twitter – Terence Eden’s Blog

You don't need an API key to archive Twitter Data

@edent — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:34:07 +0000

Apparently there's no need for IP laws any more, so here's a way to archive high-fidelity Twitter data without signing up for an expensive API key.

This is perfect for academics wishing to preserve Tweets, journalists wanting to download evidence, or simply embedding content without leaking user data back to Twitter.

tl;dr

You can get the full JSON code of any Tweet by using this API:

https://cdn.syndication.twimg.com/tweet-result?id=123456789&token=01010101010

Add any valid Twitter id, and choose a random number for your token. Done.

Twitter has an "embed" functionality. Websites can import a full copy of a Tweet, including its media and metadata. Twitter's documentation is a little lacklustre but here's a brief explanation of how it works.

Embed Code

Using HTML like this:

Produces an embeddable which looks like this:

API Call

With a bit of sniffing of the traffic, it's possible to see that the iframe eventually calls a URl like this:

https://cdn.syndication.twimg.com/tweet-result?id=719484841172054016&token=123

Visit that and you'll see the JSON code of a Tweet.

Options

id= this is the numeric ID of the Tweet.
token= this is the API token. It can be set to a random number. It isn't checked.
There's an optional lang= which takes BCP47 language codes. For example lang=en or lang=zh. However, they don't seem to make any difference to the output.

Output

Here's the JSON of the above Tweet. As you can see, it includes metadata on the number of replies, favourites, and retweets. There are entities, fully expanded links, and media in a variety of formats. There's also information on whether the post has been edited, if the user is stupid enough to pay for a blue-tick, and the language of the message.

Tweet With Image

{
    "__typename": "Tweet",
    "lang": "en",
    "favorite_count": 4,
    "possibly_sensitive": false,
    "created_at": "2016-04-11T11:18:48.000Z",
    "display_text_range": [
        0,
        120
    ],
    "entities": {
        "hashtags": [],
        "urls": [],
        "user_mentions": [
            {
                "id_str": "23937508",
                "indices": [
                    20,
                    30
                ],
                "name": "BBC Radio 4",
                "screen_name": "BBCRadio4"
            }
        ],
        "symbols": [],
        "media": [
            {
                "display_url": "pic.x.com/6F3ZSiWuIn",
                "expanded_url": "https://x.com/edent/status/719484841172054016/photo/1",
                "indices": [
                    97,
                    120
                ],
                "url": "https://t.co/6F3ZSiWuIn"
            }
        ]
    },
    "id_str": "719484841172054016",
    "text": "Warning! I'll be on @BBCRadio4's You And Yours shortly.\nPlease tune your wirelesses accordingly. https://t.co/6F3ZSiWuIn",
    "user": {
        "id_str": "14054507",
        "name": "Terence Eden is on Mastodon",
        "profile_image_url_https": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1623225628530016260/SW0HsKjP_normal.jpg",
        "screen_name": "edent",
        "verified": false,
        "is_blue_verified": false,
        "profile_image_shape": "Circle"
    },
    "edit_control": {
        "edit_tweet_ids": [
            "719484841172054016"
        ],
        "editable_until_msecs": "1460375328174",
        "is_edit_eligible": true,
        "edits_remaining": "5"
    },
    "mediaDetails": [
        {
            "display_url": "pic.x.com/6F3ZSiWuIn",
            "expanded_url": "https://x.com/edent/status/719484841172054016/photo/1",
            "ext_media_availability": {
                "status": "Available"
            },
            "indices": [
                97,
                120
            ],
            "media_url_https": "https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfwfpnJWwAEXwe3.jpg",
            "original_info": {
                "height": 1280,
                "width": 960,
                "focus_rects": []
            },
            "sizes": {
                "large": {
                    "h": 1280,
                    "resize": "fit",
                    "w": 960
                },
                "medium": {
                    "h": 1200,
                    "resize": "fit",
                    "w": 900
                },
                "small": {
                    "h": 680,
                    "resize": "fit",
                    "w": 510
                },
                "thumb": {
                    "h": 150,
                    "resize": "crop",
                    "w": 150
                }
            },
            "type": "photo",
            "url": "https://t.co/6F3ZSiWuIn"
        }
    ],
    "photos": [
        {
            "backgroundColor": {
                "red": 204,
                "green": 214,
                "blue": 221
            },
            "cropCandidates": [],
            "expandedUrl": "https://x.com/edent/status/719484841172054016/photo/1",
            "url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CfwfpnJWwAEXwe3.jpg",
            "width": 960,
            "height": 1280
        }
    ],
    "conversation_count": 1,
    "news_action_type": "conversation",
    "isEdited": false,
    "isStaleEdit": false
}

