Twitter To Developers: Please Love Us Again (mashable.com)

Twitter wants to fix its relationship with developers, it said Thursday. The company, which sold its developer platform to Google earlier this year, said moving forward it intends to be more transparent with developers and provide them with more insight. From a report: While some continue to call the end of Twitter (and others gave up on the product years ago), the company is prioritizing more tools for developers in order to grow the site. "These efforts represent a massive new engineering and product investment in the future of the Twitter API platform, and in our developer ecosystem," Andy Piper, Twitter's staff developer advocate, wrote in a blog post announcement. One of the steps involves creating an easier to use service overall. Twitter offers several developer products, including free APIs, services from data analysis group Gnip, and the enterprise-level Twitter API product. Twitter plans to simplify its offerings by releasing one way to get access to the Firehouse (access to all tweets in real-time), one way to access Twitter search, and one access for account activity.

Comments

Lesson One - API Versions

[Anonymous Coward]

When you completely break your API, you do it over major version changes - 1.0 to 2.0, etc. Twitter completely breaks there in point releases 1.0 to 1.1. No developer is going to love that bullshit.

Not to mention they are horrible at communicating changes. Just because I have to code something for Twitter doesn't mean I'm going to use your shit service to get updates. Put out a change log like every other company in the world. Fuck twitter.

Re:Lesson One - API Versions

[BarbaraHudson]

That's because they're doing a Yahoo! 10 years ago Yahoo! made a real effort to pull developers into it's ecosystem, and we saw what happened there. The fact is, it's hard (read impossible) to keep a fixed API when your (and your competition's) shit changes all the time. Keep it fixed == become stale. Change it all the time == unstable. Just look at the rapid succession of javascript libraries as an example.

Re:Lesson One - API Versions

[Jack9]

Amazon seems to manage it, just fine.

Re:Lesson One - API Versions

[BarbaraHudson]

Unlike Twitter, Amazon is actually useful sometimes. It sells stuff. Not an "experience."

Re: Lesson One - API Versions

[Anonymous Coward]

Err no. I deal with Amazon payment APIs on a daily basis, for over 5 years now, and it is a constantly changing shitshow. There's a new eye-rolling email from them twice a year (minimum) that always means we have to do more bullshit, often total re-writes.

Not as bad as Google, who is changing shit monthly, but still bad.

Stripe, Apple, and PayPal are all much better after some initial chaos.

Look who's using it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter is used by President Trump and developers don't want to develop for it?

Fake news! Sad!

twitter is an official propaganda machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Trump says his Twitter account is where to get news.

Therefore twitter is an official propaganda machine.

Who wants to get involved with this?

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets say, Donald Trump cures cancer, here is now the News Media will report it ..>

TRUMP FIRES DOCTORS!!!

MILLIONS OF DOCTORS OUT OF WORK!!!

RUSSIA HACKED CANCER!!!

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

That's because he WOULD fire them, rather than re-deploy those doctors to tend to other medical needs.

Re: twitter is an official propaganda machine

[Anonymous Coward]

You watch too much TV fat a**

Re: twitter is an official propaganda machine

[Anonymous Coward]

#SlashDot #AnonymousCoward AC unable to write the word ass. Sad!

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[Motherfucking Shit]

Maybe, just maybe, so much of the media coverage of Trump is negative because the things his administration is doing (or not doing) are perceived negatively by a large part of the population. Maybe it's because numerous things Trump promised to accomplish "on day one," or in the first month of his term, or in the first 100 days of his term haven't been done. Maybe it's because Americans are figuring out they prefer having imperfect health care as opposed to none at all, they kinda like having clean water that isn't full of coal fly ash, and they need those Amtrak trains to get to work. Maybe it's because every single day, more shady connections between Russia and the Trump camp are revealed, and the administration bungles more cover-up attempts. Maybe it's because the president looks outright incompetent having his appointees continually resigning, getting fired, recusing themselves, and finding themselves under investigation by the FBI. Maybe it's because the public doesn't quite approve of Trump's nepotistic despotism, or the very troubling appearance that he's christened his son-in-law to do an end run around various posts that are supposed to require Congressional approval.

Nahhh, can't be any of that; it's the (((librul media globalist elites))) who are the problem, right?

Re: twitter is an official propaganda machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe he's doing exactly what he said he would do (he is) and imbeciles like you are shocked by an elected official is actually trying that approach.

Or are you pretending that Gitmo was closed in Obama's first 100 days, that healthcare costs haven't doubled, or that Snowden's NSA was the most transparent in history?

You fucking moron.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

That's because he WOULD fire them, rather than re-deploy those doctors to tend to other medical needs.

Actually the US president neither gets to "fire" doctors nor does he get to "redeploy" them; much as you may be lusting to have every country be a shitty as Cuba or Venezuela, the US isn't there yet.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

Sure he can fire them - just cut their funding. Medicaid, medicare, research, orphan drug programs, aid to 3rd world countries ... you think all these programs are self-financing and make enough of a profit to pay doctors?

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

Medicaid, medicare, research, orphan drug programs, aid to 3rd world countries

None of those programs employ doctors.

you think all these programs are self-financing and make enough of a profit to pay doctors

I think those programs are one of the major reasons doctors are leaving the profession. They are also one of the major reasons American health care is so outrageously expensive and comparatively ineffective or even harmful.

E.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

So, cutting funding for those programs would probably be quite good for both doctors and patients.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

Really? None of those programs employ doctors? Medicare and medicaid don't pay the doctor's bills at the hospital, etc? Those 14 million people who would have lost medical coverage if the Republicans had their way cutting funding, they wouldn't have been able to afford to see a doctor. So, the doctor wouldn't have been paid. Are you intentionally stupid or did you get dropped on your head?

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

Really? None of those programs employ doctors? Medicare and medicaid don't pay the doctor's bills at the hospital, etc?

They pay doctors, they don't employ them.

if the Republicans had their way cutting funding, they wouldn't have been able to afford to see a doctor.

Even if that were true, it wouldn't mean that Trump can "fire" those people, so your statement is wrong. If you meant that they might not get paid, then you should have said that.

Of course, it's not true anyway. Without those shitty, inefficient, crony-capitalist programs, medical care would be more affordable and demand for it would go up.

Well, except that people like you wouldn't get free sex change operations. But fortunately, there isn't a lot of demand for those to begin with.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

And how are they going to pay those doctors if they can't bill patients? And all those doctors running their own clinics - if they can't bill medicare/medicaid, they're not going to be able to have as many doctors in their group, It's not just hospitals. So doctors out of work, by Trump cutting funding - the exact mechanism I said.

You're a moron if you can't follow the chain of cause and effect. Or are you going to argue that Trump's cuts to the EPA aren't going to result in people being fired/laid off/out of a job?

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

You're a moron if you can't follow the chain of cause and effect.

We're not talking about cause and effect here, we're talking about "firing". "Firing" is something employers do to employees. Trump can't "fire" doctors because he doesn't employ them. End of story. Your hare-brained theories about what the consequences of ending Medicare would be are irrelevant to the question of whether doctors are employees of Trump.

And how are they going to pay those doctors if they can't bill patients? And all those doctors running their own clinics - if they can't bill medicare/medicaid, they're not going to be able to have as many doctors in their group, It's not just hospitals.

Well, I suppose you are to be forgiven for your economic delusions, being effectively a ward of the state. However, markets generally expand, not shrink, when government involvement is reduced. Furthermore, demand for essential health care is highly inelastic, so people will find ways to pay physicians. (Note that physicians' salaries are about 8% of total health care spending.)

Or are you going to argue that Trump's cuts to the EPA aren't going to result in people being fired/laid off/out of a job?

Unlike physicians, EPA employees are actually government employees, so Trump can fire them. Unlike physicians, their skills also have little value in the free market. So, he can fire them, they will have to change careers, and that's a good thing. Keeping my fingers crossed here.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

Yes, we ARE talking cause and effect. Cuts to budgets result in firings. The cause is the person doing the budget cuts - not the person tasked with doing the actual termination.

