I am sick and tired of posts that are just Twitter links.

[MicaelS]

I do not have an account and with Musk's takeover, I will never have one. As far as I am concerned they are all clickbait.

Is there any way to block them? If there isn't there needs to be one.

[elleng]

1. Don't click.

[W_HAMILTON]

4. You usually don't know that's all they are until after you've clicked...

[ItsjustMe]

2. You do not need a Twitter account.

To view Twitter links, I have no problem viewing them.

[Ocelot II]

3. Don't worry; Twitter will be gone soon.

In the meantime, though, Twitter links will continue to appear on DU, just like other things some of us don't like. Personally, I don't like posts that contain nothing but a video link without being identified as a video in the thread title. But I'm not demanding that videos be blocked.

[applegrove]

5. Do you think DU being interconnected to what is going on elsewhere

is important?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

28. +1

[Samrob]

6. Me too. I just refuse to link. nt

[usonian]

7. Twitter hater #1 here.

One of my computers shows only the URL, nothing more. I love that machine.

DU’ers are going to be in a pickle posting stuff when Musk runs twitter down the shitter.

I won’t miss it one bit.

I suppose you could get your computer or mobile device to block twitter.com, but how to do that varies all over the map. If you are on wi-fi, you might be able to tell the wireless router to block it, or set your device to use a DNS server (name server) that lets you block certain sites.

Having said that, perhaps your whatever has an “adult” mode, in which you can add twitter to the block list.

Maybe ask in the computer support group.

[mitch96]

18. What pisses me off is that when you click on the link and even if you don't open it...

you get a nice twitter cookie dropped in your website data box. They track you.. fuckers..
I get a bit OCD and remove the cookie when I see a twitter link. color me weird..
m

[hunter]

25. I've blacklisted twitter. Nothing gets through.

If I accidentally click a link to twitter I get a message asking if I want to temporarily unblock it.

When I click on a post here on DU that's nothing but a twitter link I simply back out with alt left arrow and move on.

I'm not sure why twitter irritates me so much, I blocked it before Musk came along.

[mitch96]

48. "I'm not sure why twitter irritates me so much" Same here. No Twitt, Face, InstaToc etc

and any other "social" web sites. Just not my bag. I don't want anybody following me around the internets. Youtube is bad enough..
m

[hunter]

49. I have a bad YouTube habit, mostly technical and scientific sites.

Let me confess here I've paid to make the advertising go away. I felt guilty simply blocking it. Which is easy.

Sometimes it feels like a hostage situation.

[mitch96]

51. I don't get adverts either but it's the feed on the right side that sometimes gets to me...nt

[BlueIdaho]

8. Amen...

Same goes for articles behind paywalls.

[iemanja]

13. If you get four paragraphs

You do get information.

[usonian]

21. Hate paywalls

A couple of sites like archive.ph are a (time-consuming) workaround. I use a “bypass paywalls clean” extension on firefox, with mixed results (I am not keeping count). I think that the basic function is to clear cookies when a tab is closed, and that gets you past some paywalls that keep count. More, I am sure.

Private or incognito mode might help, but sites somehow sense that and bitch mightily.

But yes, people do post them, and I think that some have subscriptions and forget that when they post.

It’s a war out there!

EFF has a lot of good advice.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

42. Hard paywalls are becoming more and more common.

[usonian]

44. Paywalls

When facts are all paywalled, only hate and lies will be free


Now, there is an exception.
Some sources of information are truly free, such as Wikipedia and other publicly-funded outlets.

What's wrong here?
Well, our culture's worship of capitalism and the campaign against "gubmint", plus extreme partisanship, means that public sources as in taxpayer funding of objective sources of timely information, are about nil. Pretty vicious attacks on public radio, tv and so forth. I recall, part of culture wars.