Replies

Here's a more complicated example. This Tweet is in reply to another Tweet - so both messages are included:

{
    "__typename": "Tweet",
    "in_reply_to_screen_name": "edent",
    "in_reply_to_status_id_str": "1095653997644574720",
    "in_reply_to_user_id_str": "14054507",
    "lang": "en",
    "favorite_count": 0,
    "created_at": "2019-02-13T12:22:59.000Z",
    "display_text_range": [
        7,
        252
    ],
    "entities": {
        "hashtags": [],
        "urls": [],
        "user_mentions": [
            {
                "id_str": "14054507",
                "indices": [
                    0,
                    6
                ],
                "name": "Terence Eden is on Mastodon",
                "screen_name": "edent"
            }
        ],
        "symbols": []
    },
    "id_str": "1095659600420966400",
    "text": "@edent I can definitely see how this would get in the way of making your day a productive one. Do you find this happens often? If it does, I'd be happy to chat to you about a reliable alternative with us during your lunch break! ☕ PM me for a chat! ^JH",
    "user": {
        "id_str": "20139563",
        "name": "Sky",
        "profile_image_url_https": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1674689671006240769/OpfisqRG_normal.jpg",
        "screen_name": "SkyUK",
        "verified": false,
        "verified_type": "Business",
        "is_blue_verified": false,
        "profile_image_shape": "Square"
    },
    "edit_control": {
        "edit_tweet_ids": [
            "1095659600420966400"
        ],
        "editable_until_msecs": "1550062379768",
        "is_edit_eligible": true,
        "edits_remaining": "5"
    },
    "conversation_count": 2,
    "news_action_type": "conversation",
    "parent": {
        "lang": "en",
        "reply_count": 2,
        "retweet_count": 1,
        "favorite_count": 1,
        "possibly_sensitive": false,
        "created_at": "2019-02-13T12:00:43.000Z",
        "display_text_range": [
            0,
            112
        ],
        "entities": {
            "hashtags": [],
            "urls": [],
            "user_mentions": [
                {
                    "id_str": "17872077",
                    "indices": [
                        33,
                        45
                    ],
                    "name": "Virgin Media ❤️",
                    "screen_name": "virginmedia"
                }
            ],
            "symbols": [],
            "media": [
                {
                    "display_url": "pic.x.com/mje6nh38CZ",
                    "expanded_url": "https://x.com/edent/status/1095653997644574720/photo/1",
                    "indices": [
                        113,
                        136
                    ],
                    "url": "https://t.co/mje6nh38CZ"
                }
            ]
        },
        "id_str": "1095653997644574720",
        "text": "Working from home is tricky when @virginmedia goes down so hard even its status page falls over.\nTime for lunch. https://t.co/mje6nh38CZ",
        "user": {
            "id_str": "14054507",
            "name": "Terence Eden is on Mastodon",
            "profile_image_url_https": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1623225628530016260/SW0HsKjP_normal.jpg",
            "screen_name": "edent",
            "verified": false,
            "is_blue_verified": false,
            "profile_image_shape": "Circle"
        },
        "edit_control": {
            "edit_tweet_ids": [
                "1095653997644574720"
            ],
            "editable_until_msecs": "1550061043962",
            "is_edit_eligible": true,
            "edits_remaining": "5"
        },
        "mediaDetails": [
            {
                "display_url": "pic.x.com/mje6nh38CZ",
                "expanded_url": "https://x.com/edent/status/1095653997644574720/photo/1",
                "ext_alt_text": "Oops! something's broken! ",
                "ext_media_availability": {
                    "status": "Available"
                },
                "indices": [
                    113,
                    136
                ],
                "media_url_https": "https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DzSLf6sWsAAGWWH.jpg",
                "original_info": {
                    "height": 797,
                    "width": 1080,
                    "focus_rects": [
                        {
                            "x": 0,
                            "y": 192,
                            "w": 1080,
                            "h": 605
                        },
                        {
                            "x": 142,
                            "y": 0,
                            "w": 797,
                            "h": 797
                        },
                        {
                            "x": 191,
                            "y": 0,
                            "w": 699,
                            "h": 797
                        },
                        {
                            "x": 341,
                            "y": 0,
                            "w": 399,
                            "h": 797
                        },
                        {
                            "x": 0,
                            "y": 0,
                            "w": 1080,
                            "h": 797
                        }
                    ]
                },
                "sizes": {
                    "large": {
                        "h": 797,
                        "resize": "fit",
                        "w": 1080
                    },
                    "medium": {
                        "h": 797,
                        "resize": "fit",
                        "w": 1080
                    },
                    "small": {
                        "h": 502,
                        "resize": "fit",
                        "w": 680
                    },
                    "thumb": {
                        "h": 150,
                        "resize": "crop",
                        "w": 150
                    }
                },
                "type": "photo",
                "url": "https://t.co/mje6nh38CZ"
            }
        ],
        "photos": [
            {
                "accessibilityLabel": "Oops! something's broken! ",
                "backgroundColor": {
                    "red": 204,
                    "green": 214,
                    "blue": 221
                },
                "cropCandidates": [
                    {
                        "x": 0,
                        "y": 192,
                        "w": 1080,
                        "h": 605
                    },
                    {
                        "x": 142,
                        "y": 0,
                        "w": 797,
                        "h": 797
                    },
                    {
                        "x": 191,
                        "y": 0,
                        "w": 699,
                        "h": 797
                    },
                    {
                        "x": 341,
                        "y": 0,
                        "w": 399,
                        "h": 797
                    },
                    {
                        "x": 0,
                        "y": 0,
                        "w": 1080,
                        "h": 797
                    }
                ],
                "expandedUrl": "https://x.com/edent/status/1095653997644574720/photo/1",
                "url": "https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DzSLf6sWsAAGWWH.jpg",
                "width": 1080,
                "height": 797
            }
        ],
        "isEdited": false,
        "isStaleEdit": false
    },
    "isEdited": false,
    "isStaleEdit": false
}