Demand for medical services isn't "inelastic." Go watch "Sicko". Or look at the people who can't afford to see a doctor because the co-pay is too high. People do NOT "always find ways to pay physicians." Otherwise, they wouldn't need medicare and medicade - many, before they got covered by one of these two plans, hadn't seen a doctor in decades even though they had chronic diseases.

Why don't you go live in your libertarian paradise - Somalia has no government interference, you can do whatever you want and you won't pay taxes or have to worry about other people on medicare.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

Yes, we ARE talking cause and effect. Cuts to budgets result in firings.

"Resulting in firings" isn't the same as "firing". If I stop going to my local neighborhood cafe and it closes, I didn't "fire" anybody.

People do NOT "always find ways to pay physicians." Otherwise, they wouldn't need medicare and medicade

Medicare and Medicaid aren't free; people pay for them. They cost several times as much as they should cost and are not sustainable. They also only spend around 8% on physician salaries. So, eliminating and replacing them with something more efficient would mean that people spend less on healthcare and have the ability to spend more on physicians. Of course, since most Americans have been paying into these systems without ever getting any benefit, they would have to be compensated for the money they lost, probably around $100000 for the average American worker close to retirement.

Somalia has no government interference

It was socialism that turned Somalia into the shithole it is today, and despite all the decades-long chaos that usually goes along with the fall of socialist regimes, in the case of Somalia, life actually seems to be improving there now that socialism is gone.

Why don't you go live in your libertarian paradise

When I search for you on Google, and based on your posting history, you appear to be an out-of-work transsexual living in Canada. So why don't you worry about extracting free stuff from Canadians instead instead of chiming in on US politics? You have made your bed, now lie in it.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[Jiro]

Maybe it's because every single day, more shady connections between Russia and the Trump camp are revealed, and the administration bungles more cover-up attempts.

You clearly haven't gotten the left-wing talking points memo. Now that Trump has bombed Syria, you are supposed to be upset that Trump is provoking Russia too much, not that Trump is being too friendly with Russia.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

Never said Medicare and Medicade were free - just that some people would not see a doctor if it weren't for them.

Now as to your personal attacks on me - I'm retired, bozo. Here people have the right to retire at 60, and given the state of my health, it was inevitable. Or are you going to characterize everyone who's retired as "out-of-work"? Same as you tried to characterize us as "practically wards of the state"?

I'll "chime in on US politics" as much as I damn well please. You see, freedom of speech isn't an American invention - and isn't being upheld too well in the US, what with FISA warrants, 100-mile border search zones where probable cause isn't needed for a search, etc. That "zone" covers 2/3 of the population. You need other countries that rank higher on freedom to remind you of what you've lost. In that respect, Canada has a freedom score of 99, and the US 89. That means 43 countries are more free than the US. No doubt it will get worse when next year's ratings come out. Or if you want something that makes the US look better, there's the 2016 rankings by the Cato Institute, where you're "only" 23rd.

Now as to my being a transsexual, that should be irrelevant, but it obviously is to you or you wouldn't have mentioned it. But why would you bother when my .sig makes it obvious and I haven't hidden it since I was outed here in 2006? Obviously, from the work you put into googling me and reviewing my posting history, I've struck multiple nerves. :-) Cry-baby.

It's so easy to troll libertarian-leaning retards - feels almost like te turn of the century again.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

Obviously, from the work you put into googling me and reviewing my posting history, I've struck multiple nerves.

I didn't have to "review" anything; we both have been on the site for a decade.

You need other countries that rank higher on freedom [freedomhouse.org] to remind you of what you've lost.

You like Canada, great! I'm happy there is a place for people like you. I immigrated to the US by choice, and because it is different from Canada or Europe. I have never said anything about what Canada or Europe should do; I simply don't care. What I do care is that the US is different and stay different. Why do you have this compulsion to prove that the Canadian system is better? Why are you trying to change a country that you don't live in?

Now as to my being a transsexual, that should be irrelevant,

It is quite relevant in the context of medical costs and coverage, since it is a costly and life-long medical condition, and it goes to the core of your values and beliefs. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming here that if you're typical, your lifetime medical bills for you conditions have been substantial and that you didn't pay for them yourself.

I'm just wondering what's going on in the heads of people like you. Why do you believe that other people have a moral obligation to forego having kids or having a good retirement, just so that people like you can get costly, non-essential medical procedures done? Because that's what it ultimately comes down to.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

And yet you admitted you googled me. Your words: "When I search for you on google". Stop lying, fool. And FYI, I've been here a lot longer than you. My first uid was 5 digits.

Type 1 diabetes is also a costly lifelong medical condition if treated, and fatal if not. Are you going to call for not treating those who can't pay the full cost for a genetic condition they were born with and did not choose? 30 years ago it cost me half my earnings. Now, we have universal mandatory pharmacare insurance here, so it's a flat fee, everyone pays, everyone's covered. Are you going to say that people who make claims against their insurance that exceed their premiums should be denied? See how hard it would be to sell an auto or house insurance policy on that basis.

How about victims of crime? I didn't ask to be sexually assaulted, I didn't ask for PTSD, anxiety disorder, or persistent depressive disorder with major depressive episodes. Should the victim be the one to bear the cost? Way to victimize someone a second time. You're a jerk.

An ignorant jerk. Gender reassignment surgery is considered an essential medical procedure. It prevents suicides. Look it up, asswipe.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

Gender reassignment surgery is considered an essential medical procedure. It prevents suicides. Look it up, asswipe.

I did. Gender reassignment surgery increases rates of suicide and psychiatric disorders. That's, in fact, consistent with your history of depression, sexual assault, and deep-seated anger.

How about victims... I didn't ask to be...

You were indeed victimized, by parents, teachers, and a society that evidently didn't teach you what you needed to know. Life stories like yours are exactly why I believe the US should turn around and not go down the path of the social welfare state any further: your life didn't have to go this way.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

You're so full of shit again. That study has been completely disproven. Come on - they cite sources from 1975. Subsequently, it's been established that the public's attitude played a huge role back then. Acceptance wasn't like it is today. The vast majority of studies show that post-transition, people's suicide rates are just slightly higher than the average population.

Anything is better than the 40% who want to kill themselves without proper treatment. In other words, people receiving proper treatment are at less risk of suicide.

But again, you're making a false deduction because that's what you want to do. Why? Because you're an ignorant asshole. My problems with depression are from several sources - as I have already pointed out. It's common in survivors of sexual assault, and also in people with PTSD - and that's me. It also doesn't help that my current endocrinologist is NOT following standard treatment guidelines, and put me on a drug that is known to cause depression and suicidal ideation without taking any counter-measures. He's an idiot, which is why I have an appointment with another endocrinologist in a couple of weeks. The serious depressive and suicidal ideation only started after he began treating me. So, apples and oranges. You also must have missed the murder - violent crimes tend to also cause PTSD, depression, etc. That started way back long before I began transition - more than 40 years ago, long before the term PTSD was even invented. Only got therapy for it 3 years ago, partly because I didn't know how to get help. But depression has been an on-again, off-again problem for most of my life, and has nothing to do with transsexuality and much to do with the events that caused PTSD.

Then there's the whole problem with vision loss. For a couple of years, I was mostly blind. Couldn't read, couldn't work, couldn't do much of anything. Severe vision impairment a known source of depression. And the bout of flesh-eating disease. And a few other medical problems (work accidents, etc).

Anyone who's gone through what I've been through would be affected - unless they're a sociopath. I'm not.

Now, pretty much everyone has relatives who pay taxes but don't have such a high need for medical and other support services. Why isn't it right and proper for them to insist that some of the taxes they pay help others in their family? Or do you believe that taxes are a one-way street - the government taketh, and the government giveth not? Creep.

But of course creeps like you hide behind the anonymity of the internet. It's what you do.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

That study has been completely disproven. Come on - they cite sources from 1975

The study is from 2011 and is the most highly cited study on the subject. If you have a more recent study, feel free to share it.

Or do you believe that taxes are a one-way street - the government taketh, and the government giveth not?

No, I think health care should be privatized and insurance based: the government should (usually) neither give nor take when it comes to healthcare. Government and charity should be reserved for people who are indigent and have no other options.

I didn't ask to be sexually assaulted, I didn't ask for PTSD, anxiety disorder, or persistent depressive disorder with major depressive episodes.Then there's the whole problem with vision loss. For a couple of years, I was mostly blind. And the bout of flesh-eating disease. And a few other medical problems (work accidents, etc).

