services begin to fail. Finally, mercifully, Musk is hauled back to Tesla where share prices are tumbling almost as quickly as twitter users are jumping ship, but not before unshackling a prison full of reprobates and racists to rejoin the site by un-suspending their accounts.
the whole saga still gobsmacks me to this day. one of the wealthiest men in america tantrum-spends 44 billion dollars on a website, then goes through an agonizing six months pretending he didnt have to buy it and is eventually forced by a judge to complete the acquisition. next, said oligarch fumbles the execution so badly the company basically winds up firing everyone it can and accidentally lock themselves out of the headquarters for the weekend in the process. Eventually the man himself, Musk, desperately pleads for "anyone who writes code" to meet him in the dead of night on the tenth floor of his now empty office only to wind up with midlevel managers pledging their fidelity as the vichy scramble to find their place in the new order and various services begin to fail. Finally, mercifully, Musk is hauled back to Tesla where share prices are tumbling almost as quickly as twitter users are jumping ship, but not before unshackling a prison full of reprobates and racists to rejoin the site by un-suspending their accounts.
I'm not focusing on a single "hitman" taking down Rome. Who really knows but it was a multitude of factors. My point here is that large systems don't typically acutely fail. It's more of a gradual process of rust and decay that accelerates them into irrelevance.
Your point about what a total mess this was is absolutely spot on though. It didn't have to end like this. This was a tragedy of blunders.
Your point about what a total mess this was is absolutely spot on though. It didn't have to end like this. This was a tragedy of blunders.
The funniest thing to me is how the Billionaire railed about a lack of free speech, but then tried to turn free speech into a commodity that could be purchased for his own opportunistic profit.
Every day is a day closer to when Twitter will vanish, curing public addiction to and dependency upon it. Something else will come later, and slowly be corrupted again as well.
It would have been easier and much less costly to just have made an app from scratch and to have left Twitter to it's prior dysfunctional obscurity.
Every day is a day closer to when Twitter will vanish, curing public addiction to and dependency upon it. Something else will come later, and slowly be corrupted again as well.
It would have been easier and much less costly to just have made an app from scratch and to have left Twitter to it's prior dysfunctional obscurity.
>I'm not focusing on a single "hitman" taking down Rome. Who really knows but it was a multitude of factors. My point here is that large systems don't typically acutely fail. It's more of a gradual process of rust and decay that accelerates them into irrelevance.
I think a lot of people with experience understood this fundamental concept but the issue is that it seems difficult to convey this into a headline grabbing series of news articles.
Therefore, it seems as if the whole hubub at the beginning of this saga was this concept but massively overinflated(OMG twitter is going to collapse overnight). In fact I guess you can argue that it was so overinflated that it was lying but thats the standard we have to live with for now.
I think a lot of people with experience understood this fundamental concept but the issue is that it seems difficult to convey this into a headline grabbing series of news articles.
Therefore, it seems as if the whole hubub at the beginning of this saga was this concept but massively overinflated(OMG twitter is going to collapse overnight). In fact I guess you can argue that it was so overinflated that it was lying but thats the standard we have to live with for now.
> It's more of a gradual process of rust and decay that accelerates them into irrelevance.
precisely. entropy tends to increase in this universe. humans are special because our phenotypical effect of creating order is unparalleled in scale, precision, and sophistication.
precisely. entropy tends to increase in this universe. humans are special because our phenotypical effect of creating order is unparalleled in scale, precision, and sophistication.
Yep totally. Kind of like the "broken window" phenomena with a building/neighborhood where if one broken thing doesn't get fixed everything else goes pretty quickly
It’s a hypothesis, not a phenomenon. Several studies and statistical analyses shown that regression to the mean and external factors were better explanations for the decrease in crime than the zero-tolerance policy. The theory itself is based on a presumed correlation with no real proof of causality.
I guess a counterpoint would be freenode, but maybe that isn't large enough to count.
Something I find interesting are the parallels from current day billionaires to dictators and depots throughout history. I was recently listening to Behind the Bastard, where they spoke of Nicolae Ceaușescu [1]. Among the terrible things he did, he also constructed the largest civilian government building in the world, the Parliamentary Palace. It's sits at 30% capacity today; because it was built not to be used, but to fan his ego.
I remembered always being told growing up that capitalism was superior to communism because it intelligently allocated resources based on the market. But by giving a few people billions of dollars, we're seeing them do the same things communist dictatorships did; throwing money blindly into vanity projects. Like The Line [2], or Telosa [3]. I have to wonder if the modern billionaires are creating a similar instability in society, even if it is lessened by their not being the head of government.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telosa
I remembered always being told growing up that capitalism was superior to communism because it intelligently allocated resources based on the market. But by giving a few people billions of dollars, we're seeing them do the same things communist dictatorships did; throwing money blindly into vanity projects. Like The Line [2], or Telosa [3]. I have to wonder if the modern billionaires are creating a similar instability in society, even if it is lessened by their not being the head of government.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telosa
Nobody said it was perfect. Humans make mistakes and are corrupt. But the results are much better than the alternatives.
> is eventually forced by a judge
I might be misremembering but it didn't actually end up as a judge's decision, did it? I remember that they were starting discovery, lots of amusingly embarrassing things old Elno did/said were coming out and he said "OK NEVER MIND I'll buy it then" which suspended the court case pending him actually doing that (which, as we all sadly know now, he did.)
I might be misremembering but it didn't actually end up as a judge's decision, did it? I remember that they were starting discovery, lots of amusingly embarrassing things old Elno did/said were coming out and he said "OK NEVER MIND I'll buy it then" which suspended the court case pending him actually doing that (which, as we all sadly know now, he did.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/technology/musk-twitter-d...
> The Delaware Chancery Court judge has given Mr. Musk until Friday to close his long-promised, $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. If he doesn’t, Chancellor McCormick will preside over a trial in November that could end with Mr. Musk being forced to make good on the deal he made with Twitter in April.
Close enough.
> The Delaware Chancery Court judge has given Mr. Musk until Friday to close his long-promised, $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter. If he doesn’t, Chancellor McCormick will preside over a trial in November that could end with Mr. Musk being forced to make good on the deal he made with Twitter in April.
Close enough.
This might be semantic quibbling, but although it never came to decision, everybody with any legal knowledge whatsoever knew that the decision would be in Twitter's favor, and I assume eventually Elon's lawyers got it across to him that he had no chance of winning the case. IMO it's likely that, rather than discovery, prompted the surrender - if I could avoid paying $44 billion for Twitter with a couple embarrassing text leaks, I'd take that deal. So in that sense I don't think it's inaccurate to say he was forced by the judge, albeit indirectly.