Under capitalism, particularly "surveillance capitalism", when the product is free, you are the product --- being sold to advertisers.
I have so many articles on this that it's hard to search, but I came up with informative links. The Kagi one is good even if it's an ad for their services. If NYT is paywalled, plug the URL into archive.ph


The Age of PageRank is Over. (search, not news, but companies pivoted into news feeds to keep you locked in to their platforms (FB))
https://blog.kagi.com/age-pagerank-over

Trump, Musk and Kanye Are Twitter Poisoned
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-twitter.html

And the granddaddy of all rants against advertising, over 11 years old and still relevant:
Advertising is a poison that demeans even love – and we're hooked on it
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/advertising-poison-hooked

Alas, public projects are subject to trolls and creeps. Wikipedia has many battleground pages which have to be monitored by real people. At least, their goal is some kind of objectivity. With advertising-driven sites, the more clicks the better, so they are "often" lax in moderating content. In Elon's case, it seems deliberately lax, letting Kanye spew antisemitism.

i have bitched a lot about supposedly smart people not being able to come up with a business model (right back to Page and Brin at Google) so they resort to advertising. The alternative is NOT paywalling everything, not even "soft paywalls" (as in "You have exceeded your free page limit)". Yes, people have to be paid, but the distinction between commodity information that "everyone" needs to know, and in-depth content as in "I wrote a book on this subject" still is a subject of experimentation ON YOU AND ME.

[Celerity]

9. So ignore then. I'm tired of posting police OP's. If the DU owners ban Twitter posts, then fine, but

I have no problems with tweets from the hundreds (thousands?) of great liberal and prog sources out there, who often are bleeding edge in terms of real time updates.

[Ferrets are Cool]

15. This

[Laura PourMeADrink]

29. +1

[hunter]

52. I don't have any problem with copy-and-paste or screen shot twitter posts here on DU.

But I'm not taking the site itself off my blacklists, especially now that Elon Musk is in charge.

[FlyingPiggy]

64. Right on!! It amazes me that people can't ignore something they don't like.

[Kittycatkat]

10. Drumpf is going to war with the republican party. The feeding frenzy has begun

and they will eat each other alive.

[LexVegas]

11. ...

[sarcasmo]

12. There should be a Twitter link section, put it under The DU Lounge.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

30. Yes when POTUS or CDC or Zelenskyy or NYTimes

Or CNN or NPR etc etc post something important in Twitter will ship to lounge.

[48656c6c6f20]

61. Cool, seperate but equal.

[Ferrets are Cool]

14. Many here like them OR the content they convey...

they aren't going anywhere as long as it's still a thang. It's easy enough to skip them.

[DemocraticPatriot]

16. I hear ya. Lucky for you that

I don't know how to post a "Twitter Link"....


LOL so i will not add to your misery.


those who DO post links-- you might preface your subject line with "Twitter: "
Is that so hard ?

[usonian]

19. Something of the sort came up and the admins chimed in that they are working on new stuff.

I recall recommending that titles have some kind of descriptor in them so that people can block/trash the posts.

If you look at HackerNews ( https://news.ycombinator.com ) the title has the site referenced, i.e. twitter.com, youtube.com and so forth, so that one can easily ignore or block unwanted sites.

I think I’ll drop off that idea again. Making the site referenced (if any) part of the title would take away space for the title, or it would have to be expanded.

Trouble is that on most devices, the twitter links ”render” automatically, whether you want them to or not.

[DemocraticPatriot]

20. Oh, I don't surf this site or the net on my phone, usually...

except for 'SmartNews' app... I don't even have Twitter installed on my phone, so yeah, sometimes I hit a twitter link accidentally and that is annoying, since I cannot log in and read it...

I surf this site on my PC, so yeah the links do show automatically that way, although sometimes there is a pause... which has sometimes annoyed me also.

[usonian]

22. Tweets show up on my phone. I think one of my Firefox ad-blockers stops that on the computer.

Apps are so invasive!! Apple clamped down on some of the shenanigans apps were doing.