The only "deduction" I'm making is that your society has failed you, because your life is clearly not the path a life should take. I think you are a poster child for what is wrong with "liberal" progressive societies. In a decent. compassionate society, nobody should end up like you have ended up. And your obsession with bringing the same kind of system you live under to the US is evidently an attempt for you to cope with, and rationalize, your reality.

I will forgive your rudeness and insults because it's obvious you are suffering and you probably just don't know any better. I suggest that if you can't cope with opposing views, don't participate in US political discussions. But I will speak out when people like you advocate for bringing their dysfunctional societies and cultures to the US.

If I hadn't emigrated to the US as a young man, my life might have taken been wrecked in similar ways as yours. I cannot let views like yours stand without speaking out against them, because kids deserve better than what you got and what you are advocating for.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

The study you and many fundy christians quoted is old (the previous century), and only has a total of 17 subjects. Here's one from 2012 with 889 subjects. It shows that suicidal ideation is mostly caused by rejection and lack of support before transition.

The study found that trans people are most at risk prior to social and/or medical transition and that, in many cases, trans people who require access to hormones and surgery can be left unsupported for dangerously long periods of time. The paper highlights the devastating impact that delaying or denying gender reassignment treatment can have and urges commissioners and practitioners to prioritise timely intervention and support.

There are plenty more that all say the same thing - hormones and surgery lower the individual's risk, as does social acceptance. It's assholes like you who are the cause of the high risk pre-transition.

Also, you don't think that voters and taxpayers should have a say in how their tax dollars are spent, and they shouldn't be allowed to vote for a public health carfe service. So much for democracy. Every other OECD country disagrees with you.

I am the rare exception - it's bound to happen statistically - where things just keep going wrong. Most people never have to deal with a murder, or flesh-eating disease. Half of all women have to deal with sexual assault - and that is the same in the US - so I'd say society is failing women in general.

And the benefits of a public health care system that covers everyone is pretty self-evident when you look at the stats

Here’s a fact most Canadians probably don’t know: Canadians live longer than people in the United States. Specifically, women in Canada live an average of 83 years, compared to 80 in the U.S.; men live more than 78 years on average compared to 75 in the United States. Why is this the case? There are clear links between mortality rates and the way countries invest in health care and improving social conditions.

Recently, we published a study in the American Journal of Public Health on the efficiency of health care systems at extending lives over the past two decades – and it’s good news for Canadians. For every additional hundred dollars spent on health care in Canada, per capita, life expectancy was extended by nearly two months. The same expenditures were only associated with less than half a month of increased life expectancy in the United States.

As you can see, public health care dollars go much further in extending lifespan than private healthcare dollars. So, why shouldn't people be allowed to vote to have their tax dollars spent more effectively via a public health care system that has been proven to be better than the US private health care system?

The study assessed the gains in life expectancy from health spending in 27 countries, as well as across genders within each nation. After controlling for economic development, social expenditures, and behavior, we found significant differences in international levels of efficiency. Canada ranked 8th of 27 countries, while the U.S. came in at 22nd.

Your system just doesn't deliver the bang for the buck. That's a fact. Sometimes the government CAN do things more efficiently than the private sector, and when it comes to people's health, it should. Profit shouldn't come first.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

The study you and many fundy christians quoted is old (the previous century), and only has a total of 17 subjects.

Actually, it has 324 sex reassigned subjects and 3240 controls. The study is from 2011, so it's not old. It does look at long-term effects of gender reassignment and objective criteria, which is a good thing. And suicides occur at significant rates until the end of the study, so you cannot explain the results by social changes.

Here's one from 2012 with 889 subjects. It shows that suicidal ideation is mostly caused by rejection and lack of support before transition.

That study is based on self-reported narrative of non-representative samples with no control group, apparently close to transition. It's been cited 4 times. I have no doubt that most people who go through transition will afterwards say that it was good for them. It's basic cognitive dissonance. It's meaningless in terms of outcomes.

So, your beliefs and statements remain contradicted by scientific facts.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

I am the rare exception - it's bound to happen statistically - where things just keep going wrong. Most people never have to deal with a murder, or flesh-eating disease. Half of all women have to deal with sexual assault - and that is the same in the US - so I'd say society is failing women in general.

To see what really went wrong in your case, one would have to look at your medical history in detail, but it is highly implausible that all these problems were unrelated and accidental; that would be extraordinary and would require extraordinary proof. In fact, many of the conditions you list are preventable and/or related.

(In fact, there is one area where there is clearly a relationship even based on the limited information you give: while you may think that transitioning to a woman decreased your risk of suicide, it clearly greatly increased your risk of sexual assault.)

For every additional hundred dollars spent on health care in Canada, per capita, life expectancy was extended by nearly two months.

Nice quote, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Greece and Israel spend half as much per capita than Canada and have longer life expectancies. In fact, if you look internationally, beyond about $2000/capita/year, there is no improvement in life expectancy. Another example of how your analysis doesn't make sense is if you look at life expectancy by race in the US. Asian-Americans and Latinos have longer life expectancies than Canadians, while white and African Americans have lower life expectancies.

Your system just doesn't deliver the bang for the buck.

Oh, that's quite true...

That's a fact. Sometimes the government CAN do things more efficiently than the private sector

Medicare/Medicaid are government programs and account for about half of US health spending but only cover 1/3 of Americans, so this is clearly not true for the US. In fact, if we simply extended Medicare/Medicaid to the entire US population, it would spend about as much per American as the Canadian health care system spends per Canadian. The problem in the US is clearly that the public health care system isn't working well, and imposing it on more Americans clearly would make the problem worse.

and when it comes to people's health, it should.

Long life expectancy and health are largely determined by lifestyle choices, nutrition, and prevention, not medical care.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

No - the original study that it quotes only has 17 subjects, and dates ton 1975. A second study it quotes is also from the '80s, and another portion is from the 90s. Social conditions have changed, and subsequent studies have found that the biggest determinators were lack of social acceptance and support, and delayed care. Learn to do proper research.

And obviously newer research will be less cited because it hasn't been around as long. Here's a simple test - go in person and talk to a specialist in the field who knows what they're talking about. Get the latest information and practices. Suicide rates now are barely above the general population post-surgery with proper care. The emphasis in that last sentence is proper care. My endocrinologist screwed up. I fixed the problem and feel great. Unfortunately crappy care happens more often than it should, because there are doctors out there who are still influenced by the WHI study, which also turned out to be bullshit that wasn't replicable.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

Are you for real? All women have a huge risk of sexual assault - 50%. And the vast majority are repeat victims. So my experience is typical. It comes with the territory, and the problem isn't transition, the problem is men who think with their dicks. Nice victim-blaming you've got going there, jerk.

In a large enough population, you're going to get some people who, just at random, have a much higher number of "bad things" happening to them than others, same as if you pick random 4-digit numbers, you'll eventually come up with 4444, 1234, etc. Numbers that don't look random, but are.

Where is your proof for the claim that the public health care system (medicaid/medicare) in the US isn't working? These are people who would have NO care without it. Are you saying that people with no health care do better than people with health care? Absurd, but that's what your statement leads to.

And no, medicare/medicaid don't account for about half of US health spending. Total health spending in 2015 was 3. trillion, of which Medicare combined accounted for $1.191 trillion, out of 3.2 trillion total health care spending. That's 37%, a far cry from half. A billion here, a billion, there, and soon you're talking about real money.

Also, since you cited Israel and Greece as doing better, you proved my point. They both have universal public health care plans.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

So my experience is typical. It comes with the territory, and the problem isn't transition, the problem is men who think with their dicks. Nice victim-blaming you've got going there, jerk.

Oh, please, spare me the obvious histrionics. Medically, sexual assault is simply a risk factor after MTF gender transition. That is objectively relevant when judging the risk/benefit and cost/benefit ratios of your procedure. The choice of undergoing a major surgery followed by life-long hormonal treatment for what is essentially a mental or neurological issue does not even come close to surviving a risk/benefit analysis, let alone a cost/benefit analysis; there are many body identity disorders, and yours is the only one that is "treated" with surgery.