Yea, he weaseled out of the trial like he does everything. I wish the judge would have instead forced the trial to move forward no matter what, making him pay both financially and politically/socially.
[deleted]
>im also not sure you can really correlate the fall of rome to a single oligarch hitman although im sure some of the HN history buffs could correct me.
The imperial administration never really recovered from Commodus (who had a bunch of high-ranking officials murdered), although there were plenty of good emperors after him (e.g. Diocletian, Constantine, Justinian), but their achievements tended to be lost by their successors.
The imperial administration never really recovered from Commodus (who had a bunch of high-ranking officials murdered), although there were plenty of good emperors after him (e.g. Diocletian, Constantine, Justinian), but their achievements tended to be lost by their successors.
>im also not sure you can really correlate the fall of rome to a single oligarch hitman
Probably not, but Crassus did live in the time of Rome's centuries-long inflection point.
It's hard to use a phrase like "richest person in the world" in an age where living standards and currencies varied so much, but he was extremely, notoriously, extravagantly wealthy.
He cornered the housing market by showing up to burning buildings with a fire brigade, and offering to put out the fire only if the owners sold the property to him at a steep discount. If they didn't, he let the property burn.
He was eventually killed in a war with the Parthians, and legend has it that they found him so repulsive, they poured molten gold down his corpse's throat as a message.
Probably not, but Crassus did live in the time of Rome's centuries-long inflection point.
It's hard to use a phrase like "richest person in the world" in an age where living standards and currencies varied so much, but he was extremely, notoriously, extravagantly wealthy.
He cornered the housing market by showing up to burning buildings with a fire brigade, and offering to put out the fire only if the owners sold the property to him at a steep discount. If they didn't, he let the property burn.
He was eventually killed in a war with the Parthians, and legend has it that they found him so repulsive, they poured molten gold down his corpse's throat as a message.
[deleted]
Someone send this script to David Fincher!
We shouldn't lose sight of the role that David Sacks and Jason Calcanis has played.
Many of the worst decisions have their fingerprints all over it.
Many of the worst decisions have their fingerprints all over it.
Purposefully didn't focus on "whose fault it is". A long chain of bad decisions led to this situation. Twitter's board shares a fair amount of the blame too, for example. So does Jack Dorsey for not giving twitter much attention during his reign as CEO.
Wait, why does Jack Dorsey deserve blame? He took a failing company and conned an idiot into paying 2.5x market value for it. Measured by shareholder value, he's one of the most brilliant CEOs in history.
15 years ago it wasn't clear whether Facebook or Twitter was going to be the winner (or if they'd both just be another MySpace).
Jack is responsible for Twitter losing.
It always felt like Twitter co didn't actually understand what Twitter was and almost all of the product innovation came from the community rather than twitter itself.
Jack is responsible for Twitter losing.
It always felt like Twitter co didn't actually understand what Twitter was and almost all of the product innovation came from the community rather than twitter itself.
Twitter's only failure is that it never returned a profit. When you look at the social landscape, it's hard to argue anyone has succeeded other than Facebook.
Twitter's product is great and it didn't need to be as large as Facebook. It shouldn't need to twist itself for the greatest common denominator users who required immediate gratification via algorithmic feeds and short memes.
Twitter's product is great and it didn't need to be as large as Facebook. It shouldn't need to twist itself for the greatest common denominator users who required immediate gratification via algorithmic feeds and short memes.
> When you look at the social landscape, it's hard to argue anyone has succeeded other than Facebook.
YouTube and TikTok seem to be doing alright.
YouTube and TikTok seem to be doing alright.
Twitch and Snap too.
TikTok is private, but is said to be losing money. Snap is in the same boat as Twitter as being largely unprofitable. It is unclear if Twitch is profitable either.
He deserves a lot of blame for not standing up for his former team when they were treated so poorly during the transition.
Firing people is normal. Doing it in an arbitrarily cruel way is not.
Firing people is normal. Doing it in an arbitrarily cruel way is not.
What could he have done?
The company was taken private and the new owner started burning the place down to rebuild it in the image of a golden cow or something.
I guess he could have tweeted for mercy.
The company was taken private and the new owner started burning the place down to rebuild it in the image of a golden cow or something.
I guess he could have tweeted for mercy.
the team was paid salary for the term of their contributions PLUS severance. let’s also add proceeds from the stock sale.
are you really saying they’re owed something more by the owners of the company?
are you really saying they’re owed something more by the owners of the company?
Looks like they only ended up with one month pay as severance. Not great… Source: https://fortune.com/2023/01/07/twitter-employees-laid-off-el...
Dorsey retained his stake in the company -- he apparently believed in musk at least far enough to stay invested.
you have a way with words
the best part was all the so-sure-they're-right HN takes that ended up being absolutely incorrect every step of the way
And they still believe it! He's an unparalleled genius and every single breath he takes directly contributes to saving the world. Unfortunately there's a queer globalist Hollywood blue tick pizza trafficking Democrat conspiracy making it look like Twitter is a massive dumpfire, trying to make him look bad despite every single one of his decisions being unquestionably perfect and logical.
I can't figure out which takes you're talking about. I have to assume they're the takes that twitter is closing up shop and that everyone is moving to Mastodon, and that Mastodon is scalable enough to accept those people.
Journalists Remain on Twitter, but Tweet Slightly Less
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/journalists-remain-on-twitter...
Journalists Remain on Twitter, but Tweet Slightly Less
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/journalists-remain-on-twitter...
> only a small handful have deactivated their accounts
This is a bad metric. Twitter takes the dubious position that it's a good idea to allow usernames to be re-registered when people delete their accounts (this one can't be blamed on naughty ol' Mr Car; it's a _vintage_ design flaw). So deleting your account, particularly if you're prominent, is a bad idea as it allows for impersonation.
A better metric would have been how many accounts went silent, but they don't seem to have done that one.
This is a bad metric. Twitter takes the dubious position that it's a good idea to allow usernames to be re-registered when people delete their accounts (this one can't be blamed on naughty ol' Mr Car; it's a _vintage_ design flaw). So deleting your account, particularly if you're prominent, is a bad idea as it allows for impersonation.
A better metric would have been how many accounts went silent, but they don't seem to have done that one.
Elon Musk is never going to be able to buy twitter
oh wait maybe he got the deal, but he'll never pay for it, the whole thing is just a stunt
oh wait maybe he got the deal, but he's so stupid, he'll never be able to pay for it, but he'll be forced to buy it anyway, bankrupting him in the process!
oh wait I guess he just bought twitter. well it's going to fall apart immediately next week now that he fired everyone who kept the lights on!
etc. etc.
oh wait maybe he got the deal, but he'll never pay for it, the whole thing is just a stunt
oh wait maybe he got the deal, but he's so stupid, he'll never be able to pay for it, but he'll be forced to buy it anyway, bankrupting him in the process!
oh wait I guess he just bought twitter. well it's going to fall apart immediately next week now that he fired everyone who kept the lights on!
etc. etc.
