278 points

They actually likely did this due to SEO. Google was allegedly in the process of removing tweets from the search index because they weren’t accessible. This happens automatically for most sites.

permalink
report
reply
121 points

This feels like an extremely basic thing to miss. Something 10 seconds of thought would have fixed.

permalink
report
parent
reply
117 points

I guarantee you whoever pushed this to prod knew exactly what was going to happen, but the super genius(🤮) in charge is always right and must never be questioned.

permalink
report
parent
reply
53 points

Does anyone else think a lot about the incredible irony of western freedom-loving democracies being fine and dandy with the fact that nearly 100% of workplaces are top-down dictatorships? Even when you’re “given” freedom to act independently, it’s always predicated upon your decisions and actions aligning with the wishes of your superiors. The second that isn’t the case, you get your marching orders, and you can either comply or fuck off.

It would be one thing if employment were “optional” to some degree, or there were always more jobs than people to do them, but so many people are one missed paycheck or medical emergency away from homelessness, you basically have no choice but to grin and bear it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

The supreme leader is always right!

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points
*
Removed by mod
permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

So much this. The leader on top is the one who instills the corporate culture. In this case, the engineers have no say in the matter. They need to do what they’re told.

permalink
report
parent
reply
33 points

Okay but that would involve whoever is in charge there to think longer than 10 seconds.

permalink
report
parent
reply
81 points

How does Pinterest get around this then? They pollute image searches like crazy, and require you to login to see anything. At least they did, I blocked them from searches so maybe it’s different now.

permalink
report
parent
reply
27 points

Pinterest is cancer. They act like their content belongs to them when it’s all stolen images

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

They must have changed their paywall behavior, I just went and was able to see every image I clicked on.

The login popup appears after a few pages but you can just exit out and keep viewing. Google should be able to index the pages without access issues

Maybe that previous aggressive login screen killed their SEO before, I see much less pinterest images than I used to years ago

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

it 100% did, google removed over half the twitter links on its index due to dead links/login requirements, which if kept like that would basically kill all Twitter traffic since most traffic comes from search engines

permalink
report
parent
reply
16 points

Most of these sites serve the information, then put up something to block being able to view it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

Easy - detect if you’re getting accessed by a search crawler or a human. Serve a full page or just a login request.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

So how can a user pretend to be a web crawler?

permalink
report
parent
reply
38 points

And if they didn’t fire everyone, someone with a spec of sense would have told them this

Same with popups that try to throw you to only a mobile app

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

What makes you think that even if someone told Musk that, he would have listened to them?

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

He was firing people before who told him something wasn’t going to work, so it wouldn’t surprise me if everyone who knew this would fail stayed silent in fear for their jobs.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

True. If it were a good idea he would have already thought of it, right?

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

Yes, most likely, within days they lost half of their links in Google.

How tf they did not see this happening?

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

Since Elon I don’t think Twitter has been thinking about the long term effects of their actions. Everyone predicted the blue checkmark fiasco but they went ahead with it anyway so this doesn’t surprise me.

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points

Probably also advertisement revenue. Why would people go on twitter if they can’t see anything? Why would advertisers pay money to show ads to no-one?

I think Elon got quite a talking to.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

https://www.rawstory.com/google-twitter/

Yeah they were already doing that, I imagine he took a look at how many inbound visits come from Google and quickly U-turned

permalink
report
parent
reply
95 points

This is hilarious. You don’t change your mind about a new policy unless it was absolutely terrible and threatened your business. I can’t see twitter surviving much longer; how are they even going to make money?

permalink
report
reply
55 points

I saw one reporter describe it as if Costco decided to make every checkout “10 items or less.”

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

What is a Costco?

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Assuming you’re genuinely asking. It’s a retail store primarily in the US that is for buying items in bulk.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-11 points

They could probably survive off of elon’s surplus cash alone for a few years

permalink
report
parent
reply
39 points

But he’s a deadbeat who doesn’t pay his bills like Trump. He’s squatting sand isn’t paying rent, so there’s no way he’s using his own money for that

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points
*

Plus, people should really understand how someone being a billionaire works. They don’t have billions of dollars sitting in a bank account somewhere.

They leverage their investments to take out short term loans or the like against their invested capital.

Musk is a billionaire on paper. Like most. His wealth is represented by his ownership shares of Tesla, speculation on the valuation of space x and solar city.