In a large enough population, you're going to get some people who, just at random, have a much higher number of "bad things" happening to them than others

No, I'm sorry, things that happened to you were not "just random". You made choices and they had consequences; you can argue that you were entitled to making those choices, but that doesn't prevent the consequences or make them "just random". The way other people stay healthy, safe, and financially sound is by avoiding choices that they are technically entitled to make but that entail risk.

And no, medicare/medicaid don't account for about half of US health spending. Total health spending in 2015 was 3. trillion, of which Medicare combined accounted for $1.191 trillion [cms.gov], out of 3.2 trillion total health care spending. That's 37%, a far cry from half.

Well, so you looked it up and admit the basic fact then, namely that Medicare/Medicaid spend significantly more money per patient than private insurance. Great! You're now just quibbling about percentages.

Where is your proof for the claim that the public health care system (medicaid/medicare) in the US isn't working? Are you saying that people with no health care do better than people with health care? Absurd, but that's what your statement leads to.

That's not my main point, but that seems to be the case

These are people who would have NO care without it.

Obviously, there are people who have NO care without it. There are also people who have no care BECAUSE OF it. You're cherry-picking your criteria to suit your argument. The question to ask is whether Medicare/Medicaid are more effective at delivering health care in the US than the private system, and they are not.

Also, since you cited Israel and Greece as doing better, you proved my point. They both have universal public health care plans.

And I'd be overjoyed if the US federal government extended Medicare/Medicaid to all Americans while spending $2000person/year and allowing private insurance on the side. You know, like Canada, Greece, or Israel. And the nice thing about that is that it can be financed out of the existing Medicare/Medicaid budgets while even lowering taxes.

The trouble is that "universal health care" proposals in the US try to force everybody into public health plans that spend $10000/year/person and limit the ability of Americans to buy private health plans. That is, the proposals are actually nothing like what Canada, Greece, or Israel have. And ignorant Canadians like you keep advocating for that b.s.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

No - the original study that it quotes only has 17 subjects, and dates ton 1975

Did you even look at the paper? It follows a cohort of more than 3500 people over decades. Stop making things up!

Here's a simple test - go in person and talk to a specialist in the field who knows what they're talking about.

Geez, what possible motivation could a surgeon have to convince you of the benefits of the kind of surgery they perform? Are you really that naive?

Suicide rates now are barely above the general population post-surgery with proper care.

I'm still waiting for any evidence of that. So far, all we have is "we asked around, and people who had the surgery and responded think it helped them".

I fixed the problem and feel great.

You are, by your own description, a disabled, out-of-work, half blind, angry 60-something transsexual with a history of sexual abuse, PTSD, and depression living on a small pension. Do you seriously want to claim that that amounts to "fixing the problem" or "feeling great"?

And the sad thing is that most of those problems were likely avoidable if your society and your medical system hadn't let you down.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

I made choices? To try to stop a murder when I was 16 rather then be killed as well? How is that a bad thing, even if it did give me PTSD? Hint - it's not - because I survived.

And no, you're the one who claims it would be $10,000/year/person.

The difference, however, between the No. 1 spender, the United States, and the No. 10 spender, Canada, is quite large. Canada spent 10.2% of its GDP on health care in 2013, which amounted to $4,351 per person, while the United States spent 16.4% of its GDP that year, amounting to $8,713 per person.

So if you just did the same things we do, which result in longer lifespans, it would be less than half what you're using as a comparison. However, because being an American is pretty much commensurate with being overweight or obese, the costs will obviously be higher. But that's your choice. You can put a tax on soft drinks, public education, etc., but you won't. Here there are government ads on TV every day encouraging people to get active. That's a lot better than ads for coke that try to intimate that if you walk for x number of minutes, you'll burn off the calories in a can of coke, which just encourages consumption (but that's what coke wants - not fit people, but people who will over-consume guilt-free).

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

Here's a deconstruction of your stupid claims.

To drop from over 40% prior to surgery to 4% after is an incredible success story. Stop selectively quoting without looking at the context.

Too bad that in the US, society is letting transsexuals down by continuing to pass laws against them, as well as making it hard to obtain surgery that, as the figures show, saves lives.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

So if you just did the same things we do, which result in longer lifespans, it would be less than half what you're using as a comparison.

Canada is 35 million people occupying the second largest country in the world, with enormous natural resources, strict immigration restrictions, few geopolitical concerns, and with little diversity. Your idea that other countries can simply choose to be like Canada is as profoundly ignorant and arrogant as royalty saying "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche".

Secondly, Americans simply don't want to be like Canadians. Forcing people to maximize their life expectancy is not what life ought to be about. If it were, why stop at national health care and commercials? Why not force everybody into institutionalized living, with controlled living conditions and food intake? No, Americans still generally believe that people should be treated like responsible adults, and despite progressive inroads, I hope that will never change. It's why I chose the US; it's pretty much the only major country that still operates that way.

The kind of broken life you have led is symptomatic of progressive societies, and it is not only unsustainable for a society as a whole, it is also deeply unfair to individuals, including yourself. Instead of ranting and raving about Trump and what Americans ought to do, you should direct your anger at Canadian society, because that is what made you what you are today. And to be clear: your life and your conduct certainly do not reflect positively on Canadian society.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

To drop from over 40% prior to surgery to 4% after is an incredible success story. Stop selectively quoting without looking at the context.

You're comparing "suicidality" from a US survey with actual suicides from a Swedish study. Talk about dishonest use of statistics.

In any case, it doesn't matter anyway. "I'm suicidal unless you amputate a body part" is neither medically nor ethically a sound justification for government-financed major surgery.

Too bad that in the US, society is letting transsexuals down by continuing to pass laws against them, as well as making it hard to obtain surgery that, as the figures show, saves lives.

It is very easy to obtain gender reassignment surgery in the US, and should continue to be so. However, it is something people should pay for themselves; government should not mandate that Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance pay for them.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

Why am I even bothering wasting my time with a liar? You've become boring.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[BarbaraHudson]

strict immigration restrictions, few geopolitical concerns, and with little diversity.

You just can't stop lying, can you?

Statistics Canada projects that, by 2031, almost one-half of the population over the age of 15 will be foreign-born or have at least one foreign-born parent.[24] The number of visible minorities will double and make up the majority of the population of cities in Canada.

Canada admitted 35,700 Syrian refugees. That's almost 3x the US number.That's a heck of a lot better than the US's 12,486

Also, don't forget the province of Quebec - the second-largest province in the country - mostly french. Canada has 2 official languages.

Canada is more diverse than the US

A comparison of the Harvard and Goren maps show that the most diverse countries in the world are found in Africa. Both maps also suggest that the United States falls near the middle, while Canada and Mexico are more diverse than the US.

It's why I chose the US; it's pretty much the only major country that still operates that way.

Look at your last election. The rest of the world is laughing at you. Sad little man.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[ooloorie]

You just can't stop lying, can you?

You can't stop confabulating, can you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Look at your last election. The rest of the world is laughing at you. Sad little man.

As I was saying before: I want to thank you for your brutal honesty about your life and the kind of support and guidance Canadian society has given you. You certainly confirmed again my impressions of Canada. I hope and trust my fellow Americans will draw the right conclusions from your example and from your conduct.

Re:twitter is an official propaganda machine

[Anonymous Coward]

Why am I even bothering wasting my time

Yes, that's an excellent question! Why do you have this obsession with telling Americans that we should live like Canadians? Why do you have this obsession with US politics? Why do you believe that someone listening to your life story would say "hey, she's the product of a society that really helps its members grow and prosper"? You really ought to reflect on that.

And maybe if you reflect on it enough, you can still make some changes in your life.

Developers...Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Users have abandoned Twitter in mass numbers. It is a playground for millennials, SJWs, and Hillary supporters.

Re:Developers...Huh?

[Opportunist]

So ... both sides hate Twitter? A few postings up, we heard that it's just Trump's propaganda machine, here we get to learn that it's just Hillary's feel-good show.

Wow, even Fox News only managed to piss off one side of the political fence.

Re:Developers...Huh?

[tepples]

Slashdot users have hated twitter since 2008, if willyhill's sockpuppet exposé is to be believed.