[deleted]
Nice fanfic, but no one ever said he wasn't able, just that he was not willing. I think this is pretty clear by the fact that he tried to wiggle out of it and had to be forced by the court. No one was ever doubting that he didn't have the money to buy twitter, just that he wasn't stupid enough to go through with something so dumb just because he got triggered.
nah, people did say that. there was a lot of hyperbole. what's important is whether there were folks who who said all those things, and as to whether they were worth paying attention to their opinion in the first place.
we learn from the best https://elonmusk.today/
> but not before unshackling a prison full of reprobates and racists to rejoin the site by un-suspending their accounts.
Let me fix that for you:
> but not before unshackling a prison full of [people we disagree with] to rejoin the site by un-suspending their accounts.
Let me fix that for you:
> but not before unshackling a prison full of [people we disagree with] to rejoin the site by un-suspending their accounts.
I mean, from my point of view as a passive Twitter user whose life has been unaffected by Elon taking over, I read this just as another repeat of the same ‘Anti-Musk narrative’ that keeps getting tossed around like a football. I don’t care either way, I’m not a Musk apologist, but I would just ask why this whole ordeal upsets you (and others) so much?
Okay he immediately fired a ton of people from a company that was notorious for setting money on fire. Is that really surprising, that he guts his newly acquired company, so he can rebuild it the way he sees fit? Especially considering every single other huge tech company has laid off enormous amounts of employees in the last year? Are you just as mad at them as you are Elon?
Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad? Elon is going to do Elon things, and if it bothers you so much maybe try blocking him on Twitter, and ignoring any news you see about him. It’s not worth the stress. Especially if it causes you to take time out of your day to write such a rage filled post. Just go about your day, and don’t worry about how Elon chooses to run his companies. I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this, just go back to that and we’d all be happier.
Okay he immediately fired a ton of people from a company that was notorious for setting money on fire. Is that really surprising, that he guts his newly acquired company, so he can rebuild it the way he sees fit? Especially considering every single other huge tech company has laid off enormous amounts of employees in the last year? Are you just as mad at them as you are Elon?
Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad? Elon is going to do Elon things, and if it bothers you so much maybe try blocking him on Twitter, and ignoring any news you see about him. It’s not worth the stress. Especially if it causes you to take time out of your day to write such a rage filled post. Just go about your day, and don’t worry about how Elon chooses to run his companies. I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this, just go back to that and we’d all be happier.
Elon was just unnecessarily cruel with the layoffs imo, if he had been more professional and less political I think people would have had a different reaction.
The anti Elon group grew pretty massively when he laid off people in the way that he did. Anecdotally, I was neutral of Elon before the layoffs but that changed when I saw the way he conducted himself.
The anti Elon group grew pretty massively when he laid off people in the way that he did. Anecdotally, I was neutral of Elon before the layoffs but that changed when I saw the way he conducted himself.
> I would just ask why this whole ordeal upsets you (and others) so much? ...
Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad? ...
> I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this
There are two very separate issues. Some people are upset and mad (so good question, and I bet you get some good answers). Other people, including me, are not at all upset or mad BUT we think it's extremely interesting. And important.
> I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this
There are two very separate issues. Some people are upset and mad (so good question, and I bet you get some good answers). Other people, including me, are not at all upset or mad BUT we think it's extremely interesting. And important.
“Elon is going to do Elon things, why get mad?”
Quite the patronizing tone to say basically nothing.
But I’ll add: tech forums (like this) are built for discussions about tech stuff (like twitter), so of course you’ll hear people floating their opinions about these topics. That doesn’t mean they care more/less than you.
We get it, you’re above such petty discourse, but many tech employees see a difference between market layoffs and the richest man in the world buying a company on a whim and firing people over printed code reviews. Does holding that opinion mean that they’re stressing? Probably not. I’d bet most are just replying on the toilet.
Quite the patronizing tone to say basically nothing.
But I’ll add: tech forums (like this) are built for discussions about tech stuff (like twitter), so of course you’ll hear people floating their opinions about these topics. That doesn’t mean they care more/less than you.
We get it, you’re above such petty discourse, but many tech employees see a difference between market layoffs and the richest man in the world buying a company on a whim and firing people over printed code reviews. Does holding that opinion mean that they’re stressing? Probably not. I’d bet most are just replying on the toilet.
> I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad?
It's because a lot of people have invested time into curating their little social sphere on Twitter and Mad Car Guy has set the company on a path to utter destruction. People don't like to have their things taken away.
You may think Twitter "set money on fire" before Musk but objectively they were approximately breaking even and now they clearly are not.
It's because a lot of people have invested time into curating their little social sphere on Twitter and Mad Car Guy has set the company on a path to utter destruction. People don't like to have their things taken away.
You may think Twitter "set money on fire" before Musk but objectively they were approximately breaking even and now they clearly are not.
For someone that says they're not a Musk apologist or to ignore Musk, you seem to have a rather long history of coming out specifically to defend Musk. You realize your immediate comment history is apparent, right?
For reference [1] [2] [3] and so forth.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33999369
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33986234
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33986409
For reference [1] [2] [3] and so forth.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33999369
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33986234
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33986409
I guess you got me? You pointed out comments that came from one particular issue/ thread. That’s not a ‘rather long’ history. And as I said in those comments it had nothing to do with Elon. That was doxxing, plain and simple. And my mind hasn’t changed on that. Doesn’t matter If it’s Elon, Taylor Swift, or my next door neighbor. It’s wrong. Mind you, a high profile celebrity’s convoy got attacked right after all that happened, supposedly because they thought they were getting Elon. My point is just move on with your lives. It’s just recreational outrage at this point.
>"I'm not X, but ..."
Hmm, I've heard that phrase before.
Hmm, I've heard that phrase before.
>Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad?
The people who are mad are the type of people who were used to having the illusion of influence, or thought they had the social currency to do/get what they wanted with Twitter.
They've lost that perceived control, and are suddenly anxious that they're addicted to a service they cannot influence or use for social power. They get happy for being able to drill in Musk's failure. To them, Musk is a convenient "rich" that they can finally apply "eat the rich" to.
The people who are mad are the type of people who were used to having the illusion of influence, or thought they had the social currency to do/get what they wanted with Twitter.