Quote Tweets

Here's an example where I have quoted a Tweet:

{
    "__typename": "Tweet",
    "lang": "en",
    "favorite_count": 9,
    "possibly_sensitive": false,
    "created_at": "2022-08-19T13:36:44.000Z",
    "display_text_range": [
        0,
        182
    ],
    "entities": {
        "hashtags": [],
        "urls": [
            {
                "display_url": "gu.com",
                "expanded_url": "http://gu.com",
                "indices": [
                    17,
                    40
                ],
                "url": "https://t.co/Skj7FB7Tyt"
            }
        ],
        "user_mentions": [],
        "symbols": []
    },
    "id_str": "1560621791470448642",
    "text": "Whoever buys the https://t.co/Skj7FB7Tyt domain will effectively get to rewrite history.\nThey can redirect links like these - and change the nature of the content being commented on.",
    "user": {
        "id_str": "14054507",
        "name": "Terence Eden is on Mastodon",
        "profile_image_url_https": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1623225628530016260/SW0HsKjP_normal.jpg",
        "screen_name": "edent",
        "verified": false,
        "is_blue_verified": false,
        "profile_image_shape": "Circle"
    },
    "edit_control": {
        "edit_tweet_ids": [
            "1560621791470448642"
        ],
        "editable_until_msecs": "1660918004000",
        "is_edit_eligible": true,
        "edits_remaining": "5"
    },
    "conversation_count": 4,
    "news_action_type": "conversation",
    "quoted_tweet": {
        "lang": "en",
        "reply_count": 131,
        "retweet_count": 1337,
        "favorite_count": 2789,
        "possibly_sensitive": false,
        "created_at": "2018-11-27T15:56:19.000Z",
        "display_text_range": [
            0,
            279
        ],
        "entities": {
            "hashtags": [],
            "urls": [
                {
                    "display_url": "gu.com/p/axa7k/stw",
                    "expanded_url": "https://gu.com/p/axa7k/stw",
                    "indices": [
                        256,
                        279
                    ],
                    "url": "https://t.co/UulPL1CtcK"
                }
            ],
            "user_mentions": [],
            "symbols": []
        },
        "id_str": "1067447032363794432",
        "text": "The Steele Dossier asserted Russian hacking of the DNC was \"conducted with the full knowledge & support of Trump & senior members of his campaign.” Trump's war against the FBI & efforts to obstruct make sense if he thought they could prove it. https://t.co/UulPL1CtcK",
        "user": {
            "id_str": "548384458",
            "name": "Joyce Alene",
            "profile_image_url_https": "https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/952257848301498371/5s24RH-g_normal.jpg",
            "screen_name": "JoyceWhiteVance",
            "verified": false,
            "is_blue_verified": true,
            "profile_image_shape": "Circle"
        },
        "edit_control": {
            "edit_tweet_ids": [
                "1067447032363794432"
            ],
            "editable_until_msecs": "1543335979379",
            "is_edit_eligible": true,
            "edits_remaining": "5"
        },
        "isEdited": false,
        "isStaleEdit": false
    },
    "isEdited": false,
    "isStaleEdit": false
}