Re:Developers...Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what your mom said last night when I was pounding her ass with my naked cock. Also Twitter was never really good for anything in the first place and was only ever a 'playground' for useless unproductive people with nothing better to do, the world will be better off once it's dead and gone. Same goes for all so-called 'social media' nonsense. Oh and by the way how many cocks do you suck every day? Double digits?

Re: Developers...Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Naked cock" lul.

Re:Developers...Huh?

[AVryhof]

...and just after I wasted my mod points

There's an easy way to do this.

[H3lldr0p]

Stop fucking around with the API and stop fucking around with access to it. You need to build trust and you can't do that when you change rules willy-nilly all the time.

The reason why developers fled your platform is because you never let it stabilize long enough for people to do things with it. Then, if memory serves, you closed it. And then you sold it.

So the question becomes one of why would anyone want to invest the time to figure the API and platform out if you're just going to pull the football away without warning?

Re: There's an easy way to do this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth here. Once bitten twice shy. Not wasting time again to develop tools that will be deprecated by dumb management decisions of others.

Why bother?

[Opportunist]

Twitter, the problem is a fundamentally different one: Why bother with you?

Twitter was a very good platform to get points across quickly. You would say what you want and people could reply to it, could write short counterpoints to it, it was quite the place. A veritable "marketplace of ideas". And actually, the short format worked in the favor of this. Instead of writing an endless stream of words where the average reader's eyes glaze over somewhere in the middle (like, say, this wall of text here), you had to be terse and get your point across. Which allowed readers to quickly go down the list of replies and counterpoints, allowing a reader to get a really good grasp of a topic he was interested in and hearing many opinions, conflicting opinions that sometimes led to quite heated and interesting discussions.

That time is gone. Now that you can't even be sure anymore that you get to hear everyone. With shadowbans left and right, and some people outright getting banned to "make a point against different views, I mean, hate speech". Hate speech? Disagreeing with someone has become hate speech now? Don't get me wrong, if someone said that group X should be strung up, I could at least see the point, but we're talking about people whose "crime" was to disagree with someone and make them drop out of their echo chamber.

TL;DR: Twitter became irrelevant when not hurting someone's feelings became more important than hearing all sides of a story.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that Twitter banned many developers from using the API, because they didn't like the purposes the developer had in mind. Law enforcement or government? Commercial and not an advertiser? Ban!

Once you've kicked out the best paying and most reliable developers, why would anyone else bother with you?

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Had a project that was hoping to use Twitter to essentially do a quick and dirty damage assessment after natural disasters. (The idea was that people already tweet pictures of things after a disaster and they could be used to quickly determine areas that needed to be checked out more thoroughly.) It was government related, so Twitter banned us.

Anything that isn't about invading people's privacy to try and sell crap isn't allowed on the Twitter API.

Re:Why bother?

[Xest]

The monetary value in Twitter was never in discussions, debates, or the latest celebrity selfie.

It was in the fact that often news broke there first. Someone feeling an earthquake, or seeing a US assault on OBL's compound is announced there before it hits the news, and as such automated data mining and monitoring can reap great rewards, from trading, to being the first news person with a story, to targeted advertising based on an event, to better directed emergency response information, or nowadays, to intelligence information in warzones, and even to whatever the latest fucking presidential policy is towards something apparently.

Twitter's problem is that if it loses followers, it loses that edge. It can facilitate conversations until the cows come home but no one cares about that, no one's going to develop anything meaningful or massively profitable against that. What they need is geopolitical information and that simply requires a large active, global user database. If you can weed out information that will affect the markets, if you can weed out intelligence useful to the military, if you can weed out important news before anyone, then you're going to be providing value.

Twitter's API needs to support that to the greatest degree possible, and it needs to maintain a thriving userbase to back it up.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter was a very good platform to get points across quickly.

Then along came somebody who only uses it to spew lies and misinformation.

Re:Why bother?

[Opportunist]

Somebody? You act as if that was only one person. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and most of them stink.

The fun part is that what you USED TO be able to do is to simply reply to it and call people out on their bullshit. Try that now.

Re:Why bother?

[BarbaraHudson]

It was a platform for people with a 10-second attention span. What could go right?

Re:Why bother?

[BarbaraHudson]

Twitter was a very good platform to get points across quickly.

Then along came somebody who only uses it to spew lies and misinformation.

Then along came everybody using it to spew lies and misinformation.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother developing anything profitable and meaningful if Twitter can take one look at it, decide they'd like to steal the concept, change their terms and lock you out of their API then build their own version?

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not acting like he's the only one. I'm just saying that when it comes to frequency, it's kinda hard to Trump him.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was in the fact that often news broke there first. Someone feeling an earthquake, or seeing a US assault on OBL's compound is announced there before it hits the news, and as such automated data mining and monitoring can reap great rewards, from trading, to being the first news person with a story, to targeted advertising based on an event, to better directed emergency response information, or nowadays, to intelligence information in warzones, and even to whatever the latest fucking presidential policy is towards something apparently.

The thing is you're right, but Twitter has (to this point at least) basically decided they don't want to be in that business. I mentioned this in another reply, I was involved with a project that would have like to have used Twitter to do things like automated data mining to discover natural disasters. Specifically the idea was to get an idea of the areas hardest hit, and as a proof of concept, we were using tweets posted during a recent hurricane.

Twitter pulled our API access when they found out what we were doing because it had a government connection.

Basically their API is only open to people who want to datamine tweets for marketing purposes. Twitter doesn't want to be in any other market.

Our Fickle Love

[Anonymous Coward]

We only "loved" you before, because our bosses told us to. The bosses claimed to understand the value of Twitter and what it's for. They said, "I don't care if you get the point of Twitter or not, it's in, so finish up that tweeting robot."

The bosses' other decisions and values were of equal quality and conherence, so they aren't the bosses anymore.

"Shadowbans left and right"

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's mostly shadow bans right and right, thanks to the SJW-ridden Twitter "Trust & Safety Council." To the best of my knowledge only right-wingers/trump-supporters are being shadowbanned/throttled.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[Opportunist]

I honestly don't give a fuck what spectrum gets banned. For the record, I am a liberal. Leaning towards socialist even. Hey, I'm European, for the average American I'm probably a commie anyway.

But I DO want to hear what everyone has to say! Yes, that includes that I want you to be allowed that this Opportunist bastard should be dropped out of a plane without a parachute. I want you to be allowed to say that! I want you to be allowed to speak your mind, even if I think it's complete and utter bullshit!

I do reserve the right to reply to it, though. And I do expect that I get to be heard too. I am a firm believer in audiatur et altera pars, everyone has to be heard if you at least want to have a CHANCE to get to the true core of a problem.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a firm believer in audiatur et altera pars, everyone has to be heard if you at least want to have a CHANCE to get to the true core of a problem.

Exactly! I don't agree with half the stuff on Twitter, but I firmly believe that even the people I disagree with should not be shadowbanned, have their check mark remove, etc. Let them speak, reply, and be replied to.

It's hard to trust Twitter with the time and energy of developing for their platform when a midlevel, anonymous 'community manager' could suddenly decide that I hurt someone's feelings and my app gets banned. No thanks.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[avandesande]

I have exactly the opposite problem I don't care what anyone thinks and I don't want to hear from any of them. Same result though....

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[Opportunist]

That's fine too. Hey, you do have that right to not listen to anyone, that's absolutely ok. But as far as I'm concerned I, and only I, should have the right to decide what I want to listen to and what not.

In turn, you, and only you, should have the right to decide what you want to listen to.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[roman_mir]

This commie Opportunist bastard should be dropped out of a plane without a parachute.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[Anonymous Coward]

You're in the minority now, sadly. I agree with what you're saying and I respect that sort of difference of opinion.

But you don't have to look far to find people who are trying to solve the problem of "abuse" by making sure some messages are never heard. I mean, just look at this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/02/unwanted-advances-on-campus-us-university-professor-laura-kipnis-interview

Unless perhaps I'm not keeping up and the Guardian is now considered Russian propaganda, it's quite dangerous to see how far this new trend has gone, wherein people find it injurious that they actually have to defend their (lack of) thinking and would much rather shut down all discussion via legal or extra-legal pathways.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[russotto]

Yes, that includes that I want you to be allowed that this Opportunist bastard should be dropped out of a plane without a parachute.

