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Comment by angoragoats

6 months ago

Can we please stop allowing links to Twitter? Rationale: the artificial limitations on that site around post size mean that most announcements (such as this one) are multiple posts. This, combined with the questionable design decision of hiding all reply tweets when a user is not logged in, means that many posts are completely missing crucial context for those of us who don’t have Twitter accounts.

Alternatively, Twitter links could be rewritten to redirect to one of the few Nitter instances that are still functional.

8 comments

angoragoats

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astrange  6 months ago

> Rationale: the artificial limitations on that site around post size mean that most announcements (such as this one) are multiple posts.

That limit actually doesn't apply to premium users/bluechecks, and he's using the other features like bold text.

The problem with long posts like that is one, they're annoying to read because when you open one up you don't know how much of a time commitment they will be, and two, you can't reply to just part of them.

  • angoragoats  6 months ago

    > That limit actually doesn't apply to premium users/bluechecks, and he's using the other features like bold text.

    I can't keep track of the flailing over at Twitter, especially because I don't have an account. Regardless, it's not all that relevant to what I was saying; maybe I got the reason wrong, but the fact remains that the vast majority of people who I see trying to post longer content on Twitter do it via multiple posts.

    As a related aside, it baffles me why people still use the site when many superior alternatives are available.

    > The problem with long posts like that is one, they're annoying to read because when you open one up you don't know how much of a time commitment they will be, and two, you can't reply to just part of them.

    Those don't actually seem like problems to me.

miki123211  6 months ago

I believe this is against HN's values.

HN allows, and has always allowed, links to paywalled sources, sources with geographic restrictions that refuse to display the content for some readers, and won't modify a posts URL due to the site being slashdotted / suffering from an HN hug of death. Twitter is no different, except maybe by being more ideologically polarizing.

The place for alternative URLs is, and has always been, the comments.

  • angoragoats  6 months ago

    Yeah, I understand this has been the case, but I guess I don’t understand why it can’t be changed, or why it’s even a good thing.

    Seems like most others disagree with me though, so I guess I’ll just skip over anything posted on Twitter.

    • freediver  6 months ago

      Once you start discriminating content based on arbitrary rule (and this would be one), you are entering a slippery slope. Hence it is better to not let precedent take place in the first place.

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