Downloading Media

Videos are also available to download, with no restrictions, in a variety of resolutions:

   "mediaDetails": [
        {
            "type": "video",
            "url": "https://t.co/Qw1IFom7Fh",
            "video_info": {
                "aspect_ratio": [
                    3,
                    4
                ],
                "duration_millis": 13578,
                "variants": [
                    {
                        "content_type": "application/x-mpegURL",
                        "url": "https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1432767873504718850/pu/pl/DiIKFNNZLWbLmECm.m3u8?tag=12"
                    },
                    {
                        "bitrate": 632000,
                        "content_type": "video/mp4",
                        "url": "https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1432767873504718850/pu/vid/320x426/oq2p-t0RJEEKuDD6.mp4?tag=12"
                    },
                    {
                        "bitrate": 950000,
                        "content_type": "video/mp4",
                        "url": "https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1432767873504718850/pu/vid/480x640/3X8ZsBmXmmaaakmM.mp4?tag=12"
                    },
                    {
                        "bitrate": 2176000,
                        "content_type": "video/mp4",
                        "url": "https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1432767873504718850/pu/vid/720x960/sS9cLdGn93eUmvKC.mp4?tag=12"
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    ],

Other Examples

Limitations

There are a few small limitations with this approach.

It doesn't capture replies
- If the Tweet is in reply to something, it will capture the parent.
- If the Tweet quotes something, it will capture the quoted Tweet.
The counts for replies, retweets, and favourites may not be accurate
- Older messages seem worse for this, but that's a natural part of digital decay.
Reduced metadata
- The official API used to tell you which device was used to post the message, user's timezone, and other bits of useful information.
You need to know the ID of the Tweet
- There's no way to automatically grab every Tweet by a user, or from a search.
Sometimes the API stops responding
- Change the token to another random number.
Occasionally replies and quotes won't be included
- Calling the API again often recovers the data.

Python Code

If you're technically inclined, I've written some Python code to automate turning the JSON into HTML.

Have Fun

Remember, the owner of Twitter no longer believes in IP law. So I guess you can go nuts and download all of Twitter's data and use it for any purpose?

Social Media Blocking Has Always Been A Lie

@edent — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 11:34:48 +0000

What does it mean to block someone on a social media site?

Way back in the mists of time, we dealt with trolls on Usenet with the almighty PLONK - PLaced On Newsgroup Killfile. It meant your newsreader never downloaded their posts. They could rant at you all day long, and you'd never hear from them. It's what we would nowadays call "Mute".

But, whether you're on Usenet or a modern social network, muting someone doesn't actually stop them replying to you. The miscreant can still see your posts, interact with them, quote them. And everyone on that service can see their abuse. Perhaps they will also join in?

Most modern social networks now have the concept of "Block". When Alice blocks Bob, it means Bob cannot see Alice's posts. The service doesn't deliver her content to him. If he goes looking, he can't find it. She is invisible to him.

Except, of course, that's a lie. If Bob logs out of his account, he can see Alice's public content. If he logs into an alternative account, he isn't blocked.

The block is a social signal backed up with mild technical restrictions.

What do I mean by that? Ordinarily, you will have no idea that you have been blocked by someone. They will simply vanish from your screens. You do not receive an alert that you've been blocked. Technical restrictions mean you won't see their posts, nor replies to them. The only way you might know is if you deliberately look for the person blocking you.

Seeing that you have been blocked is a "social signal". It lets you know that your behaviour was unwanted, or that your contributions weren't valued, or that someone just doesn't like you. For most people, that sort of chastisement probably induces a little shame or grief. For others, it is enraging.