They've lost that perceived control, and are suddenly anxious that they're addicted to a service they cannot influence or use for social power. They get happy for being able to drill in Musk's failure. To them, Musk is a convenient "rich" that they can finally apply "eat the rich" to.
I don’t think that’s a fair characterisation.
I am for instance not and have never been a twat and have disliked most of the discourse there and certainly resented the disproportionate amount of attention the twats got.
However, I had and have little reason to trust that Musk won’t make twitter into simply a different kind of hell. He certainly said as much with all his (ultimately) fake “free speech” stance.
Basically just because a thing is bad doesn’t mean it can’t get worse.
If Musk manages to make twitter irrelevant though I’ll thank him for it.
I am for instance not and have never been a twat and have disliked most of the discourse there and certainly resented the disproportionate amount of attention the twats got.
However, I had and have little reason to trust that Musk won’t make twitter into simply a different kind of hell. He certainly said as much with all his (ultimately) fake “free speech” stance.
Basically just because a thing is bad doesn’t mean it can’t get worse.
If Musk manages to make twitter irrelevant though I’ll thank him for it.
I mean, from my point of view as a passive Twitter user whose live has been unaffected by Elon taking over, I read this just as another repeat of the same ‘Anti-Musk narrative’ that keeps getting tossed around like a football. I don’t care either way, I’m not a Musk apologist, but I would just ask why this whole ordeal upsets you (and others) so much?
Okay he immediately fired a ton of people from a company that was notorious for setting money on fire. Is that really surprising, that he guts his newly acquired company, so he can rebuild it the way he sees fit? Especially considering every single other huge tech company has laid off enormous amounts of employees in the last year? Are you just as mad at them as you are Elon?
Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad? Elon is going to do Elon things, and if it bothers you so much maybe try blocking him on Twitter, and ignoring any news you see about him. It’s not worth the stress. Especially if it causes you to take time out of your day to write such a rage filled post. Just go about your day, and don’t worry about how Elon chooses to run his companies. I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this, just go back to that.
Okay he immediately fired a ton of people from a company that was notorious for setting money on fire. Is that really surprising, that he guts his newly acquired company, so he can rebuild it the way he sees fit? Especially considering every single other huge tech company has laid off enormous amounts of employees in the last year? Are you just as mad at them as you are Elon?
Again, I just don’t get why it makes folks so mad? Elon is going to do Elon things, and if it bothers you so much maybe try blocking him on Twitter, and ignoring any news you see about him. It’s not worth the stress. Especially if it causes you to take time out of your day to write such a rage filled post. Just go about your day, and don’t worry about how Elon chooses to run his companies. I doubt everyone cared this much about how Twitter was run before this, just go back to that.
Why do you think that folks discussing this situation find it upsetting, stressful and/or maddening?
The idea that blocking the billionaire owner would prevent me from noticing Twitter is struggling is a little silly.
The idea that blocking the billionaire owner would prevent me from noticing Twitter is struggling is a little silly.
> Innovation rapidly plateaus.
Yeah when I think of innovation I think of Twitter, and when I think of stagnation, I think of Elon Musk - the guy with the rocket company /s.
Yeah when I think of innovation I think of Twitter, and when I think of stagnation, I think of Elon Musk - the guy with the rocket company /s.
I’d wager a great deal of SpaceX’s success is down to competent management and a lot of people who believe in the mission and are willing to work very hard to make it happen.
I’d also wager that a not insignificant amount of time and effort is spent insulating Musk from anything important, rather like how an oyster coats an irritant in layers of nacre.
Twitter’s problem is that they no longer have competent management. Plus they’ve never needed the kind of organisational immune system that can deal with something like Musk before and are therefore wide open.
I’d also wager that a not insignificant amount of time and effort is spent insulating Musk from anything important, rather like how an oyster coats an irritant in layers of nacre.
Twitter’s problem is that they no longer have competent management. Plus they’ve never needed the kind of organisational immune system that can deal with something like Musk before and are therefore wide open.
What's with people constantly inventing myths about SpaceX?
It's all out in the open, Musk played an important role in getting it going and still plays an important role in running the R&D side of the company, leaving the 'operational' stuff to Shotwell. There are plenty of testimonies from current and previous employees showing this.
It's pathetic to be inventing stories just because you can't accept that someone you dislike has been successful in some things.
It's all out in the open, Musk played an important role in getting it going and still plays an important role in running the R&D side of the company, leaving the 'operational' stuff to Shotwell. There are plenty of testimonies from current and previous employees showing this.
It's pathetic to be inventing stories just because you can't accept that someone you dislike has been successful in some things.
Not sure why you’re quite so personally upset by this idea.
Think about it - if you’re someone who wants to continue making cool rockets you’re going to tell the person with all the money anything they want to hear, including “Oh yes, you’re so smart and your R&D contribution is so important, thank you for thinking of these things, how would we have managed without you.”
The last thing you want is the person with all the money to stop giving you money because their notoriously fragile ego has been bruised.
Think about it - if you’re someone who wants to continue making cool rockets you’re going to tell the person with all the money anything they want to hear, including “Oh yes, you’re so smart and your R&D contribution is so important, thank you for thinking of these things, how would we have managed without you.”
The last thing you want is the person with all the money to stop giving you money because their notoriously fragile ego has been bruised.
No - no he is not. Since he bought Twitter it seems as though he hasn't stepped foot in it judging by his private flight records[1].
It has been no secret at all that at Musk's company's significant management resources are dedicated to managing Elon Musk, and when he gets his hands into the rest of the company things tend to go wrong[2,3].
Musk is the money and was the hype man. By all accounts he was an absolute disaster of a manager, and the goal of dealing with him was to keep him as away from regular employees as possible. It's just in the case of SpaceX everyone is committed to the big lie because they all want to build spaceships - if you're smart enough to do rocket science, you're smart enough to do almost anything else and make bank. At Tesla it's the same - people wanted to build environmentally friendly, self-driving cars (Autopilot might be increasingly a catastrophe, but it's not hard to see why people would want to work on it).
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-jet-not-recently-f...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-extreme-...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/19/elon-musk...
It has been no secret at all that at Musk's company's significant management resources are dedicated to managing Elon Musk, and when he gets his hands into the rest of the company things tend to go wrong[2,3].
Musk is the money and was the hype man. By all accounts he was an absolute disaster of a manager, and the goal of dealing with him was to keep him as away from regular employees as possible. It's just in the case of SpaceX everyone is committed to the big lie because they all want to build spaceships - if you're smart enough to do rocket science, you're smart enough to do almost anything else and make bank. At Tesla it's the same - people wanted to build environmentally friendly, self-driving cars (Autopilot might be increasingly a catastrophe, but it's not hard to see why people would want to work on it).