Helicopter, not plane. Not sure why, the things cost a fortune to run and are quite space limited, but it's always helicopters.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[jimmifett]

I'm am probably the exact ideological opposite of you fiscally and socially, but in this we are in 100% complete agreement. Not bad for a commie ;)

Additionally, the best antisceptic for rotten ideas is to expose it to sunlight. The more people out there that can see how amazingly flippant an idiot is, the more ridicule they will get.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[Dixie_Flatline]

Twitter is capricious with its bans. It bans people for saying offensive things, but doesn't ban them for saying threatening or dangerous things.

I abhor hate speech, and I actually support my country's ban on it. I believe speech can be weaponized; advocating for the extermination of a person or people on the basis of race or orientation or whatever shouldn't be protected speech. (Don't argue with me about this; I don't care what you think in this regard. I'm just giving this preamble as context, not to invite any discussion on the matter. I mean, post if you want, but I'm not going to read any of it.)

The problem with Twitter is that because they're so useless on their own and haven't allowed anyone to make useful tools for the service, people that I *do* want to hear--usually women--are driven off the service because of the unending firehose of rape and death threats. Police don't take those seriously, and neither does twitter, and so the system becomes unusable for anyone at the receiving end of that. I don't think that's an acceptable use of a service.

IF Twitter had provided appropriate tools from the beginning (shared block lists, tools to filter out threats and random hateful garbage, etc.) this would all be a non-issue. The all-speech-is-free crowd could go off and do what they want, and the people that are just trying to live their lives without hearing how they should be raped to death could ALSO use the space as they want. Instead, Twitter lashed out in all directions at none, ineffectually banning people but not making the system any better for anyone.

If you're going to provide a platform for free speech (and for twitter, I fall on the side of more speech being better often because it means repressed populations may actually get heard), you also need to provide tools for some people to make sure they only have to hear what they want to.

Re: "Shadowbans left and right"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an alt-right troll, and I agree with you.

All opinions are worthy of existence. I can defeat bad ideas with rational debate! I don't need Nanny Twitter to protect me, and neither do you.

If our ideas are so weak that they need shadowban protection from challenge, are they really worthy of your devotion?

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly don't give a fuck what spectrum gets banned. For the record, I am a liberal. Leaning towards socialist even. Hey, I'm European, for the average American I'm probably a commie anyway.

Stopped reading right there. Opinion discarded.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[Opportunist]

Hmm. I disagree, care to present your argument for it? Mine against it would, at least for now, be that I enjoy living.

Re: "Shadowbans left and right"

[Opportunist]

Only bad ideas require censorship for survival. If you need proof for that, take a look at any dictatorship in history.

Re:"Shadowbans left and right"

[roman_mir]

But what do your desires matter, a collectivist shouldn't be looking at his desires and enjoyments, he should be looking at what is the best for collective. The collective would be better off without any collectivists, if everybody was a completely anti-collectivist and individualistic the system would not provide any opportunity for any form of majority to abuse any form of minority. If you are against abuse you should jump from a plane.

Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[tepples]

One big problem with the Twitter API that I'm aware of is the requirement of an OAuth "consumer secret", which I've mentioned before.

Twitter's implementation of OAuth 1 requires each application to sign all requests with a private key that an application's developer is obligated to keep secret even from the application's users. This is fine for a web application that runs on a server. But a native application, particularly one distributed as free software, can't avoid exposing its private key to the user. Twitter can and does revoke keys that leak. Though most other services have switched to the more cookie-like OAuth 2 spec, which has an option to allow desktop applications to operate without a private key, Twitter has persisted in requiring this idiocy, which both the OAuth 1 and OAuth 2 RFCs discourage.

Does this new announcement include a move away from a mandatory "consumer secret" for applications that run on a desktop or mobile computer?

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, Ron Johnson here. I'm the Lead Senior Development Engineer here at Twitter.

We are moving away from the "shared secret" approach to the industry standard "username and password". You might be interested to know we never bothered updating older android clients to use OAuth anyway, so if you faked your authentication to say you were one of them you could always just use a password!

On behalf of the team here at Twitter, I'd like to share a heartfelt fuck you. Sincerely,

-Ron Johnson
Senior Tweet Development Engineering Specialist

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[Anonymous Coward]

route your shit through your own web service that conceals the api key and exposes only the actions you'd feel comfortable having your api key used for, dingus

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[conquistadorst]

This is some years ago, maybe things have changed but I think the data coming back from the API is what confused our users most. Since it wasn't the full fire-hose, the API results were often inconsistent. Sometimes tweets you'd expect to be there wouldn't show, sometimes there seemed to be whole swaths of data missing from more recent days, sometimes it was date ranges, or sometimes it was baffling random. We dabbled with Gnip but unfortunately the pricing was way out of our range. Gnip seemed to be more aimed at large companies with deep pockets. Instead it just came a little used feature of our product that got more or less ignored. I don't think the Twitter API product was terrible, it just fell short of our users expectations and we couldn't explain our way out of it.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[tepples]

route your shit through your own web service

That was already mentioned in the linked comment:

The first, recommended by OAuth 1 spec author Dick Hardt, is to proxy all API calls through a server that the app developer operates. The API keys then never leave this server. Yet the app developer needs to find some way to recover the cost of operating this proxy server.

If you were developing a free application that uses the Twitter API, how would you go about recovering the cost of operating "your own web service"?

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[BarbaraHudson]

Hi Ron.

We don't care. Damage done.

-- the world.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[BarbaraHudson]

Maybe it's better you don't recover the cost. Or provide your service. 99% of the web is shit anyway. That includes Twitter.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[allo]

which means loss of control to the user. A local client can keep the user secret local. My service would need to know your secret.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[tepples]

An application using the Twitter API uses the application secret to obtain a secret that represents the (user, application) pair. The trouble is with distributing an application containing said application secret to the public.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[allo]

Yep, but i can read your public timeline with the application secret, but only post to it with the obtained secret. When i hide the app secret in the binary you get, you can request a user secret, which allows the app to use twitter, without sharing the user secret with the developer. And if you get the app secret (which is bad), you still cannot get the secrets of other users without phishing (now YOU request them to login to a site, which uses the app secret, so it gets new user secrets).

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[tepples]

On the other hand, one user of a desktop application can leak the app secret and report to Twitter its having been leaked, causing Twitter to revoke the key for all the application's users.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[allo]

Yes. The concept is broken. But it's also hard to solve, if you do not want a password login (which cannot be revoked as nicely as oauth tokens).

You would need something to do like getting an token from a user encrypted with the twitter pubkey, then signing it with your app key on your server and getting a user secret back encrypted for the user signed by twitter or something similiar ... and i guess there is no such standard available, yet.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[tepples]

You would need something to do like getting an token from a user encrypted with the twitter pubkey, then signing it with your app key on your server

Which requires the developer to operate a server. How is the operation of said server paid for, particularly for an application that's distributed as free software through Savannah, GitLab, or GitHub?

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[allo]

I answered the question, how somebody could operate a relay server without knowing the client secrets. You're asking another question now.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[tepples]

You're asking another question now.

I'm fully aware that this is a follow-up question. What are practical answers thereto?

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[allo]

a flow without app token. Or username password, but we discussed a scheme, which doesn't expose too much of my account and/or credentials to you.

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[tepples]

a flow without app token.

And my complaint in comment #54185757 was that Twitter hadn't officially made such a flow available to developers. What am I missing?

Or username password, but we discussed a scheme, which doesn't expose too much of my account and/or credentials to you.

I must be missing something. In which comment did "we discuss[]" such "a scheme"? The scheme you mentioned in comment #54192497, which involves "signing it with your app key on your server", fails the moment the developer ceases to operate the server. So how, if at all, is it possible for an installable app distributed as free software to provide all three of password privacy, resistance to app developer insolvency, and compliance with the contractual mandate of non-disclosure of the app key?

Re:Will Twitter drop the "consumer secret"?