Again, it isn't impossible for a blocked user to see content - but technical restrictions means it takes effort. And, it turns out, for all but the most obsessive abusers - a mild bit of UI friction is all that it takes for them to stop.

On a centralised social media platform, like Twitter and Facebook, your blocks are private. The only people who know you have blocked Taylor Swift are you, the platform, and T-Swizzle herself.

On decentralised social media platforms, it is more complicated.

Mastodon / ActivityPub lets you block a user. In doing so, you have to tell that user's server that you don't want them seeing your messages. That means your server knows about the block, their server know, and the user knows. But, crucially, there's nothing to stop a malicious server ignoring your wishes. While your server can mute all the interactions from them, there are only weak technological restrictions on their behaviour.

BlueSky / AT Protocol takes a different (and more worrying) approach. BlueSky tells everyone about your blocks. If Alice blocks Bob - the system lets everyone know. This means that if Bob starts replying to your posts, other clients will know to ignore his interactions with you. I've written more about the dangers of public blocklists over on BSky.

But, crucially, none of these systems actually block users. This isn't like that Black Mirror episode where people are literally blurred out from your eyeballs.

In all cases, a user can log out and see your public posts. They can sign in with an alternative account. And, in the case of decentralised social media, they can choose to ignore the technological restrictions you impose.

Social networks have a responsibility to keep their users safe. That means having enough friction to prevent casual abuse.

But blocking is only a social signal. That's all it ever has been. It is a boop on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. It is a message to tell someone that they might want to adjust their attitude.

You should block - and block often. You should feel empowered to curate an environment that is safe for you. But you should also understand the limitations of the technical controls which underpin these social signals.

Replace Twitter Embeds with Semantic HTML

@edent — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 11:34:34 +0000

I logged into Twitter using a fresh account last week. No followers, no preferences set. The default experience was an unending slurry of racism and porn. I don't care to use Twitter any more. Whatever good that was there is now drowned in a cess-pit of violent filth.

I still have a lot of Tweets embedded on this blog. Using WordPress, it was easy to paste in a link and have it converted to an embed. But I don't want to direct people to a dangerous site.

So here's a somewhat automated way to replace embedded Tweets with good-looking and semantic HTML. You no longer need to worry about Twitter tracking people if they visit your site. It in-lines all images and avatars so there's no data leakage. Links go direct rather than through the obnoxious t.co service. The HTML is semantic, short, and accessible.

The simple Python code is available on GitHub - feedback welcome!

Demos

Here are some examples. You'll see all the links work - to external sites, hashtags, or mentions. Media is loaded, emoji work, alt text is included where available, and the CSS is roughly right. The number of likes and replies is shown - but the number of retweets isn't always available in the embed API. The number of quotes and bookmarks aren't available.

Polls

Embedded Images

Quote Tweets

Replies

Videos

The poster of the video is embedded - the actual MP4 is still loaded off Twitter's site.

Get The Code

The simple Python code is available on GitHub - feedback welcome!

Replacing Twitter Embeds With Images

@edent — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 11:34:18 +0000

I still have a lot of Tweets embedded on this blog. Using WordPress, it was easy to paste in a link and have it converted to an embed. But I don't want to direct people to a dangerous site.

So here's a somewhat automated way to replace embedded Tweets with screenshots.

Shut up and show me the code!

Demo

Use the Embed Platform

Take the ID of the Tweet you want to convert. Add it on to the end of an embed URl like this - https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&lang=en&theme=light&width=550px&id=1092852483033055232

Let's make that a bit more readable:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?
   hideCard=false
  &hideThread=true
  &lang=en
  &theme=light
  &width=550px
  &id=1092852483033055232

You can change whether to show a card (the attached image or link), show the preceding message in the thread or not, what UI language to show, dark or light mode, and how wide you want the embed to be.

