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mjfern | 6 years ago

As an aside, why does nearly every Twitter link take you to a page not found thus requiring a reload? This is a terrible user experience that should be easy to fix.

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ikeboy|6 years ago

They implemented a mitigation for an issue that had this as a side effect. See https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/insights/2... and the last time this came up at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20123942

Terrible engineering on their part.

swang|6 years ago

thanks for this. when they released their new twitter version, i started getting all these pages where it would error out and none of the reload buttons would work. couldn't search the cause for this very well. i can't believe the resolution to this is to force users to reload yet again to load the site... ugh.

2ion|6 years ago

Oh, when I open Twitter in Firefox on Android tweets fail to load in 95% of the cases, however the Twitter site itself loads fine enough to show me a Retry button I can press to fail at loading the tweet again. All the while accessing via 'app' and even embedded tweets on 3rd-party sites load fine. Can't recall when this started; must have been some time in 2018.

On the desktop (in Firefox also, same addons and addon config too) things always work (as far as that can be said for a site as horribly slow as theirs).

They have been completely below the bar in terms of UX for a long time now, at least for me. They used to have a lean, good/available and fast site, and now they don't.

shantly|6 years ago

I'd assumed it was on purpose to push you toward the app. I don't see it as much on desktop.

tgsovlerkhgsel|6 years ago

On Reddit, I almost always downvote the "broken" link, just to make Twitter marginally less visible.

At this point, the platform is so full of horrible UX and dark patterns that I want it to die.

axaxs|6 years ago

It's worse than that...they provide a reload button even that does absolutely nothing, requiring you to manually reload the page. With all the money they've spent on engineering, it's mystifying why their system is such a dumpster fire.

notelonmusk|6 years ago

"We've detected that JavaScript is disabled in your browser. Would you like to proceed to legacy Twitter?"

> Clicks button

> Nothing happens

> Right Click Inspect Element

> Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete

Revenue US$3.04 billion Operating income US$453 million Net income Increase US$1.2 billion Total assets US$10.16 billion Total equity US$6.8 billion

> Hmm...

JohnTHaller|6 years ago

$ to support non-JS users > $ revenue from non-JS users

mcv|6 years ago

Like Amazon is intentionally enabling counterfeiting, Twitter's website is now intentionally broken. Somehow Twitter forgot how to build a functional website.

throwawaysea|6 years ago

I've wondered the same thing. It seems to only happen on mobile browsers, and on both iOS and Android. I wonder if people who are logged in are subject to the same?

kadoban|6 years ago

It seems to happen at least much less often when logged in.

But yes, it is by far the jankiest thing I've ever seen in a supposedly serious tech company. No idea what failure has allowed that to happen for so long, it seems to be a permanent feature at this point.

alienallys|6 years ago

Holy moly. I thought it was a thing with my phone and not a wider problem...

dilyevsky|6 years ago

This has been going on for years. Twitter is just really bad at this software thing

ryanlol|6 years ago

This has been going on for so long they simply must not give a shit.

mffnbs|6 years ago

I always thought this was some sort of rate limiting that twitter applies to visits from aggregators like reddit or hn. I'm not sure how I originally made that assumption, though.

Scramblejams|6 years ago

Firefox on iOS simply won’t show me Twitter any more, even in private mode. Always says “something went wrong,” no matter how many times I reload. Oh well, didn’t need it anyway.

Marsymars|6 years ago

I think it has something to do with their cookie requirements. Not too sure, I just stopped opening Twitter links rather than debugging why I couldn't load their contents anymore.

andyfleming|6 years ago

I’ve specifically noticed it when using the embedded browsers in apps. If I “open in safari”, it will load.