Ask HN: Can we ban Twitter links, please?

[whyoh]

Every day there are posts here with some Twitter thread as the source.

This used to be just annoying in the past (because of the overall low quality of such sources), but now it's gone too far. Twitter won't let you see the content without logging in anymore. At least this is what I see when I open a Twitter link and scroll down: https://i.imgur.com/E0h2CtQ.png

There are many free blog posting platforms out there that don't annoy users like that and — needless to say — are in a much more readable format. All it takes is a couple of minutes to sign up...

I think such a HN rule could help in promoting common decency on the web.

EDIT: A couple of posters made valid points against an outright ban. Someone suggested flagging paywalls/credential-walls. How about lowering the score for Twitter-link submissions (something like: 1 vote counts 0.5 votes)?

[laurencei]

Doesnt the HN voting system kind of take care of this problem? If the tweet is low-quality, not important, then it wont get many upvotes.

But if the tweet is highly important, has information people believe is valuable etc - then it gets upvoted towards the top of HN.

An outright ban on tweets also creates a secondary problem; what if there was some single tweet that was extremely important to the HN community. The inability to post it means people miss out on the news/discussion, until later on when it is re-submitted as a news story elsewhere.

[hhjinks]

That's one way to view it.

Personally, I think it works the opposite. The voting only gives the community so much power. Often the content starts dictating the community, not the other way around. With enough low effort and uninteresting content clogging up the chronological feed, you eventually see core- and power users migrating to other sites or communities. The community is eventually transplanted by those who seek out the kind of content that made the core community leave, perpetuating the new kind of content.

I've seen it happen to a lot of subreddits.

[samwillis]

I agree with this.

This is asked for somewhat regularly as well as banning paywalled sites. It would be wrong to do so.

In general I think it's good to have the primary source be the linked posting. If that's a Twitter thread or an original price of journalism on a paywalled site, and its interesting to the HN community it should be linked here.

What the OP if suggesting is that the only Twitter threads that are submitted are submitted by the Twitter user themselves, that's a tiny proportion of posts. If someone sees a twitter thread that would be interesting to the HN community there is no other option but to post it.

[stunt]

Not anymore.

Last week we had an article about "Why babies cry" on the first page.

Exact title was "Why babies cry in the first three months, how to tell them apart, and what to do"

[kevincox]

Exactly this. I don't click Twitter links myself and have considered taking the time to filter them out often. But I don't feel the need to impose that on others. Just because I think Twitter is a poor way to share and discuss information, and that the website is painful to use doesn't mean that I should deprive others.

Now an account-level domain filter. That would be a fantastic idea.

[dang]

This is an easy question to decide once you understand that there's a single thing we're optimizing for on HN, namely intellectual curiosity: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....

We're not going to ban Twitter because, like it or not, it's the source of some of the most intellectually interesting material that gets posted here. It's also, of course, the source of a lot of gunk. We penalize such sites by default (almost all major media sites are penalized this way on HN), but we don't ban them, because we'd miss out on too many good things if we did. It's more important not to miss good things than it is to ban bad things: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

The paywall question is a different one. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 for how we handle paywalls. I don't think twitter.com is hardwalled, though like a lot of big sites, its behavior seems to vary a lot across different regions. It shouldn't be hard for people to post workarounds in the threads, though.

[pheasantquiff]

It's disappointing that some very clever and interesting people now write posts (exclusively?) on twitter. This means that many people, like myself, cannot read them (for non-technical reasons).

I have a couple of solutions to this:

The first is very low-tech. If you post a twitter link please copy/paste the tweet into a HN comment.

The second is please simul-post your tweets to your personal blog. Of course this requires extra effort, but it could be alleviated by making a twitter client which provides simul-posting. Although such a client is probably against corp-law.

As more people are making informative tweets, we are locking too much valuable information away behind the tweet-wall.

I think this is an important post and am glad [whyoh] has raised the general topic.

[oxplot]

> some very clever and interesting people

Clever people value their time. When twitter reaches a large audience and has the lowest friction for sharing content, then that's what they use.

[carrolldunham]

>cannot read them

Just type nitter.net over twitter.com

[jacquesm]

No.

People that barely participate on HN are the ones with the loudest voices when it comes to what should/may be posted and what not. But you have all the power you need to improve HN right at your fingertips: quality submissions, rather than ASK HN's requesting blanket censorship, upvotes of articles on the new page that are interesting (and note that there is more than one new page). That's far more effective than a ban on one of the most popular social media sites, that also happens to be a pretty good conduit for timely stuff.

Have a look at a couple of these pages and decide if you wanted to lose all of the highly upvoted links:

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=twitter.com

[tpoacher]

You are missing part of the point, in my view.

There are people who don't have access to the content. Simple as that. Good content is irrelevant if it cannot be accessed.

Yes, quite often a good samaritan will come and provide a workaround link, but there are two problems with that:

1. The immediate one which is that, if the canonically accessible article is at a separate link, then this is the link that should be the main article. Not the pay/loginwalled one.

