Can we ban Twitter links, please?

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.

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.

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.

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

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;)

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!

What about rewriting links to Nitter?

https://nitter.net/about

>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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

> 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)?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

This got me wondering, are there any websites that are banned from HN?

There was another recent complaint about this 'twitter not letting you see content without popups asking you to login'.

What is this about? Doesn't seem to be case. Tweets are public for the most part, even the replies.

I cannot duplicate this behavior on Chrome or Firefox (Windows, logged out, incognito, because you seem to want to use a site without actually being a participant). Are you using some weird addons or something, ad blocker? Weirdness. Tweet links wouldn't keep being shared on here if they weren't accessible by majority of readers.

The side issue is the reason for these shares is trend of more content being shared only as tweets, breaking news, the dreaded threads etc....with no other non-social source at the time.... breaking news with no associated blog post or news story yet etc, so as HN moves fast, it's the tweet that gets shared.

Unfortunately Twitter still remains as a major information source.

Since Twitter does not care about UX for unregistered users (so do Facebook, Instagram, Medium, Reddit on mobile and so on), users can switch to Nitter instances or using some extensions to block it.

It would be also somehow helpful to disable Cookie on twitter.com.

The main problem I have with twitter links is that they're too short to understand what they're saying if you don't already know the whole context. I almost always have to dig through the HN comment section hoping that someone explained what the tweet said.

> 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.

That is of no significance if the content you want to share is not on those platforms and you did not make the content.

There could be a personalized setting to show/hide Twitter links.

Those links have been usable again since I installed this extension (automatically redirects to Nitter, which is an alternative client for Twitter).

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nitter-redirect/mo...

Feels like déjà-vu with 'old twitter redirect', but it works wonderfully for me.

If you don't want to login to twitter, then install the Redirector addon: https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/

Then set a redirect from twitter links to https://nitter.net or https://threadreaderapp.com/

I tend to scan an RSS feed of HN articles that hit at least 100 points and I don't think I ever see twitter links.

If you're reading `new` then I think you're going to have to wade through the garbage.

Every now and then there's a good twitter thread by a legit expert in their field which adds context to something in the news which you really can't get anywhere else. Particularly during the pandemic.

You don't get to decide for others where they are writing, and you don't get to decide for others what they are upvoting on HN.

There aren't many Twitter submissions, at least on the front page.

Get over it, nobody forces you to click on a Twitter link. There are plenty of other submissions.

As Twitter now requires ID and it closes down alternative front ends such as nitter.net, these posts will naturally lose relevance and not be upvoted by those who cannot view them. We have similar situation with Facebook.

I'd rather educate people on how to use social platforms instead of banning some links.

We should use social media primarily for sharing links, not to fill them by content. Then this problem would disappear.

I don't have a Twitter account, but I view posts and threads simply by opening Twitter links in a private browser window. Does that not work for you all?

IMO it should be configurable per user.

Not only twitter, but all social media, paywalls, politics, etc.

Also HN desperately lacking tags: I only interested in couple of tech stacks/protocols and several problem domains/verticals - why do I need sift through all these unrelevant submissions?

I'm disappointed by what Twitter has become and wish this could happen.

But sometimes the content is relevant or innovative; not sure it's fair to expect HN to take a principled stance against the platform.

How about a preference that hides Twitter submissions? Half the time I skip them anyway or hit Back before the site finishes loading. If enough readers move along, perhaps it would incentivize publishers to as well.

Twitter lets you see that specific content but nothing else w/o logging in. Still better than full blown paywalls IMO.

NYTimes is just a paywall. There are a few of these. Flagging them as credential_walls or pay_walls would be cool.

> Twitter won't let you see the content without logging in anymore.

I don't know why people don't make a bigger deal out of it. I guess everyone has twitter now.

If content is relevant for HN, I would like to see it, even if it’s on Twitter. Yes, we would collectively prefer that it’s in a blog and that there are no paywalls or login screens, that RSS is available everywhere, that Google Reader is still alive, etc. But that’s not the current reality.

To make things less abstract, John Carmack is active on twitter. Should we ban a link to his tweets if it’s something interesting?

As a submitter I have no control over the platform the original content is published on.

I would do the same for all the paywall links, there are really a lot of HN lately.

Yes, please.

A very valid point is that Twitter asks for an account to view content. This makes it unacceptable to be posted here as is, imo.

All OPs posting Tweets should be required to post an alternative link which doesn't require an account, just like with other paywalled content.

Let's ban Medium as well when we're at it. They go a step further and actually paywall free articles, rather than twitter that just needs a free account.

I'd much rather we ban paywalled links.

Twitter is a platform for politicians and the rich to announce stuff and new laws. Haven't u... 1/8