Why do I use the phone? Well, if you wear glasses, phones are barely readable, but I am very nearsighed, so I take my glasses off, and the screen is at my distant vision (infinity, as they say)
Easy reading!

Doesn’t help my fat fingers!

This is interesting. I have *never* found a twitter link that required me to log in. Facebook, definitely. And this is on every device. If I see a bare link and click on it, I just go to twitter and read what there is to read.

Need an OS upgrade? I can’t say.

[DemocraticPatriot]

23. I may has mis-spoke-- I accidentally hit Twitter links

within news stories on my phone, and they "ask" me to log-in.... but on my latest phone I have never installed Twitter and don't want it there. lol


Viewing DU, I can see all Twitter links as if on Twitter, but sometimes it takes a minute... often I click on the graphics here to send me into my Twitter account, if I want to reply or follow or whatever...

[usonian]

24. Oh, that's it. You have a twitter account. I don't. So we have potential apples and oranges here.

How does it know?
I wonder if you aren’t keeping a login cookie that lets them know.

No biggie.

[48656c6c6f20]

17. Sure use this.

[live love laugh]

46. LOL

[Emrys]

26. Can we have a forum just for complaints about Twitter?

It would stop these endlessly repetitive and totally unproductive moanfests cluttering up GD for no purpose.

BTW, I quite often base OPs on tweets, as do many others here. Otherwise where do you think information comes from? The MSM, often a day late and slanted? Blogs, diminishing in number nowadays? We'd be very short of timely Ukraine coverage on DU if not for Twitter, as just one example.

When I post an OP, I usually give a hint in the subject line that it contains Twitter. I almost always post the text of tweets and any images that can be isolated.

And still the moans come.

Until Twitter goes *poof* or DU bans links to it, it's going to be part of DU's daily posts, so I suggest you're just going to have to live with it.

[usonian]

32. Authors are starting to migrate off twitter. So there will be more outlets.

Won’t happen right away. Change is like that.
We do just fine without AOL and other roadk —— OOPS
—- without other formerly indispensible items.

Nobody’s too big to fail.


Taking in Kanye was a fatal error. There have been, and will be, others.

[Emrys]

36. Sorry, that's nonsense. It took a decade or so for the networks on Twitter to be built up.

That's why a number of us who're very familiar with Twitter, shortcomings and all (it was never perfect even before Musk came along - people seem to forget how slow it was to take action on racism, bullying, Trump etc. while in Jack Dorsey's hands), get pissed off when those who don't know much if anything about it dismiss it out of hand - and by extension those of us who use it and find daily worth in it, some of which we take the time and trouble to share on DU.

Nothing currently available could take its place. Anything that might would take a long time to get established, and there's no concensus on what platform that might be, so fragmentation is a serious issue. Some of the writers etc. I read regularly have taken the precaution of setting up Mastodon accounts, but it's quite an alien environment without the broad scope that typifies Twitter, which is actually deceptively sophisticated, and it's not a change they'd relish.

Most of them - and me - are intent on sticking it out while Twitter's basic functions aren't yet too compromised to make it useable. So far, apart from too much chatter about Musk's antics, I'm seeing no difference in the way the site behaves, but then I'm not a typical Twitter user and don't rely on its homepage and timeline features etc.

People invested a great deal of time and effort building the communities that populate Twitter, and if there's some solace in the current situation, it's the fact that Twitter's the best place on the web to see Musk ridiculed and humiliated on a daily basis.

It may not be a vain hope that his current focus on fixing things that didn't need fixed and breaking things that worked OK will peter out or implode spectacularly, not least because of the financial pressures. What happens then is anyone's guess, but I seriously doubt Twitter will just disappear.

[leftstreet]

53. +1

[Ms. Toad]

27. I'm much happier encountering a tweet link,

Than a post which is completely meaningless because the OP didn't bother to provide context.

[herding cats]

31. I'm curious what you do when it's an actual news article which has a Twitter link?

Many real news sources, both local, national and international link to a tweet. It's a standard in the industry. Many outlets require their reporters to have accounts.

