The ethics of syndicating comments using WebMentions


The WebMention logo is a stylised letter W with an arrow at the end.

This blog uses WebMention technology. If you write an article on your website and mention one of my blog posts, I get a notification. That notification can then be published as a comment. It usually looks something like this: This means readers of my post can see where it has been mentioned around the web. […]

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Twitter's archive doesn't have alt text - but Mastodon's does!


The Twitter logo drawn in circles.

Because I don't trust Alan, the Hyperprat who now runs Twitter, I decided to download my Twitter archive before setting my account to dormant. About a decade ago, I wrote about how the Twitter archive works and where it is deficient. Things have got better, but there are still annoying limitations. For example, Hannah Kolbeck […]

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Is Open Graph Protocol dead?


Robot faced Mark Zuckerberg is weating a VR headset - it digs painfully into his smiling cheeks.

Facebook Meta - like many other tech titans - has institutional Shiny Object Syndrome. It goes something like this: Launch a product to great fanfare Spend a few years hyping it as ✨the future✨ Stop answering emails and pull requests If you're lucky, announce that the product is abandoned but, more likely, just forget about […]

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Why can't Twitter stop the "Twoo Fun / Ask For Me" spam?


Colourful image saying "Who visits your Twitter profile. Real data. Totally free."

Back in June, I noticed a pretty insidious piece of Twitter spam. The "twoo.fun" website was claiming that it could tell you who visited your Twitter profile. That's pretty enticing! It's what LinkedIn uses to drive its premium product. Perhaps it would tell me if a potential employer was looking at my profile? Or if […]

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Towards a Taxonomy of Twitter Tropes


The Twitter logo drawn in circles.

If you hang around on a social network long enough, you'll find the same tropes being repeated again and again. So, I thought I'd document some of the ones that I personally find annoying. This blog post is an extension of my moderately popular Twitter thread - with a bit more detail about why they […]

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Augmented Reality Twitter Conversations!


I've recently launched TweeView - a new way to visualise Twitter conversation threads in 2D and 3D. Sadly, I don't have a Virtual Reality system - feel free to buy me one! - but I have the next best thing. A web browser! Demo! Using the awesome power of A-Frame, here's a demo of how […]

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Twitter trialling "bot" account identification


Screenshot showing the @openbenches account is Automated by @edent.

I run lots of automated Twitter accounts - "bots" in common parlance. But there's no way for people to know that these are automated accounts. This leads to slightly odd situations where people try to have conversations with them. It sure looks like a shade of purple to me. 🤔 — 🇺🇸 Elections Matter 🇺🇸 […]

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(re) Introducing TweeView - a Tree Visualisation for Twitter Conversations


A dozen or so Tweets in a thread.

Previously on Terence Eden's blog... About 4 years ago, I wrote about Visualising Twitter Conversations in 2D Space. Based on an idea by Lucy Pepper, I built a quick hack to show what Twitter threads actually looked like. Well, lockdown finally got the best of me, and I finished the project! TweeView.ml Here are a […]

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Visualising Twitter Conversations in 3D Space


A small conversation.

Here's set of visualisation I've been working on. Last night, at #TapIntoTwitter, I demonstrated a fun way to view your Twitter conversations as a force-directed graph in 3D space. I'm going to show it off to you, then explain how it works. This is a designed as a "fun" demo. Here we go! So, what's […]

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Rethinking Twitter Verification


Screenshot of the GOV.UK Twitter Account. Twitter have added a flag and label saying it is state affiliated.

I have my Twitter Tick™ because I'm a mediocre white man in the tech industry. No joke. During one of Twitter's periodic bouts of opening up their verification programme, I applied and basically said "Don't you know who I am??!" and got it. Sucks to be anyone other than me, I guess. Twitter has paused […]

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