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-jet-not-recently-f...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-extreme-...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/19/elon-musk...
It's a bit naive to think SpaceX's ability to innovate is Musk's own doing. Gwynne Shotwell has been the one calling the shots for a long, long time.
Gwynne calls the shots because Elon put her there.
"Surely this next success is ALSO due to luck" - the loser comforts themself on the sidelines. "Surely, this is simply the 14th time they have gotten incredibly, improbably lucky."
"Surely this next success is ALSO due to luck" - the loser comforts themself on the sidelines. "Surely, this is simply the 14th time they have gotten incredibly, improbably lucky."
Twitter is (was?) a large contributor to OSS projects, no?
A lot of folks aren’t open to change and see change and experiments as frightening yielding biased conclusions.
It’s fine to have opinions but drawing bold conclusions is best done with factual data over a longer time horizons.
It’s fine to have opinions but drawing bold conclusions is best done with factual data over a longer time horizons.
> A lot of folks aren’t open to change and see change and experiments as frightening yielding biased conclusions.
> It’s fine to have opinions but drawing bold conclusions is best done with factual data over a longer time horizons.
Not sure if you've heard of the McNamara fallacy, but it's something I see a lot on HN.
Point is, the twitter saga is happening now. I'm sure a retroactive analysis of twitter's financials, user growth, activity, etc. would be fascinating ten years from now... but at that point it would have become an academic curiosity. Perhaps a curiosity we can learn from, but in that timespan the tech industry might be totally different.
It's thus silly to brush away obvious qualitative observations and dismiss conclusions from them as irrelevant. Worth noting their limitations, sure.
A bit silly to call this whole saga an "experiment" either. Musk didn't even want Twitter. He decided to axe a good chunk of the folks arbitrarily. By many accounts, a good chunk of the folks left don't want to be there either. Is it an experiment? If so, it's one of the least controlled and poorly set up experiments I've ever seen.
Not sure if you've heard of the McNamara fallacy, but it's something I see a lot on HN.
Point is, the twitter saga is happening now. I'm sure a retroactive analysis of twitter's financials, user growth, activity, etc. would be fascinating ten years from now... but at that point it would have become an academic curiosity. Perhaps a curiosity we can learn from, but in that timespan the tech industry might be totally different.
It's thus silly to brush away obvious qualitative observations and dismiss conclusions from them as irrelevant. Worth noting their limitations, sure.
A bit silly to call this whole saga an "experiment" either. Musk didn't even want Twitter. He decided to axe a good chunk of the folks arbitrarily. By many accounts, a good chunk of the folks left don't want to be there either. Is it an experiment? If so, it's one of the least controlled and poorly set up experiments I've ever seen.
I've had a bug on Twitter iOS for nearly a year where if I'm on cellular network it cannot connect. I can go to the website fine using desktop user agent but the app will not load tweets. All other apps work fine. The app starts working again when I get on a wifi network.
If you are on iOS there is a per-app setting where you can disable cellular data for a particular app. It's possible you inadvertently turned that on for Twitter - Its a mistake I've made before and convinced myself I had a bug in my app.
Wow, that was it. No idea how that happened.
Could it be something OS config related? I recently migrated phones without "upgrading" (I do this every other upgrade) and realized I put in some draconian lockdowns on my old phone that prevented me from seeing Twitter at all in the browser. New phone worked fine.
Have you checked settings > cellular to see if you might have accidentally denied mobile data usage for that particular app?
It wasn't just Twitter having problems https://downdetector.com/
"works for me"
Seems like glitches updating new features.
It would be hilarious if Twitter used a footgun to disable API access and blocked itself. The deadline was this week, right?
I believe that they have a number of internal systems that were relying on the ability to consume the public API "firehose" and now that it's been turned off, they're failing.
That smells like a big antipattern.
No it's the opposite, it's exactly what you should do to exercise your public API. If your API isn't good enough for you it isn't good enough for your external integrators.
Dogfooding is an antipattern now?
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Tweetdeck (which is a Twitter product) stopped working yesterday. My API access is still OK for now.
Don't worry. Once Musk transitions to leading software & servers teams these embarrassments won't happen anymore!
Similar content on Mastodon for anyone avoiding Twitter:
https://mastodon.social/@mmasnick/109831436839340942
https://mastodon.social/@mmasnick/109831436839340942
is this someone close to twitter’s inner workings? if not, can we stop pretending that random people have insight as to what is happening at twitter.
Shameless plug: I created a browser extension to help transition to Mastodon[0]. If you don't yet feel like you can leave twitter.com, but want to explore alternatives it's a great way to get started. Essentially it injects Mastodon posts into your Twitter timeline, so you can retain your existing Twitter following while getting exposed to Mastodon.
[0] - https://chirper.picheta.me
[0] - https://chirper.picheta.me
This isn't because of some policy, it's some sort of error. I can't even post on an account (via the app) I haven't been active in in months but unlike the web browser it simply fails. DMs also don't load.
I think they're having an incident. I can't follow people, post, or load messages right now.
Sounds like they tried to restrict and killed an/their own ("unofficial") API, and shot themselves into the foot.
Definitely the kind of mistake that gets made after losing an enormous fraction of your institutional knowledge.
Sure. Or it could just the kind of mistake that is being made all the time. I remember for example facebook taking itself offline[0], or cloudflare taking itself offline[1]. And of course pre-Musk twitter is well known itself to regularly have had significant incidents.
This new twitter incident could well be a result of layoffs and the resulting loss of institutional knowledge, but that's hardly a foregone conclusion.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Facebook_outage
[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-outage-on-june-21-202...
This new twitter incident could well be a result of layoffs and the resulting loss of institutional knowledge, but that's hardly a foregone conclusion.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Facebook_outage
[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-outage-on-june-21-202...
They've pretty obviously had an increase in service problems since the culling. Most services this size very rarely have outages. You had to go back to 2021 for facebook. Twitter has had several major outages since Musk's purchase.
Twitter also has made a lot of changes in the past few months. I don't recall a time in recent history where they've made so many changes so rapidly. Arguably not all for the better but "move fast and break things", right?
Twitter had a code freezenfrom the time of culling until January roughly. They appeared to make a lot of changes due to botched launches, e.g. they released checkmarks for sale, reversed it and re-released it. Does that count as 3 changes, or one half-baked one?
Move fast for no reason is stupid
It could all be part of Musk’s plan. Make people upset that they can’t use the website properly, and then offer a paid service that provides them with a working version?
tweetdeck.twitter.com is down with an auth error - they've YOLO'd themselves to death.
Same, can't follow, it will say that I've reached the follower limit. Checked documentation, not even close.