Not being snarky, I'm just curious how you react when NBC, CBS, ABC, etc. have Twitter links in them?

[MicaelS]

56. I do not click on them. n/t

[Meowmee]

33. You can pay for a star account

I think the site owner, Earl, said that eventually then it will be apparent in the link that it has a twitter post.

The thing that I am finding really annoying now is that I still will look at some of the posts with Twitter because some of them have OK content in my opinion, but I am purposely trying not to click on the actual Twitter part and now I find that even if I just scroll it’s bringing me to Twitter- which is really annoying to me. I don’t want to contribute financially to Twitter at all. In the past that didn’t seem to happen to me unless I actually clicked on the part that was the Twitter post. I don’t know what is going on with that.

[The Revolution]

34. Auto-trash helps

I have auto-trash set up for "tweet" and "tiedrich". I should add some more.

[Sugarcoated]

35. I trash them

[pecosbob]

37. If you wish to post links please have the courtesy to cut and paste the relevent content...

don't post them with no additional comment or content. It's not that much to ask.

[Kennah]

38. Just wait it out. $44 billion goes fast on a bender.

[chriscan64]

39. I am not crazy about them either or Twitter in general.

I have gotten to a place where I manage to live with them. Sometimes they contain information that interests me, other times they don't. Sometimes the whole content is contained in the title. That kind of post can be annoying, but I am in control of how annoyed I get or how much being annoyed affects my quality of life in general. When I get to that kind of post, I hit the back button or the link to one of the forums and look for something else to read. There is plenty of that here. My personal preference is for longer articles, so I check out the Editorials forum. There is much less twitter there.

[msfiddlestix]

40. I share your frustration, but good newsn soon we will be able to avoid click bait twitter

a couple of weeks ago or so, I posted similar question, EarlG responded indicating they're working on that for Du4, where posts will have a feature embedded in the subject line indicating if twitter or youtube is embedded in content of an OP.

I never have problems with youtube, easy for me to decide if it's click bait or not but twitter is different.

But at least before deciding to click on an OP, there will be an indicator which I'm looking forward to.

Hope this helps.

[Demsrule86]

41. Trash the OP. Or don't read it...

[kentuck]

43. I cannot link to Twitter half the time and when I do, it seems to take forever to come up...

I have never been a member and do not wish to join.

I wish that people would indicate Twitter in their title OP so I could skip them all.

Or create a new General Discussion, for Twitter posts only?

[Hortensis]

45. Most people post the "tweet" itself instead of a link to it.

Although that doesn't seem to be working for me now. Wonder if firing most of Twitter's tech support has anything to do with it?

(For those who might want to, when it works it's done by clicking on the little icon of 3 horizontal dots in the upper right corner, then "embed tweet," then "copy code," then pasting the copde wherever.)

Btw, I liked a "leave Twitter?" meme that's sprung up among those who use Twitter to communicate significant info, so copied a couple examples, in this case from scholars who are particularly hard for this world to surprise and harder to shock. (I was browsing for mentions of the strike and picketing of the UCalifornia system. At 48,000 academic workers, biggest higher ed strike in U.S. history!)

"Leave Twitter because a colonialist has bought his way into a place he knows nothing about to steal the work of a group of people he's never been a part of? My dear, I'm an anthropologist." ~ Dr. Holly Walters

"Leave Twitter just because it’s fallen into disrepair under terrible leadership? My dear, I study the crusades." ~ Thomas Lecaque (He "specializes in the nexus of apocalyptic religion and political violence, medieval to now.&quot

[Emrys]

47. You can post a Tweet just by copying its URL from the address bar in your browser.

DU's code takes care of embedding it. At the moment, Tweets display on DU just fine for me. The only time they consistently haven't was when I needed to tweak my Ghostery settings to let them through a long time ago.