2. The ethical one: should we as a community be promoting content controlled by a closed platform (and thus endorsing/promoting/requiring subscription to that platform)? There's a reason you don't get facebook stories on HN. Up until now twitter was not closed like facebook, but now it is.

[Turing_Machine]

As of this moment, 4 of the first 10 stories at your link are [dead] or [flagged] [dead].

Edit: compare to 1 of the first 10 and 2 of the first 30 for washingtonpost.com.

Twitter appears to be a very low-quality source overall.

> People that barely participate on HN are the ones with the loudest voices when it comes to what should/may be posted and what not.

I participate quite a bit, and I think Twitter is cancer.

[ur-whale]

> decide if you wanted to lose all of the highly upvoted links

To be fair, they are already lost to a sizeable fraction of the audience now that Twitter pesters you for signing in.

[Qub3d]

For the record, I support the informal system used for paywalls: Its allowed if there is a viewable alternative (archive.is or another news site).

In the case of twitter, we have https://threadreaderapp.com (used to also have threader.app but they got ACK!-quihired by Twitter)

[sva_]

No blanket bans on websites please. I dislike Twitters interface as much as the next guy, but if it annoys you so much, then use an adblocker filter.

  twitter.com##[id^="layers"] > [class^="css-"]:has([dir^="auto"]):not(:has([aria-expanded])):has(a[href^="/"]):has-text(/Log in|Sign Up/)
  twitter.com##html[dir]:style(overflow: auto !important;)

[Jaruzel]

I've just done some rudimentary testing...

  1. Incognito window -> No Model Popup, just the accept cookies/sign-in bottom bar

  2. Edge with no add-ons -> No Model Popup, just the accept cookies/sign-in bottom bar

  3. Chrome with uBlock Origin -> Model Popup, impossible to browse Twitter if not logged in.

So, are they detecting an ad-blocker, and ONLY doing the model popup on those browsers?

[firecall]

Twitter Threads are the absolute worst!

Just write a blog post already!

But I guess for better or worse, the Twitter Threads get people more internet points!

[ColinWright]

You're shouting at the wrong people. The problem isn't HN users posting their insights to Twitter and then submitting those links. The problem is other people, often some with useful or valuable insights, post to Twitter, and then HN people find that information.

What to do?

We can copy that information to our own site and post a link to that, but the guidelines ask us to post original sources.

We can ignore it,but that means ignoring a possible source of useful and insightful information.

Or we can post a link to the tweet, and rely on HN users to find a way to read it, such has been suggested elsewhere in this discussion.

But telling HN readers to post on their own blog is a bit pointless.

[tiborsaas]

Twitter played well in the impulse control game and unfortunately won over many people. Crafting a blog post takes way more effort compared to a rant like loosely connected stream of tweets.

[btgeekboy]

I've never come to understand the disdain for tweet threads. Sure, a blog would be nice, but as a reader I have no idea if it's going to render correctly on mobile or be inundated with terrible ads. At minimum there'll be a braindead cookie banner taking up 1/3 of the screen. Meanwhile, the author now has to go set up a blog somewhere, link to it, moderate comments on two forums, etc. All because people can't read with a faint horizontal line between coherent thoughts? Or is there something I'm missing?

[oxplot]

> Twitter Threads are the absolute worst!

It really depends on what corner of Twitter you live in. I follow a dozen or so people and see nothing but high quality content.

[moontear]

I don't have any problems with Twitter threads. Why don't you like them? I can consume them easily on mobile and on my desktop.

On the other hand I think apps that unroll threads are the worst. All the spammy answers just saying "@threadreaderapp" or something like that - THAT is the worst in my eyes.

Nothing against blog posts, I'd also prefer a blog post over a Twitter thread.

[llui85]

What about rewriting links to Nitter?

https://nitter.net/about

[achairapart]

Better yet, using this extension: Privacy Redirect[0]

[0]: https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect

[gadders]

Came here to say this. It's less user-hostile.

[jasode]

>There are many free blog posting platforms out there that don't annoy users like that [...] All it takes is a couple of minutes to sign up...

Your proposed suggestion usually can't be followed as it seems like you're not noticing the difference between the HN submitter userid vs the Twitter userid. The HN submitters sharing the links are usually not the Twitter authors.

Consider the Twitter SSD thread on the HN frontpage right now and look at the metadata fields : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30419618

* The HN user who submitted it : ahachete

* The Twitter user: xenadu02

Side note: I notice that xenadu02's Twitter profile has a link to his blog website (http://russbishop.net) but he hasn't put any articles there since 2019. (It looks like that site doesn't have SSL enabled so it's not even modernized for https.)

The SSD comparison was only published to his Twitter page. It's been frequently discussed why people do that even though many readers don't like it: the Twitter platform has more engagement from a bigger audience than a personal blog site.

[ksaj]

I think there already is a rule. Something like "If it's a link to another link, just link to that one."