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Likewise! I thought I had been randomly banned before finding this post.
I never post tweets, but I did try to follow someone and got an error.
I can’t post, retweet or follow. Loading Tweets work.
Same here - can't post.
As of today I'm getting a message saying that I can't follow more people. I'm only following ~2000 people and have more followers than following. I've tried unfollowing a number of accounts but still can't follow more.
Twitter is starting to feel very broken in ways that seem counter productive to growth and daily usage.
Twitter is starting to feel very broken in ways that seem counter productive to growth and daily usage.
It’s an error. You can get around the limit by scheduling a tweet a minute into the future or using the API to tweet/reply.
You can if you want to. Nothing I tweet is important enough to bother. If it doesn't come back I just won't post any more.
Just like millions of other people.
Just like millions of other people.
I am not sure how long the API will last. They have already said that they will be limiting the usage of the free API to "good bots"
Ooo good find.
Sounds like the clock for rate-limiting is improperly centralized, in my speculation.
Sounds like the clock for rate-limiting is improperly centralized, in my speculation.
Twitter is probably toast, which really is too bad. It was a huge source of joy and friendship and learning for me over the years. But stuff like this is leaving the door wide open for others to figure out how to do real time + video + micro blogging.
Dear brilliant tech-obsessed entrepreneur…this could be you.
Dear brilliant tech-obsessed entrepreneur…this could be you.
I have just received the "You are over the daily limit of sending tweets" message. Sent three (!) tweets today.
Couldn't think of a better way to kill the user retention and engagement.
Well done, Twitter!
Couldn't think of a better way to kill the user retention and engagement.
Well done, Twitter!
Hmm... It's interesting that it's not particularly clear whether this is a failure or policy change. Twitter's intentional changes don't look a whole lot different than outages. (And their communication is so poor we can't tell from that either.)
I think its pretty clear that its a failure, either due to a bug or an incorrect policy change.
Some people haven't been able to tweet at all.
Some people haven't been able to tweet at all.
This must be a divine intervention. I was just about to tweet some insomniac crazy tweets and got an error.
Whenever you are about to post something, anywhere in general, ask yourself: Why? What are you trying to get out of that? Are you adding meaningful information? Are you trying to advance a particular cause (which can just be a small personal one, but at least any cause at all)?
Note that I'm obviously not saying any online discourse is for naught.
But during and after your "social media experience", for lack of a better term, do you feel better or worse, and if not better, did you at least accomplish something?
Note that I'm obviously not saying any online discourse is for naught.
But during and after your "social media experience", for lack of a better term, do you feel better or worse, and if not better, did you at least accomplish something?
Usually I don’t post random stuff. But haven’t slept for a few days because of stomach flu, feeling like a drunk, and this inhibits my judgment.
Understandable, sleep deprivation sucks.
Hope you get some sleep soon!
Conversely, as long as you're not someone who regularly finds yourself being a jerk, it's okay to just experience social interactions. Most of my internet posting could accurately be described as "shooting the shit", and I feel okay about that.
True, if it really is social interaction. But especially on Twitter (when I still bothered using it), I saw so many stream-of-consciousness dumping of thoughts on there, which mostly only managed to gather a few irrelevant likes, that I seriously wonder whether the poster really gets anything out of it, or is just used to shouting out every little thought that they have into the void.
This also goes for answers to tweets, where even on highly technical, niche topics, a pretty large share of the replies seem either performative ("I'm going to ask a question to impress OP, the answer does not really matter!"), or useless (some tired meme, if it was ever funny), or just plain nonsense ("I don't really understand the technical matter behind that, but here's some nonsensical technical question that seems vaguely related").
I think in face-to-face social situations, most people would be much better at weighing whether their interjection is worth the effort and the attention.
This also goes for answers to tweets, where even on highly technical, niche topics, a pretty large share of the replies seem either performative ("I'm going to ask a question to impress OP, the answer does not really matter!"), or useless (some tired meme, if it was ever funny), or just plain nonsense ("I don't really understand the technical matter behind that, but here's some nonsensical technical question that seems vaguely related").
I think in face-to-face social situations, most people would be much better at weighing whether their interjection is worth the effort and the attention.
Also "What do I hope the reader will get from what I post?"
But you have to then be honest about the answer to that. Especially if religious or political conversion is what you hope they get.
But you have to then be honest about the answer to that. Especially if religious or political conversion is what you hope they get.
I was about to Tweet for the first time in many months when I ran into this and looked up what was going on, bizarre timing. Good thing though, stopped me from coming back!
Tweetdeck is also down if you're set to the non-preview interface, stuck in a loop of login and instant logouts.
The Tweetdeck Preview works (and you can access this by clearing all cookies) but keeps hitting a rate limit.
I hope the rumors of TweetDeck becoming a premium feature are not true - I could never hope to catch everything without use of all those columns at once.
Can confirm. "Legacy" TweetDeck is unreachable. "Preview" TweetDeck works... sorta. It's slow as molasses and it's a torture to use it on an i7 laptop with 16 GB RAM and an SSD. I can't imagine how that would be in a 4GB Celeron craptop.
Can Musk please stop actively killing twitter already.
I know people say just move away, but for certain communities (I'm not even talking about small communities: like in Japan, all the people from individuals to companies to artists post and only post all the updates on Twitter), Twitter is the only place to follow the news. I don't need anything fancy I just need it to work.
I know people say just move away, but for certain communities (I'm not even talking about small communities: like in Japan, all the people from individuals to companies to artists post and only post all the updates on Twitter), Twitter is the only place to follow the news. I don't need anything fancy I just need it to work.
minimaxir pointed out a brilliant trick to sidestep the Twitter problem: schedule a tweet for 1m into the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34716411
I haven’t tested it, and it doesn’t seem to work for replies (no way to schedule those) but it seemed worth mentioning.
EDIT: Twitter seems up now. https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1623454832257548288
I haven’t tested it, and it doesn’t seem to work for replies (no way to schedule those) but it seemed worth mentioning.
EDIT: Twitter seems up now. https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1623454832257548288
DMs still down for me
I was met with a "you are subscribing to too many accounts at once" today.
Is there a version of this which shows a plan like in The Producers, where Elon appears, in good faith, to ruin Twitter until it goes bankrupt, absolving him of having to pay them back?
I've tweeted once today.
I'm now over the limit for sending tweets.
(I pay for Twitter Blue)
I'm now over the limit for sending tweets.
(I pay for Twitter Blue)
working as intended
Somewhere on a Twitter dashboard, a graph for revenue/tweet is showing hockey-stick growth.
There is an incident for sure. Cant tweet unless you schedule it. Cant follow any new accounts.