Sometimes the embedding takes some time to resolve because Twitter's sometimes slow or down in different parts of the world. Meanwhile, people affected will just see the infernal "Link to tweet" link.

The same may happen if the tweet has been deleted. The fact it might be deleted is an argument in favour of posting the tweet text and any imagery that can be isolated along with the tweet link. Videos are a different matter, and unless they're a Twitter-embedded YouTube link, I don't know of any way to post them on DU, so I'll just insert "[Twitter video]" as a placeholder.

And yes, there's a pretty strong resistance community on Twitter. The attitude is that Musk, in the words of Elizabeth Warren, "didn't build that".

He may have bought the platform, but he didn't buy its users. And some of them are quite ornery and resourceful. There are few enough platforms with reach where liberal and progressive ideas can gain currency as it is without abandoning a major one and letting RW forces take over without a fight.

[BornADemocrat]

50. Agreed

I didn't like them before Musk took over.

[Emile]

54. I filtered out any post that says wordle, maybe you can

do the same with Twitter?

[LAS14]

55. I'm grateful to DUers who post notable Tweets so I don't have to go there. nt

[brooklynite]

57. "Clickbait"

Link to tweet

[MicaelS]

58. Still clickbait.

How long would it have taken for you to copy and paste the text, if you really wanted to know what he said?

Laziness.

[brooklynite]

59. So you're okay reading a Tweet...

…you just don’t want to be seen reading it at Twitter?

President Biden apparently isn’t leaving Twitter. Neither am I. You can choose to read posited tweets or not.

[MicaelS]

60. I only read it because I wanted to see what you posted.

And that way I could accuse you of being lazy.

I stand by what I said.

How long would it have taken for you to copy and paste the text, if you really wanted to know what he said?

Laziness.

What DU needs is a way to filter ALL Tweet link, so we do not even have to see them in the first place.

[brooklynite]

63. As far as I know, anyone can see a posted tweet, with or without an account.

No need to duplicate a tweet so people read it twice.

[Celerity]

66. Yes, you can view Twitter without account on the web and use some functions of Twitter. However, you

can’t use the Twitter app for Android or iPhone without an account. When you open this app on your phone, you’ll be asked to sign in.

https://moviemaker.minitool.com/moviemaker/view-twitter-without-account.html

How to View Twitter Without an Account?

Here’re 5 methods to browse Twitter without account.

Method 1. Visit Twitter’s Explore Page

The first simple workaround is to visit Twitter’s Explore page to view Twitter without account. Then you can browse the breaking news in the world right now, just click it for checking the detailed information. And you’ll find more related news, including videos, text, and photos. Also, you can choose a topic from Trending, COVID-19, News, Sports, and Entertainment to find and view more tweets.

Method 2. Search Twitter Without an Account

On Twitter’s Explore page, the search bar is also available. You can type any keyword (like a topic or username) in the search bar to look for something on Twitter. When you enter a word and click the Enter key, the search results will display in the Top tab by default. Alternatively, you can click the Latest, People, Photos, and Videos to get more results.

Method 3. Use the Advanced Search Without Logging in

The third thing you can do on Twitter without an account is to use the Advanced Search feature. After you search for something on Twitter, you’ll find the Advanced search button, a three-dot icon at the end of the search bar. Also, you can directly go to Twitter’s Advanced Search. Then you can set the specific words, date, engagement, and more to find specific tweets.

snip

[Celerity]

65. Every DU OP is hoping for people to click on it, so therefore can be spun as 'clickbait'

As for 'lazy', what about a simple (NON TWITTER involved) OP that is the title of the article, and then a link to say, CNN, or WaPo, or any other 'mainstream' source, and nothing else.

Not even a short quote from the article. THAT is just as lazy as posting a tweet as a standalone.

[JHB]

62. So just hit "Trash this thread" like I'm doing with this one.

DU already has a way, you're just not using it. It won't block it before you see it, but one click and it'll be gone from your views.