[allo]

The whole OAuth scheme is the good idea to give applications a revokable token only. Would you give a thirdparty site your password? And for a thirdparty app you should think about your trust as well.
The additional app token prevents other sites from claiming to be your app. Your site has an unique token and an unique user readable app id. Which you can see in some twitter apps below the posts. When i use yourcooltwitterapp, i do not want you to be able to trade the user-secret.
But the whole flow has the problem, that some client application needs to have everything which is needed to tweet. And i everything is available in the app, you or somebody else can extract it and still trade user secrets.
And this is a problem with such schemes which is hard to solve.

Maybe stop censoring everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean...just thinking out loud. Maybe stop censoring people? Stop obviously shadow banning content you have somehow decided against all others is wrong? How shocking that nobody wants to be associated with a website that is a haven for rich, wealthy virtue signaling celebrities, pedophiles, rapists, and people who physically assault others in real life and call others to commit crimes & violent actions against innocent people...

Re:Maybe stop censoring everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean...just thinking out loud. Maybe stop censoring people? Stop obviously shadow banning content you have somehow decided against all others is wrong? How shocking that nobody wants to be associated with a website that is a haven for rich, wealthy virtue signaling celebrities, pedophiles, rapists, and people who physically assault others in real life and call others to commit crimes & violent actions against innocent people...

Which precious snowflake are you, an Alt-Righty Neo-Nazi, PUA shitbag, or MRA loon?

Re:Maybe stop censoring everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to include gamergaters and white women in your list there, mister/miss/other Intersection Cop.

Re:Maybe stop censoring everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which precious snowflake are you, an Alt-Righty Neo-Nazi

Even though the left has tried to pretend otherwise for about a century, Nazis are, in fact, ideologically close to communists, socialists, and progressives.

Re:Maybe stop censoring everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a SJW to me.

Twitter...

[Anonymous Coward]

...gone to the shitter.

Stop demaning my phone number for API key!

[Anonymous Coward]

When they started demanding my phone number, I walked away.

Confused here, real API issue not talked about

[SuperKendall]

To start with, Twitter did not sell off "their API". They sold Fabric which was a tool to help others with app development, not developer access to Twitter.

Secondly, as far as I knew the number one hugest blocker to Twitter API use was Twitter not letting new developers have more than a tiny amount of allowed API calls, or rules around how much a client could write anyway (as the article alludes to). In fact there was a huge Kickstarter campaign that succeeded in part because this is one of the few developers on earth that has a key that allows them much larger numbers of users to post tweets.

I personally have some fun ideas for Twitter use in apps I'd love to try. With access to Twitter via API being limited though, I will never put forth the effort into making them happen. So has Twitter (or all Twitter) finally let developers write REAL twitter clients again that any number of people can use?

If not good luck and thanks for all the fish.

Re:Confused here, real API issue not talked about

[Jason Levine]

That was what did it for me. I wrote an application to let people see who followed you so you could decide whether or not you wanted to follow you back. It was a decent application and, if I put some work into it, might have been something many people used. Shortly after launching it, Twitter changed their API rules, vastly limiting the amount of times a developer could hit their API and how much data they could pull. My application, given it's tiny audience, wouldn't have hit that amount, but had it grown in popularity it easily could have.

I decided not to put my effort into the application if Twitter was going to give me a hard ceiling for how much my application could grow before they cut me off. If I'm going to put my efforts into something, I'd rather it not be in an area where someone tells me from the start that I only go so far.

Fogive me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I can speak for everyone when I say:

Fuck Twitter.

nuanced qualities ...

[micahraleigh]

Can't wait to see what they're gonna censor next !

My phone number doesn't even work: no TTS

[tepples]

Even adding a phone number doesn't work. I tried adding my landline to the add_phone form today. But instead of Twitter reading out the verification code through text-to-speech the way my bank does, it produced a message "There was an error sending a text to that phone number. Please try again."

Leverage

[SuperKendall]

I agree that the shadow bans and such are really hurting Twitter. They certainly have curtained my use of it to an extent.

But the reason for developers to bother, is that if they write successful apps that increase Twitter use, that gives them leverage to ask Twitter to stop things like shadow bans. If nothing else things like shadowbans would complicate an API or alternately make the API appear not to work (when it will not fetch messages that are plainly there or sharing a link with others fails because Twitter has shadow banned the post) so such things will naturally be phased out if developer use of the API increased.

Twitter is not dead yet, and I would like to se them succeed if they can become a truly open platform again that does not discriminate against communication by chosen users.

Re:Leverage

[Opportunist]

But why risk it? I might develop something that Twitter doesn't like for some odd reason because it ... purple monkey dishwasher. And poof, gone it is.

And please don't say that never happened. It did. More often than you could imagine.

Why should I invest time and energy into a market that is so highly risky that the chances are pretty good that the moment it becomes successful someone gets "offended" by its very existence and it is going to be shut down?

What you're dealing here is essentially the social media equivalent of a failed state that is run by some tinpot dictator council. You have zero economic certainty that the money you invest in it will not be taken away from you if they don't like your nose anymore.

Re:Leverage

[SuperKendall]

And please don't say that never happened. It did. More often than you could imagine.

Of course it happened. I know all too well, as I said in another post I had Twitter API ideas I have shelved in response to some of those issues.

Why should I invest time and energy into a market that is so highly risky that the chances are pretty good that the moment it becomes successful someone gets "offended" by its very existence and it is going to be shut down?

Because Twitter is still a really promising platform that could be of great value to people, so it's worth some risk to save.

What you're dealing here is essentially the social media equivalent of a failed state that is run by some tinpot dictator council.

And that is EXACTLY why enough developers with enough leverage could compel such weak leadership to take the right course.

You have zero economic certainty that the money you invest in it will not be taken away from you

Hi, welcome to app development.

Though the reality is not that the money is "taken away" it is simply lost.

You might even make some of what you spent back before you are shut down, so it's not like there is zero mitigation of risk... or then again you might succeed and through the effort, right the Twitter ship again. That possibly has enough value that it's worth some risk.

Plus, you could be "risking" venture capital so it's not even like a real risk.

Re:Leverage

[Opportunist]

It's not exactly that way for all of app development. If you develop an app for Android, you can be fairly sure that you will be able to run it in the foreseeable future. Hell, even with iOS there is a set of rules that you have to abide with, but if you do, your app will continue to exist.

What we're talking about here is an app going *poof* for no other reason than Twitter saying "yeah, we didn't like it", without even providing an explanation what you did wrong.

Have each user register with Twitter

[tepples]

Develop your client and distribute it without keys. Then each user of the application can register on Twitter as a developer, register his own copy of the client as an application, and paste the keys that Twitter issues to that user into the client.

Re:Have each user register with Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

https://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10458119&cid=54185917 no way!

Twitter to Developers: Please Love Us Again

[Anonymous Coward]

"also you are banned for using the right pronouns and for blaspheming our Prophet (pbuh)."

Re:Twitter to Developers: Please Love Us Again

[bill_mcgonigle]

"also you are banned for using the right pronouns and for blaspheming our Prophet (pbuh)."

Shit, I created a new business account this morning and got banned for uploading a profile pic (no funny business, just my business logo). It was tagged as "suspicious activity". I tried to reactive it but my business phone number (which I've had for 13 years now) is "unsupported" for a phone call or SMS to confirm.

I had the account open for, I think two minutes before getting banned. So, really, pronoun use and blasphemy must just be if you're not trying hard enough. Be a real rebel and complete your account profile!

I can't imagine how much fun it is to interface with their backend if this is the way the frontend works.

Re:Not exactly. You aren't seeing the big picture.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because the non-leftist are sitting in their barns with their shotguns and don't have computers or phones.

Re: Not exactly. You aren't seeing the big picture

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way leftists can afford their fancy phone, Xbox, and toys is by begging mom for money when they come out of the basement.

Real original source link

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you msmash (and /. editors) and fuck you Kerry Flynn of mashable for making me hunt.

https://blog.twitter.com/2017/building-the-future-of-the-twitter-api-platform/aA

Re:Real original source link

[Anonymous Coward]

Half of the article is using the word pricing. Sounds like even deeper cuts in the free API.
To win developers, they should stop charging anything, then people would build more apps instead of leaving.

Re:Not exactly. You aren't seeing the big picture.

