Comment by Ugvx
1 day ago
The only reason why I needed nitter to access x is due to organizations still using it as their main communication solution to their customers. Even my local council uses it. I would like this to be the final push for people to get off x but I suspect its going g to stay and I guess I don't get to see news from my local council anymore.
I'm totally clueless, but aren't there rules requiring accessibility of public-facing government communications, to the extent that they shouldn't be allowed to use a gated platform when making official statements that are a matter of public interest?
It should be that way.
My tolerance for people posting to X without also posting to an open platform is over.
Public institutions especially.
There's zero excuse, none.
People don't seem to know about bluesky, the fediverse and the indie web enough.
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> There's zero excuse, none.
How about the general lack of awareness of "open platforms", or of any given one of your objections to X?
Most people are not in the HN bubble.
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Someone could certainly make a case in a lawsuit for an ADA violation. I bet if people organized, the city would listen before it got to that point
There are open meeting laws like the Brown Act but I think that only restricts relying on social media for deliberation. Not communication
There is also Lindke v. Freed (2024) which holds that public officials using social media can be sued under the First Amendment violations like blocking users or deleting comments.
Ya'll are talking lawsuits and organizing protests, but the reality is probably just that no one (outside the Bluesky/HN bubble, which is tiny) cares. Very few probably care what their local government is babbling about today in general, and even fewer what platforms they're using.
And yet if someone did care, there's a decent chance if they asked the right person in the right way they'd be like "Oh, Mastodon? Okay, sounds neat, oh you know what it's just another checkbox in the software we use to cross-post everything! I'll just check the box!"
But nah, lets not do the easy thing, lets look up legal precedent and ponder the ADA.
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What open medium would you suggest as an alternative to X?
I miss the days when we had an RFC, people got together, came up with a solution, and we ended up with decentralized NNTP or something. Everything is someone's little kingdom now.
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I presume the post is referencing principal councils in England or Wales. They're powerful enough to make life difficult, but small enough to not get a lot of oversight. From what I've heard, it's like a government-backed HOA, and they're notorious for doing whatever they want, while not letting you do what you want.
Newspapers are still often required to be used for certain government publications and they cost money. TwitterX is free. I'm not clear what the controversy here is exactly.
It is not free? You just pay them with your private information and by looking at a few ads. That is not free. Unless you believe information and time have no value?
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You need to make an account to access it. That's not free
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>I'm not clear what the controversy here is exactly.
Seems pretty obvious, not every citizen has access to twitter, there's no legitimate chain of trust and there's endless potential for corruption and manipulation.
In pretty much every developed country sans the US apparently governments, even local ones, tend to be obligated to publish information through their own channels because 1. they own them so you know communication is authentic, 2. they can't ban or restrict you from accessing it, they know how that information is made available, there's no financial conflict of interest.
It's completely possible for Twitter, given that the government has no insight into its technical operations, exert influence on who sees what and how. That alone is insane for public, government communication. If the government isn't sovereign in respect to its communications infrastructure your government is run by tech oligarchs
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No, and this policy goes back to publication in for-profit newspapers. Not an issue in the USA in general.
With a disclaimer that there's one zillion governmental entities on the planet overall, so its plausible that one requires no fee and no signup required.
It's not gated. You can read any non-adult post with a direct link. I'm seeing this perspective all over in here. As someone without an X account, I can only assume you all have X accounts to not know this!
You can't see replies without an account, and it is pretty common for content to be posted as a series of replies to the first post
You can still view direct links, but you can’t scroll someone’s profile or use the search functionality without an account. How many I supposed to scroll a government organization’s tweets if I can only see the first few?
Ah, and if that person has split their post into several messages, I can definitely read all of them from a direct link to the first message, right?
If I have a link to a local emergency department twitter handle, I can view all of their recent posts, right?
Can't you submit written/oral comments on this? Write letters to your local paper etc. You might need to be That Guy for a few months but sooner or later you're going to connect with other people who feel the same way.
Web enshittification should be disallowed in public offices. It's so easy to create a news entry in Facebook or Twitter/X but they are always walling you from it unless you subscribe. This is unacceptable in public service sector.
...and a mandatory website for every app they tell you to download.
The main competitor in this space is sadly Instagram, which is no better.
I really don't understand any place relying on a third party to publicise news.
(but I'm as fiercely independent as my own skills and ability to learn can manage)
You still have access to local council posts, without logging in. You need to log in to view the follow up discussions(comments) a subtle but important distinction
For example you can view the main post and included links in incognito not logged in, just not the "discussion"
https://x.com/ManCityCouncil/status/2091903421917892994?s=20
That's assuming you have the link to their post. The profile page only shows the last 5 posts (assuming they are showing them in chronological order)
Seems X is balancing post visibility against bots, scraping, and some dark patterns that push people to sign in.
Showing everything is not viable under those competing goals. So they have settled on:
Show the post when someone has a direct link, but require login to see the discussion Show a limited number of recent posts on a profile, and require login for more
Raising that limit from 6 to 10 would not solve the real complaint: “I cannot see communication from my city.”
They already identify government official accounts. One simple option is to extend the visible timeline for those accounts only—six months or a year of posts—while still keeping discussions behind a login.
Final? If anything X seems to be more popular among users.
you're smokin crack, i don't know a single person who uses twitter anymore. literally not one. 5+ years ago? _everyone_ was on twitter.
That's your bubble. Organizations are pretty much still exclusively using X and so are many individuals.
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You could make an X account.
Is Xitter still doing the "Your account was suspended for reasons, now you gotta dox yourself" dance? (EDIT: Yes, according to debazel's reply) That'd be a reason why "You could make an X account" isn't a reasonable suggestion.
Personally I had an account since 2008 and it got locked for no discernible reason. The website asks me to scan a QR code from my phone to prove I'm a human, and even after grudgingly installing the mobile app to try and complete this verification it just keeps throwing me into a loop.
Not possible, says phone number is invalid.
You mean give them my e-mail and phone number so they can shit that all up too? No thanks.
Don't forget your biometrics, too.