There has always been a limit. Especially with replies.
I recall the XBox support team having to juggle 8 or more different handles to get around that limitation.
I recall the XBox support team having to juggle 8 or more different handles to get around that limitation.
A while ago I tried to follow a person and was denied with a Limit reached, even though haven’t been on twitter for weeks. https://twitter.com/heinmeling/status/1623520631269789696?s=...
I experienced this too, minutes ago
This random forum may have crashed. But here's the techcrunch article
https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/twitter-tweet-limit-bug-er...
https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/08/twitter-tweet-limit-bug-er...
"Free speech maximalist"
Should be rewritten ".. minimalist", by inspection.
Perhaps he meant he's a free speech maxi-pad?
Title should probably be changed to: "Twitter has a rate limiting bug"
Wasn't working earlier, now it appears to be working now. I saw a rumor this morning that they were making TweetDeck Blue only, and I wonder if some sort of Twitter update regarding that move broke things.
They [0] are reporting that "Welcome to TweetdDeck, a feature of Twitter Blue" was found in the source code of the new tweetdeck.
[0] https://twitter.com/TitterTakeover/status/162312359733297971...
[0] https://twitter.com/TitterTakeover/status/162312359733297971...
For want of an API the tweets were lost.
For want of tweets the subscribers were lost.
For want of subscribers the channel was lost.
For want of a channel the platform-users were lost.
For want of platform-users the platform was lost.
And, all for the want of an API.
For want of tweets the subscribers were lost.
For want of subscribers the channel was lost.
For want of a channel the platform-users were lost.
For want of platform-users the platform was lost.
And, all for the want of an API.
Ditto yesterday after a few tweets. Assuming this is bug, as others have noted similar even with only two tweets. So one has to assume a bug, or perhaps some other issue where they felt they had to manually temporarily limit the number of tweets drastically to help avoid some larger failure. Ironically, I and most presumably wanted to post about but where unable to because of the nature of the bug.
-- website just gives me error "This community is not accessible because you are in South Korea." - what they got against South Korea?? --
Also get this issue in HK
They started limiting how many people I could follow in a day. Very suddenly today. I could follow zero people at all, the one person I wanted to follow was too many. For no apparent reason. They linked me to a 2019 policy explaining this, and none of the reasons listed apply. I just… can’t follow a person today for some reason.
I think someone pushed the wrong thing to prod.
Notifications tab seems down on the website too.
I only noticed because it didn't have the constant "(20)" text injected in the titles for once (I never look at that tab anymore because it's always "recommended tweets" spam and it immediatelly fills it with more notifications if I open it to clear the number).
I only noticed because it didn't have the constant "(20)" text injected in the titles for once (I never look at that tab anymore because it's always "recommended tweets" spam and it immediatelly fills it with more notifications if I open it to clear the number).
I have to wonder ...how do features like this get tested and greenlighted on supposedly cutting edge global platforms with the best teams.
What is the limit? Article doesn't say.
2,400 per day, according to Twitter: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-limit...
This seems pretty reasonable honestly. Who the heck needs to tweet more often than 100 tweets per hour continuously?
I have a few friends who use Twitter DMs as chat, and 500 seems low for that purpose. Plus, I'd figure that a 1:1 message is a lot easier and lower load than trying to consistently share something globally....
Bots, probably.
Based on other comments this isn't the actual limit (ie: it's much lower) or the current implementation is broken.
[deleted]
Oh, cool, so it will effect bots and a couple people who could use the corrective nudge. Thanks for that.
The error people are getting links to this page: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-limit...
tl;dr:
* 500 DMs (yes, direct messages)
* 2400 tweets
* 4 account email changes
* 400 follows
* Additional restrictions once an account following 5000 people total
tl;dr:
* 500 DMs (yes, direct messages)
* 2400 tweets
* 4 account email changes
* 400 follows
* Additional restrictions once an account following 5000 people total
That's been the limit since sometime between November 29 [1] and December 13 [2]. The daily tweet limit has been 2400 since at least 2018-01-03 [3]. I'm not sure why the DM limit was reduced.
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20221129122631/https://help.twit... 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20221213164704/https://help.twit... 3. https://web.archive.org/web/20180103202353/https://help.twit...
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20221129122631/https://help.twit... 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20221213164704/https://help.twit... 3. https://web.archive.org/web/20180103202353/https://help.twit...
I guess I'm glad I still have my static blog website (that I also use as a microblog if the occasion fits)
[deleted]
2400 tweets
it has always been this way, afik. That is a lot of tweets. Who is going to tweet that often in a day?
it has always been this way, afik. That is a lot of tweets. Who is going to tweet that often in a day?
I could not add a new follow with the Twitter app on iOS. Message was that I reached a limit.
First time I really felt a change since Twitter moved. Strange feeling to be limited for no reason and anticipating the future with payment required for everything.
This just happened to me! And I’m following fewer than 900 people.
Just hit this and felt like I had a existential crisis... Did Musk finally takedown Twitter?
[deleted]
[deleted]
Probably part of the settlement with the SEC to limit Musk's tweeting.
> I am using ModernDeck 2 as Twitter client
Isn't Twitter banning 3rd party clients?
Isn't Twitter banning 3rd party clients?
Moderndeck runs on top of tweetdeck, which is first party.
I can't follow or tweet using their official website(twitter.com).
Seeing how Twitter was up for months while being proactively destroyed by an incompetent doofus, I would say this is a testament to solid resilience and scale engineering that was.
Blue checkmarks are posting 4k tweets and using up all the characters.
seems like pretty much everyone is getting this error right now - logged into an account I haven't tweeted with today and also got that error
...time to move to spacehey I guess
...time to move to spacehey I guess
Well it seems like a typical message for anti-DDoS rate-limiting, probably something incorrectly started attributing the clock or counter for ratelimiting.
[deleted]
Finally Twitter is going in the right direction. Less spam, less fakes and monetizing from people who earn from your platform.
Article replaces "Twitter" with "Elon Musk." Reads like comedy. "Elon Musk starts limiting how many tweets you can post per day." "I couldn't login to Elon Musk." This kind of idolatry makes me laugh, because people typically are unaware that they're doing it. Something about that is incredibly comical to me. Anyone else find this hilarious? I'm curious if there is some evolutionary purpose behind it. Being that it's subconscious behavior, I suspect there is.
Funny, I got the limit error for today, and I posted a single tweet.
The quality of Twitter's launches has visibly gone downhill.
The quality of Twitter's launches has visibly gone downhill.
I am getting errors on a number of sites. Is this a twitter only problem or something bigger?