He’s not selling his interests or shares in Tesla to buy things here. He’s leveraging them.

Similar to how you can have your house paid off, and then get a new mortgage against your house for an injection of capital. You’re leveraging the equity you have in your home. Which is based on the current perceived value of your home in the current market.

If the market changes drastically, so does the amount you can leaverage.

TL;DR; he does not have cash sitting around he can burn through to actually pay bills, and he’s absolutely not going to pay his Google cloud hosting bill with his Tesla shares unless absolutely forced to (at which point he’d probably just sell Twitter).

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

He doesn’t have he got bailed out to buy that sinking ship

permalink
report
parent
reply
92 points

A lot of government agencies use Twitter for breaking news, notifications, and alerts that they’re trying to get out as quickly as possible to as many people as possible, such as tornado warnings, amber alerts, traffic conditions, etc. I can’t imagine they’d stick around a platform that requires logging in to view these messages.

permalink
report
reply
25 points

I can’t imagine they stick around on a platform that isn’t stable and in the last year has changed direction so many times that almost no one can keep up with it. It’s the instability and constant changing that makes people jump ship from a previously stable platform. It’s not like a Lemmy instance where it’s to be expected for a while.

permalink
report
parent
reply
24 points

Ideally governments should be pushing things like threat to life alerts out via a digital emergency alert system (e.g. Amber alerts) rather than hoping those potentially impacted are checking Twitter.

Which is funny because the UK decided to finally implement this recently and my god the Twitter Boomers were mad.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

I reluctantly disabled all government alerts on my phone a few years ago because despite theoretically having multiple levels of importance (minor alerts, major alerts, critical alerts), apparently they weren’t categorizing the alerts when they sent them out so I kept receiving all alerts, even minor ones and alerts for things happening far from where I live, and to make matters worse they overrode do not disturb. Hopefully they’ve improved the system by now, but I haven’t thought to check until this conversation thread.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Let me guess… Amber Alerts in Canada being sent as the “presidential alert” which bypasses everything on your phone and wakes you up at 3AM? Goddamn Alert Ready is a mess.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-9 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points
*

This morning storm Poly smashed the Netherlands, especially North Holland (Amsterdam region). Digital emergency alert system was used, three times, and directed people to Twitter.

Which was closed, of course. It’s a political shitshow right now. Amsterdam municipality already runs its own Mastodon, and this fuckup will probably have consequences in moving official broadcast channels off Twitter.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points
*

Which was closed, of course. It’s a political shitshow right now. Amsterdam municipality already runs its own Mastodon, and this fuckup will probably have consequences in moving official broadcast channels off Twitter.

Germanys gov runs its own Mastodon instances - social.bund.de - where the cabinet, the ministries, state institutes etc have their official accounts.
Some non-political examples are: The German Weather Service, the German Aerospace Institute, and the Consumer Protection Agency.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Nonsense like this is why I believe outdoor warning sirens are still incredibly important. Mobile alerts are not foolproof, and can be bungled horribly, and not everybody has their phone on them, or a phone at all. If there’s a severe storm or tornado coming, you need to know ASAP. Sirens are an excellent way of getting people indoors, regardless of who’s outside. I heard the Netherlands was considering decommissioning its countrywide siren system, which I thought was absolutely fucking stupid. What you posted proves exactly why.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Kind of terrible that we ever got to this point. I’ve seen announcements from government agencies that are ONLY available on social media. Who thought that was okay?

permalink
report
parent
reply
22 points

The joys of neoliberalism and privatization. When you’re convinced the private sector can do no wrong and the government can do no right, is it any surprise that this is the outcome?

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

Welcome to the dumbest timeline

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points
*

I read that public service annoucement accounts were excempt from the change, but it’s just bad business either way.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Just today we had a severe storm alert pushed to phones through the emergency system here in the Netherlands and the alert contained the fire department’s twitter handle. I was like “welp, I guess I’ll hear the updates later”

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

I thought the exact same thing this morning when the NL alert had a Twitter reference in it

permalink
report
parent
reply
61 points

Business genius.

permalink
report
reply
41 points

Irrelevant. Nitter still not working.

permalink
report
reply

World News

!worldnews@lemmy.ml

Create post

News from around the world!

Rules:

  • Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc

  • No NSFW content

  • No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc

Community stats

  • 7.4K

    Monthly active users

  • 9.7K

    Posts

  • 117K

    Comments