Twitter update

The latest word I'm getting is that Twitter has blocked non-member access to itself, so it is indeed becoming even more hermetic. This is going to kill view counts for a lot of people, but Twitter is apparently dealing with botting and other malware problems, so sealing itself off further from the real world seems to be the only pragmatic solution. Upshot: my inability to access tweets directly is not so much a result of censorship as of self-protection. From my point of view, though, the end result is unfortunately the same.

Here's a reply I got to a comment I'd posted about the problem:

Today, Twitter cracked down on access to its site, forcing people to log in with an account to access it. Elon Musk stated it was necessary as apparently multiple AI startups simultaneously started ripping ALL DATA from Twitter, crushing its servers and imposing huge costs in terms of servers and data fees. 

There is speculation growing that this is a coordinated attack by the lefty tech bros to take down or at least harm Twitter. If they can't control it, they will try to destroy it. 

Regardless, Twitter has taken steps to protect itself. This is not likely to go away anytime soon. You will need to make an account if you want to access Twitter from now on.

So we're back to data scraping again. I'm not planning to reestablish an account just so I can access tweets because, as you know if you've read my blog faithfully, fuck Twitter. My policy was to quote from it when it was useful (and Twitter is a good source for breaking news from on-site sources), but I can do without Twitter just fine, thanks.

UPDATE: with these changes to Twitter, is Musk "self-immolating"?