[deleted]
I was just replying to someone’s tweet and it kept failing. Not sure what is going on
Twitter just told me I’m not allowed to follow more people. No real reason why.
I ran into that as well. Despite having used the platform since 2007, I was unable to follow more than 5000 users (also despite having ~1400 followers). Considering the platform has some hundreds of millions of monthly active users, it was completely mind-boggling to me that I can't follow more than ~5000. Especially when you consider how many official orgs like local police, fire, emergency, road/traffic, news, school district, companies you are interested in, bands you like, etc... it's basically inevitable to hit that limit, especially after having used the service for 15+ years.
starting a few minutes ago:
- twitter prevented me from posting any more tweets "for the day"
- "#facebookdown" started trending on twitter
- "#instagramdown" started trending on twitter
all of this happening around the House hearing. curious.
- twitter prevented me from posting any more tweets "for the day"
- "#facebookdown" started trending on twitter
- "#instagramdown" started trending on twitter
all of this happening around the House hearing. curious.
In another part of the world, people are being curious how it precisely coincided with Nintendo Direct show (of all things). That could be a wrong kind of curiosity.
What house hearing? Sorry I seem to be out of the loop?
I was/am also getting an error when I try to follow other accounts.
Bring back the Fail Whale.
how can one possibly tweet more than 2400 times a day? Surely this cutoff was chosen because people do but...how do you even live your life outside twitter at that point? Bots I guess?
You can tweet if you schedule it > 1 minute into the future
This is basically turning them into a badly made blog
$1 per tweet doesn't sound so silly any more :D
Musk is just fascist lite Michael Scott now.
It was a temporary glitch/outage like we've seen countless times over the years, but by all means indulge in a moment of schadenfreude.
Just another glitch by the new, terrible management while implementing a new, terrible feature. Nothing to see here.
Great, now they’ll finally shut up :^)
Strange... for some reason, I don't mind not being able to tweet, it's like Twitter is trying to tell me to not waste my time~
did he try restarting the server?
I wish Twitter was publicly traded right now. I need some excitement in my life.
tkiolp4(1)
ccn0p(3)
This is 100% in response to Turkey banning twitter in the middle of earthquake response, and Elon Musk bowing down to the terms of the authoritarian government. Instead of applying it locally, they applied it globally.
Are you serious Twitter? In the middle of an earthquake disaster in Turkey where people try to collect list of people alive under the rubble?
Doesn't matter, Erdogan just blocked Twitter again because people were asking why was the government not being competent and where were the funds from the special earthquake relief tax.
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Sounds like Turkey blocked twitter anyways
It's back on now (mostly)
In Turkey? That’s interesting. I wonder what changed.
Where’d you learn about that?
Where’d you learn about that?
People pressured for Twitter to open. Prominent figures on live TV mentioned this as well, loud and clear.
Twitter is not really the platform for that type of organizing. They are 100% on Whatsapp though.
There is always going to be something happening somewhere also.
There is always going to be something happening somewhere also.
You're aware that this has affected Turkey and Syria, in Turkey affected 10 cities, basically erased half of them from the map, right?
This is not any disaster. This is the disaster after 99.
Plus, please do not assume that people are only trying to use Twitter. They post addresses of loved ones to anywhere they can find: Twitter, Instagram, FB, Tiktok, local social media etc. and surely Whatsapp before all these.
However, the very nature of posting openly in social platforms are different than platforms which are predominantly used for private communication. People cannot think of building massive groups through Whatsapp. Plus, there's a barrier to reach hub people.
This is not any disaster. This is the disaster after 99.
Plus, please do not assume that people are only trying to use Twitter. They post addresses of loved ones to anywhere they can find: Twitter, Instagram, FB, Tiktok, local social media etc. and surely Whatsapp before all these.
However, the very nature of posting openly in social platforms are different than platforms which are predominantly used for private communication. People cannot think of building massive groups through Whatsapp. Plus, there's a barrier to reach hub people.
>You're aware that this has affected Turkey and Syria, in Turkey affected 10 cities, basically erased half of them from the map, right?
Yup! And they squandered it.
See comment here:
Imagine if the money had been spent on seismic retrofitting so that fewer buildings would collapse during an earthquake? Los Angeles spent $1.3 billion to retrofit more than 8,000 of their most vulnerable buildings. With much lower cost of labour and a $30 billion pot, Turkey should have been able to retrofit far more buildings.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/10xyybj/eu_p...
Yup! And they squandered it.
See comment here:
Imagine if the money had been spent on seismic retrofitting so that fewer buildings would collapse during an earthquake? Los Angeles spent $1.3 billion to retrofit more than 8,000 of their most vulnerable buildings. With much lower cost of labour and a $30 billion pot, Turkey should have been able to retrofit far more buildings.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/10xyybj/eu_p...
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What’s the limit? Depending on that it could increase signal to noise. It would only affect accounts that is at tail end of the bell, ie bots and some extreme accounts that usually annoys the crap out of me.
Let’s wait for the official before pouncing
Let’s wait for the official before pouncing
Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, Fox have incidents right now.
Interesting how many here took early conclusions, especially many writing that it’s the fault of Elon.
Interesting how many here took early conclusions, especially many writing that it’s the fault of Elon.
You're making an early conclusion.
Which is that there is a common thread between Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, Fox and Twitter that doesn't cause outages at lots of other sites like a network link down or routing table misconfiguration would cause.
Which is that there is a common thread between Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, Fox and Twitter that doesn't cause outages at lots of other sites like a network link down or routing table misconfiguration would cause.
The article is about Twitter. So it’s really not that “interesting”, it’s literally the point of this discussion thread.
I wish I was surprised at the pettiness that seeing Twitter clearly having some internal issue - the willingness of people who consider themselves adults to drink it up as hate fuel against the bad man they think switched "teams".
Imagine the most incompetent and yet overconfident person you've ever worked with. Imagine them taking full credit for everything they've worked on despite making the people they work with miserable. For some reason people love them despite the fact they are an obvious fraud.
Now imagine the satisfaction you would get when they very publicly reveal that they aren't a super genius, just a huge rich asshole.
This is why people are enjoying the Musk Twitter saga.
Now imagine the satisfaction you would get when they very publicly reveal that they aren't a super genius, just a huge rich asshole.
This is why people are enjoying the Musk Twitter saga.
I don’t believe that’s true. For a couple hundred people maybe.
Let’s be honest, Hate is a team sport now.
Let’s be honest, Hate is a team sport now.
Imagine this level of obsession with a celebrity. Musk is not your bully at work.
It takes a high level of obsession for me to read an article about Musk on HN and say "lol"
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I think this is a write/posting outage/incident.
Firing everyone seems to be working out well for stability.