My suspicion is they do it hoping that people who click it will also follow them on Twitter.

[Tomte]

> My suspicion is they do it hoping that people who click it will also follow them on Twitter.

In my experience tweets are almost never submitted by the tweet's author.

[ColinWright]

I don't understand this ... people aren't posting links to their own tweets, they're posting links to tweets by other people that they found.

[keiferski]

Links to Twitter discussions are fine, but it would be nice if they automatically redirected to a tweet-reader app and/or a self post that contained the entire discussion.

[shantnutiwari]

Somebody linked to nitter the other day (As an alternative to a twitter post) -- maybe thats what we should require-- if you must post a twitter link, please use nitter or similar

[Jaruzel]

Or as a community, if we don't see a nitter link in the comments, add one.

[kevincox]

I don't really like linking to alternative frontends. It actually makes it harder for people to decide for themselves. If I use extensions that redirect Twitter to my preferred Nitter instance hard-coding a Nitter link makes it worse for me. I feel the same way about people linking to old.reddit.com. I have configured Reddit to use the old UI automatically on desktop but on mobile I find the new UI the best of the awful options. However the old links still use the old UI because it was explicitly requested.

Basically the canonical URL serves as a consistent identifier, and the reader can choose how it opens. By linking to alternatives that you prefer you are depriving the power-user reader that choice to apply their preference.

So I think we should use canonical URLs most of the time (especially for popular sites) because I value viewers preferences more than submitters preferences or a better default.

[Adamantcheese]

There are some posts where Twitter is the primary source. Banning Twitter outright isn't a solution for this type of situation.

[arm]

I used to have the same misgivings with Twitter threads being linked, but after discovering Privacy Redirect¹ (and Privacy Redirect for Safari²)—which automatically redirects Twitter links to a alternative Twitter frontend (like Nitter)—Twitter threads are much nicer to read.

――――――

¹ — https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect

² — https://github.com/smmr-software/privacy-redirect-safari

[MaknMoreGtnLess]

> Every day there are posts here with some Twitter thread as the source

These threads are extremely and overwhelmingly popular and that surprises me.

These threads always start off like "Here's how to make $100MM in 10 hours" and then multiple sub posts of most generic nonsense I've ever seen.

What's even interesting is people think they get tremendous value out of there and share/re-tweet and go crazy about them.

Am I really stupid or are most people on Twitter who engage with these threads on some kind of hallucinogen(s)?

[aasasd]

Indeed, let's make sure only articles allowed are those with a cheesy work anecdote at the start for those who fall asleep too easily, then the entire life story of the subject person beginning with their dad, and ten screenfuls down you may finally learn what the article is supposedly about.

I'm not even exaggerating, that's one of the top posts from the past week. Editors of longreads in ‘serious’ publications love this formula for some mysterious reason.

[CodeGlitch]

Perhaps HN could automatically convert Twitter links into nitter.net?

[ziml77]

A simple userscript should do the trick instead of HN changing the URL.

    var nitterUrl = window.location.toString().replace('twitter.com', 'nitter.net');
    window.location.replace(nitterUrl);

Though if you want to be sure you never send a single packet to Twitter, you'll have to make a script that operates on all sites and rewrites URLs in the anchor tags.

Edit: Just saw someone mention this extension which could be a better option https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect

[jacquesm]

That just sets you up for long term issues similar to the ones associated with URL redirectors and shorteners.

[oxplot]

First of all, absolutely not.

- Twitter hosts some of the highest quality content that get into the nitty gritty of some topic, exactly because it's so low friction to post to Twitter. Those of you saying "just put it on a blog" are either oblivious to how much more effort that is, or have already spent a lot of time making blogging low friction for your needs. That's not the rule however.

- There are countless posts with a mixed quality here from NY Times and other subscription based sites that show a pay wall when opened. Do you propose banning those too?

- If someone really cares to find out what's there to see, they'll sign up. If not, they move on and the post doesn't get any upvotes. Works itself out. As others have mentioned, script it out of your view if it really bothers you that much.

[4io3i343io4]

It's such a joke that even officials at least in my country post their stuff to Twitter, where people without account can't read it... The platform is clearly unsuitable for any serious communication.

[jb1991]

For what it's worth, I do not have a twitter account but have never seen this popup you are seeing. Likely due to better browser blocking. I'm using FF with UBlock, ABP, and Privacy Badger.

[defanor]

FF with uBO (default lists + "annoyances") and noscript here (with Twitter itself whitelisted, otherwise it doesn't seem to work anymore), no popups in sight either.

[dan-robertson]

One tip is to replace twitter.com in the URL with nitter.net. But I realise that isn’t a great solution. I think one must accept that, annoying as the platform may be, Twitter is the place where many discussions of interest to HN happen and so I think it ought to be acceptable to link it. One could imagine an alternative where people post buzzfeed-style blog posts that merely repost Twitter threads and I think that would be worse.