Use Selenium to automate the screenshot

Using Python, we can use Selenium's Chrome Webdriver to open pages, find elements, and take screenshots:

import time

import io
from PIL import Image

from selenium import webdriver 
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

#   Chrome's headless options
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless=new')
chrome_options.add_argument('--window-size=1920,1080')

#   Turn off everything
chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-gpu")
chrome_options.add_argument("--no-sandbox")
chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage")
chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-infobars")
chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-logging")
chrome_options.add_argument("--log-level=3")

#   Start Chrome
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)

#   Open the page
driver.get("https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&lang=en&theme=light&width=550px&id=1092852483033055232")

#   Twitter is slow!
time.sleep(5)

#   Get the Tweet
tweet = driver.find_element(By.TAG_NAME, "article")
#   Use the parent element for more padding
tweet = driver.execute_script("return arguments[0].parentNode;", tweet)

#   Save as an image
print("Save")
image_binary = tweet.screenshot_as_png
img = Image.open(io.BytesIO(image_binary))
img.save("tweet.png")

Get the alt text

Accessibility is important. Getting the text of the Tweet is as simple as:

#   Get the alt text
alt = tweet.text

But that retrieves all the text - including things like "Copy link to post" and "Read more on X" - because Twitter doesn't believe in semantic HTML. There's also no way to easily get the number of likes and retweets - which might be useful information.

If there are images in the post, it's useful to get their alt text. This is simpler:

images = tweet.find_elements(By.TAG_NAME, "img")
print("\nAlt text of images:")
for img in images:
    alt_text = img.get_attribute("alt")
    if alt_text:
        print(alt_text)

Use The API

There is a better way to get all the text, alt text, and metadata. Use the hidden syndication API! But that's a blog post for another time…

Get the Code

Grab the code from GitHub - and if it is useful to you, please star the repo or leave a friendly comment.

Of course, if we can use the API to get the pure data, perhaps it is possible to make some lovely semantic HTML rather than an image...? 😉

Seven Years On Mastodon

@edent — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 12:34:32 +0000

I remember seeing the original "A new decentralized microblogging platform" on HackerNews back in October 2016. A few weeks later, I joined - becoming the 7,112th user. As the years went on, my use of it waxed and waned. I started cross-posting to both Mastodon and Twitter. Gradually, I started spending more time on the Fediverse.

Once Elon shat the bed on Twitter, I moved over completely. And, you know what, I don't regret it for a second.

I've found a lovely community of people. I get my parasocial fix without being inundated by cryptogrifters shilling shitcoins, nor by thought-leaders posting inflammatory takes for clout. There are no disingenuous politicians and remarkably few celebrities trying to sell me their bathwater. There's no advertising. There's a great API for bots. And - for now - people are generous with their time and expertise.

But, just to be contrary, let's list some of the bad points about it.

There are fewer people about

That does mean there are fewer arseholes⁰. But it doesn't yet feel as magical as Twitter did - when you could suddenly be in a conversation with a goat farmer from the other side of the planet and a world-famous astrophysicist.

The people who are about tend to be on the techy side of things. Which does mean putting up with some annoying pedantry and plenty of "jUSt InsTaLl LinUx aNd delETE facEbOoK."

There's a bit more ✨drama✨

Small, insular communities are fractious. A perceived insult or slight can rapidly descend into childish taunts of "well I'll defederate you first!"

There was drama on Twitter - and even more since Elon's full on conversion to the dark side - but because the community is smaller here, the drama feels bigger.

Fewer official accounts

This is a mixed bag. Frankly, Twitter should never have been a customer support channel. But businesses wanted to promote their goods and services, and customers took the opportunity to upbraid them in public. That led to all sorts of weird behaviours.

Nevertheless, I'd like to be able to see what's going on in local politics, and transport, and a dozen little services I used Twitter for.

Search (is getting better)

I've posted some thoughts on Mastodon search. It's now pretty good. But the federated nature of Mastodon means it'll never be as comprehensive as Twitter.

Perhaps momentum is slowing down?

I've seen plenty of waves of users over the years. But I think that the majority of people who wanted to leave Twitter have done so.

And... I think that's OK. I still use Facebook, I'm signed into a dozen different forums, I'm not particularly loyal to anything.

The Fediverse is about diversity. It would be nice if Twitter and Threads and BlueSky all federated with each other. But I think that Mastodon now has enough users to be self-sustaining. It doesn't need to become a giant killer. It mustn't become a de-facto monopoly.

I'm looking forward to the next 7 years here.

Not zero, just fewer. ↩︎

Please don't give away your Twitter API keys to Cloudinary

@edent — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 11:34:03 +0000

My CDN just asked me for all my Twitter API keys...

WTF? This would give them complete access to my app's Twitter account, the ability to send and receive messages, and anything else that my API key allows.

Giving them - or anyone - the entire set of credentials would be a very bad idea.

What's going on?

