Comment by afavour

> It's quite inconsistent though which is really frustrating. I can look at the imgur homepage feed, but if I go into a specific post and accidentally click anywhere it throws a modal up that can't be dismissed.

That's not inconsistent, that's a deliberate dark pattern that every social media site uses. Let them see the first page, then when they want to engage: force creating an account.

When you just put a "log in to see this page" up front, people will bounce. When you have them engaged a little bit, chances are they are already invested enough to create an account.

I remember using old.reddit to bypass login requirements and quite often it would let me read with VPN on (otherwise it kicks you out if you are not logged in with VPN on). Only recently did they introduce the same authentication blocks to the old.reddit, so I am assuming everyone was taking advantage of it

> Does the free ad model just not pay anymore, or is the selling user data model just that much more lucrative that they would rather no user at all if they aren't logged in?

Traffic from google is probably in the process of collapsing, so these sites are trying to capture all the users they can as registered users before it's gone completely.

And yes, the free ad model is probably in the process of dying, the information that was once given away for free in return for looking at ads is now more valuable sold to llm's who will have the eyeballs going forward.

This will presumably make many on this site happy, since for many years an ad supported open web was consistently railed against.

Imgur is 80% posts of text for people trying to post political messages vs what it used to be, interesting or funny pictures

I guess that's their traffic so that's their market but ugh. Imagine if flickr or some other photo site was run over by people posting photos of text messags.

Bots are the noisy excuse they can scream and point to. You look at the mobile reddit app or the new reddit interface and you think these javascript “devs” are capable of forming any valid opinion on these things?

This is the company that refers to its users as “daily active shitheads.” That’s a real quote.

They’re just screaming and pointing to anything they can so they can lock it down and gain more favorable data to sell and more legitimate accounts to show advertisers. That’s what it always is.

I’m never wrong and I’m tired of fake imposters devs telling me I am wrong at every corner of every single topic when I turn out to be right 100% of the time.

Actually you can discard those annoying popups on reddit using some HTML element blocker (e.g. “hide distracting element” on safari or the picker tool from uBlock origin)

I had some success with these for logged-out browsing ever since old.reddit was locked down completely

I recently deleted all of my Reddit accounts. The website had been unusable on mobile for a good while, with the constant and ever-more-aggressive nagging about switching to the app. Old Reddit was the one thing that made the site still usable. And now that requires a login.

So fuck that. Bye Reddit. I'll miss some of the communities.

Imgur has been totally unusable in the UK for a couple of years - it's an irritant, because it's used for so many image embeds and I'm reluctant to fire up the VPN just so I can see someone's meme that they posted on a forum thread. Nobody has ever used Imgur as a destination site, it's a utility, and any attempts to make it a destination or an app you'd deliberately open are futile.

Reddit isn't so badly impacted, but there are still age-walls around some of the content where it's been deemed "adult" (which encompasses more than just graphic adult imagery).

Hide distracting items is great on the iPhone to delete elements on the page intuitively and it remembers what you hid.

[flagged]

Yes and hiQ v. LinkedIn has already given us precedent that scraping is not inherently illegal, not to mention X's own scraping to train their AI.

Makes sense that they want to consult legal experts rather than just going with their gut though but I hope those legal experts will work something out that gets them back online.

It depends on how deep your pockets are, not risk tolerance.

And the manbaby in charge will absolutely go after you.

There's a bit difference between breaking a scraper and sending Cease and Desist letters.

Also, blocking scraping is very rich (and expectedly hypocritical) for an AI company, which SpaceX is now.

Most people on HN don't work at Google. And most would probably agree that both Google and Twitter are being user-hostile.

This might be the first HN thread I’ve seen where the statement “regiwalled content is bad” is somehow attracting a lot of negative reactions…

I don't get it, are you implying everyone who's not a fan of this change is a Google employee?

You should've removed your account too.

You won't miss much.

Reddit seems to have let this AI demand go to their heads.

I had multiple Reddit accounts, simply because I did not want my more "professional" account linked to the other accounts (some for more controversial opinions, some for more adult talk, etc.) Apparently that's a problem for them. So they banned most of my accounts. If I really was up to no good, I'd have used VPNs, etc. to hide my activities. But I just wanted to segregate my personas. e.g. I like discussing local SF and California politics, and often times take controversial positions. I don't want my activities as a respectable(?) member of the Linux Kernel group to be colored through my activities in these other groups. But now I can't do that.