[Anonymous Coward]

More like because Twitter breaks any threads supporting trump or other conservatives, making them impossible to see when you look at Trump's tweets. Then they break conservative retweets in a way that logged in users are told that the tweet is unavailable, while logged out users can see them. Then they throttle conservative users so their posts don't go out to followers. And when the conservative users continue to tweet, making it clear that they don't care whether or not Twitter wants them around as users, they shadowban them.

That's how they get it to look like Twitter leans 95% liberal.

Twitter to users: please leave

[Anonymous Coward]

Recently went through the experience of having an account suspended. No reason given. Did the appeal process through a form on their support page. A few days later account is reinstated. No reason given.

Now I'm finding that even though my account is back, my tweets do not show up searches or in hashtags. There is not a form on the support page by which I can accurately convey what is happening. When I type the word "suspend" I get told I need to go to the account suspension appeal form, which I can't use since you can only complete the form from a suspended account.

Let's say it continues on that my tweets cannot be seen. This is an account used to promote news of a particular interest. What good is the account to me now?

Re:Twitter to users: please leave

[BarbaraHudson]

Let's say it continues on that my tweets cannot be seen. This is an account used to promote news of a particular interest. What good is the account to me now?

Next time, don't let someone insert themselves between you and your users. Get their email addresses.

Micro.blog

[cerberusss]

I'm really looking forward to the launch of Micro.blog. I've supported the project, which will release a mobile client and a backend that simply build upon open stuff like RSS (which everyone and their mother supports).

Twitter doesn't have any attraction to me. It's just one big bucket of, well, of everyone. So as a consequence, it feels like I don't know anybody there.

Re:Micro.blog

[allo]

Use GNU social. Its ready and has a lot of users and it even looks like twitter looked in better times.

Twitter/Google: People love this & hate you

[Anonymous Coward]

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Ads/script & malware rob speed/security/privacy

Hosts add speed (via hardcodes/adblocks), security (vs. bad sites/malware/poisoned dns), reliability (vs. dns down), & anonymity (vs. dns requestlogs/trackers).

Less power/cpu/ram + IO use vs. DNS/routers/addons/antivirus + less security bugs/complexity & faster vs. addons/routers/remote dns!

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APK

P.S. - Safe https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e01211ca36aa02e923f20adee0a3c4f5d5187dc65bdf1c997b3da3c2b0745425/analysis/1433430542/

Lesson Zero

[sexconker]

If you're consuming someone else's API to get at someone else's data, you're not a developer, you're a consumer.
Developers won't abandon a platform/service if there's money to be made. They'll jump through tons of hoops. Look at iOS and the AppStore. Look at Facebook. Twitter may have bungled their API repeatedly, but if the service and data were useful enough to develop for, developers would still do so.

Twitter killed itself with its politics, "Trust & Safety Council", ads, and incessant changes to the "feed" that make it harder to see shit from people you follow and filled your feed up with retweets, likes, and more ads.
All of this has led to fewer users and less "engagement" from the users who are still around. The internet keeps telling me that everyone has moved on to Snapchat for their pointless, daily trivialities (which is what Twitter was for).

They still hate third-party clients

[ZorinLynx]

Things started going downhill when they started putting limitations on third-party clients, like only allowing a limited number of user API keys and not providing new features to third parties, like polls for example.

Then after they did that, they slowly started making their official client worse and worse until it became unpleasant to use. If they ever kill off third parties like Tweetbot, that'll be the end of Twitter for me.

I wish they'd go back to encouraging and supporting third-party clients. If they want to put advertising requirements in, that's fine, as long as they don't stifle the platform. At the very LEAST they could make the official client better but I think that ship has sailed.

FUCK IT

[wulfmans]

Fuck Twitter.

LOL, that's rich...

[XSportSeeker]

Remember when Twitter shut down access to 3rd party access?
http://www.digitaltrends.com/m...
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
http://www.idownloadblog.com/2...
http://news.softpedia.com/news...
http://www.eweek.com/developme...

Stop fucking around

[allo]

Specific to developers: Do you really think mandatory mobile numbers on developer accounts will attract more developers? We do not want to give you number to share with your advertisment partners (as said in the ToS).
Raise the api limits, give us functions to access ALL twitter functions instead of a limited subset, rate limit but do not limit the age of date which can be retrieved. 200 DMs and that's all? What do you think how people should implement for example an archive function, if you only get the most recent DMs?!

Specific to every user:
The app gets worse and worse and so does the webinterface. While twitter spared tweetdeck from the bullshit for a long time, stuff like broken reply function was implemented in tweetdeck very shortly after it was rolled out on the main webinterface.
Look how other sites have a working endless scroll and fix it! Reading 4 hours of tweets ago and then retweeting one and the site jumps back to top? W.T.F!
And try to grasp the concept of threads. You never ever had a working implementation of displaying threads. Either stop trying and limit it to top-post and replies or get a nice threaded view!
Accept, that people want chronological timelines. We do not need or want "while you were away" "you could like ..." sections in the timeline. After we DEACTIVATED the checkmark to have an algorithmic timeline!

And finally: Get the concept of consent!
The "while you were away" section first had "did you like this yes/no" (clicking no had NO effect), then it were changed to "show me this less often" (where is the fucking NO button? And it isn't shown less often when you click) and now the "show me less often" option is moved into a nicely hidden menu (click the v on the top left), still without having any effect. I guess the "option" will vanish completely soon.

So, when you start loving your users again, the users and developers (who are also users) may love you again. Try not to fuck up, it's not like twitter isn't dying more and more anyway.

I leave it to other people here to complain about some annoying groups dominating twitter trying to force their rules on it.

Re:Stop fucking around

[allo]

Something i have to add:
Get your banning right!

Stop shadowbanning and throttling. If you do not have enough reasons to ban (or ban for a certain time) people, do not ban at all. Shadow Bans are a stupid concept, which only confuses people, what happend or if anything happend at all. Your service seems to be dysfunctional and the reaction is to see it as a broken technology. Be clear with your intent, ban people and tell them.

I have one account, which posted updates about a security related site. It is shadow banned. I have no idea why, but i guess it is because the site recommends adblockers as a security tool.

Stop requiring phone numbers for login:
A bouncing mail address results in a question to add the mobile number without any option to login with the e-mail address. You can suspend accounts, until they have a working communication connection (mail or sms), but allow the owner to login. Without mandatory phone number. Then allow him to add a working e-mail or phone number (but do not force him to use a phone number.

And stop breaking the web interface for (temporarily) suspended accounts.
When you have a suspended account for any reason, you cannot change settings, request your archive or even delete it!
You may argument about some things, but the possiblity to DELETE your data is a basic right in the web. When you decide some account should be suspended, the owner should be able to decide he doesn't need the account anyway.

Again it was only a technical reason, when i experienced it. I logged in into an old account just to delete it. The login (from another ip range than the old one) triggered the bot detection and got the account suspended. It thought no big deal, i wanted to delete it anyway. I tried requesting the archive. No, you cannot when the account is suspended. Okay, not that important ... so i wanted to just delete it. No, you cannot delete your own account, when its locked. You cannot delete your data (i.e. single tweets) or even just free the name for new people to get the account.

This is actually broken behaviour for a web service. And every developer should know how to handle such things properly.

Or..

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, just maybe its based on factual information.

Maybe, just maybe, you've been extremely mind controlled by your media handlers.

Twitter allows third party apps again?

[ooloorie]

Who knew!

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I was trying to be clever in my response above to keep it well under 140 chars but Slashdot requires a comment. Sad.

Follow the money: Who owns them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow the money.

Firehouse

[manu0601]

Twitter plans to simplify its offerings by releasing one way to get access to the Firehouse

Are you certain it is not "firehose" instead?

Developers to Twatter... FUCK YOU!

[Anonymous Coward]

You and google too... Here is a Search API... build a business on it... now we yank it away... Here is a Shiny new data store for App Engine... Now it's gone... FUCK WITH US ONCE.. and we are gone... FUCK YOU. and good luck with your bankruptcy...

Re: Not exactly. You aren't seeing the big picture

[Opportunist]

Odd. I would consider myself "left". And it's likely I make more money than you. Yes, even after those insane European taxes.