Oh, and back in the day Reddit (when it wanted to pad its user numbers) didn't care for an email address or a phone number. Now, 15 years later, it suddenly wants to confirm the email address!

And don't even get me started on the moderation at Reddit. Typical example: "Hey! We deleted your comment. If you have any questions about it, email the mods." except ... they deleted the comment and now I don't even know what was wrong with it! :-D

Old Reddit is now completely unusable without an account. Maybe it's time for me to finally stop using it.

(as a logged-in user) I just stopped using it the day they banned 3rd party apps and I don't miss it a bit. I visit some communities still, but only on PC with old reddit. Once that is gone, I'm gone as well.

> Reddit is the worst for this. I hate the disgusting, low class UX design where they let you read about 10-15 seconds of a page before locking you out.

When this happens I use uBlock origin to remove that popup and the grey background behind it. Scrolling and loading more comments remains usable (unlike Facebook)

spez is a problem. And if it's not spez, then enlighten me. But they've taken years of built up network effects and absolutely wrecked it. It's so hostile when companies do this. They just ignore their users, straight up. That should be a firable offense. The customer is NOT 'always right', but you can meet them halfway

Fail upwards. That's all they know how to do

Unlikely.

The EU is first and foremost a business club. So the majority of EU rules are there to create a common market. If one participant is trying to be dodgy, then oftentimes a rule valid for all market participants is created, to re-establish the common market.

Sometimes it's even the producers that ask the EU to regulate it. E.g. all of those classes for vegetables originated from the producers. As a result, an egg of size "M" from Netherlands has the same size as an egg of the size "M" from France. And both can be sold in e.g. Belgium, since we now have a common market and common attributes. A customer seeing an "M" sized egg in the shelves doesn't need to ponder, he knows what he gets.

If some website needs a login so that you can view contents is completely outside of this. That is actually common, many newspapers and magazines do that. Its entirely to their discretion if they allow free public access, limited access, or paid access. One doesn't need to be Google Search, one can also be Kagi, so to say.

"And the monkey's paw curled a finger"

Yes, more regulations from the EU is what the internet needs /s

Want to come to the free town square ? Gotta show ID first to the guard at the wall

I'd say that's practically a given. Everyone that wants to have an account already has one, everyone else will not make an account just because they are bothered into making one.

Nitter and xcancel traffic must be negligible, they're doing this just to pretend they're doing stuff to justify their legal department wages.

Hear, hear.

I received an Amber Alert a few days ago, which linked to a Twitter post containing the details, and the "x" in the "plz login" modal that blocked the entire screen was non-functional. I just sat there pounding on the x, and then a little hand gif popped up and pointed at the login button.

> https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack

Only 5 posts, and when you click on any of them, you don't see the post, you see a sign up popup

Unless it has changed, the posts are in random order; they aren't the latest, which makes the ones you see basically worthless.

I don't know how it works, but it is very inconsistent.

On mobile right now, I can't scroll past the second post of [1] without getting blocked by an undismissable popup.

If I click on the "read more" button of the first post, I can't scroll down at all before getting that same non-dismissable popup. It makes it hard to read the post itself, because even scrolling a tiny bit (e.g. to get what I'm reading closer to the center of my vision) triggers it.

I've also had other times where I couldn't play a video someone linked to me, but sometimes I can, don't know why.

A few months ago you needed to log in to view any replies, which was critical for some threads.

Not sure how you manage that - twitter, insta, and pinterest all begrudgingly let you see one, maybe two things, then lock down and prevent you from interacting without logging in.

It really gives the sense that you’re not wanted there.

And so I gladly oblige.

This is a surprising change. It works even without JS, although as others have mentioned, without all the content.

6 years ago, pre-Musk, they started forcing the JS-only webapp and everyone absolutely hated it: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/twitter-war...

I wonder if there's a group of developers at X, especially with Musk's cost-saving direction, who are slowly bringing back the static pages.

Only if it's directly linked to you. Can't go scrolling on someone's profile without getting blocked by a pop-up. Also can't click a post and see replies.

Edit: also can't read a thread because each new post is considered a "reply", so blocked too.

Not in any useful way that makes Twitter better or different than other sources of news.