Twitter's slow-motion collapse and hostility to developers is causing a whole bunch of second-order effects.

Lots of services let people log in to them using Twitter. It is (was?!) a quick way to do identity management without having to bother the user with a separate username and password. Once someone has logged in, it's nice to be able to show their user avatar.

Annoyingly, Twitter never had a simple solution for that. You couldn't take my username - edent - and then grab twitter.com/edent/avatar.jpg. Instead, you had to perform an API call to get the image.

So a whole bunch of services started up which would retrieve Twitter avatars based on username. And they also did the same for Facebook, GitHub, Google, and lots of other OAuth providers.

I was using Cloudinary's Social Media Profile Pictures feature. But with Twitter's complete inability to serve API users, that functionality is going away.

Last week Cloudinary said that they could keep the functionality going if I was willing to provide my API keys. I (somewhat impolitely) complained to Cloudinary that them asking for all the API keys was a security nightmare. They responded (politely) to my points:

I completely understand your concerns. Twitter's recent limitations to their API have made it so that we are unable to continue to use our own API credentials to allow customers to fetch Twitter assets, and so we must implement customer credentials instead. We were working on a long-term resolution, but they cut off our API access without warning, and so the temporary solution to minimise disruption was to request your credentials so our backend team can add in a rule to run your Twitter API requests with your own credentials. As such, we require both the API key and secret, along with the access token and secret.

...

As mentioned, this is just a temporary measure in order to ensure continued delivery of your assets. If you prefer to wait until we have a customer-facing portal to enter your Twitter account credentials, then you are certainly welcome to do so. Unfortunately I don't have an ETA on when such a solution might be available, however we will do our best to keep you updated.

I understand that they don't want users to have a degraded experience. And I understand that Twitter have screwed them over. And I'm sure that they're a thoroughly trustworthy company who will never get hacked. But asking customers to fatally compromise their own security like that is not acceptable.

Can't you just...?

Twitter doesn't offer a stable avatar service. Users can change their profile picture at any time, and the URl to the old image stops working. So caching the profile picture URl often leads to a broken image. Caching an old image can mean showing something outdated.

The API rate limits are pretty small for any service with heavy traffic.

Not showing a user image - or just the Twitter icon - could work. But it makes for a pretty crappy experience.

Telling everyone to leave Twitter and join Mastodon would be nice.

Creating a bespoke read-only API key could work - but Twitter now limits the number of apps a develop can have unless they pay stupid money.

It is entirely understandable that people would panic and hand over the keys to their (digital) kingdom. Fear makes people do dangerous things.

Anyway, this Mastodon post sums it up the best:

Post by @RickiTarr@beige.party

View on Mastodon

The ethics of syndicating comments using WebMentions

@edent — Sat, 03 Dec 2022 12:34:17 +0000

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. They can read your article after reading mine. Nice!

I've also set up a "bridge" service which looks for people posting comments about my work on social media. For example, if you post a link to my blog on Twitter - or reply to someone who has shared a link - I get a notification. That means if I think it is an interesting comment, I can publish it in the comment section. It usually looks something like this:

This means readers of my post can see your Twitter or Mastodon comments. They're identified by the logo. Users can go to Twitter or Mastodon to reply to you. Nice!

Everyone is one big happy family, no matter where on the web you are.

Or so I thought. There are a few drawbacks with this system.

I didn't write that!

I had one reader complain that someone else was impersonating them in the comments of my posts. It wasn't immediately clear to them that I'd syndicated their comment and reposted it. After that, I added the Twitter logo to make it a bit more obvious. But many people still find it unintuitive that content can be replicated outside of its original publication.

I deleted that!

I had another reader who automatically deletes their Tweets every month. My blog retains a copy of their Tweets because it doesn't check for deletions. This might be against the user's wishes - especially if they had posted something inappropriate. Twitter doesn't send a "deleted" notification to services which have stored Tweets - and it would be impractical to periodically check every single Tweet I have stored. The reader was ambivalent about whether they should be kept on my blog.

I'm not that person any more!

One of the comments was a person who had changed their name & Twitter avatar. Understandably, they weren't happy about still being referred to by their deadname on my site. Again, neither Twitter nor the bridging service notifies me when a user changes their name or avatar. Naturally I deleted the comments when they contacted me.

I have the copyright to that!

An overly aggressive person was furious that I'd copied their © content onto my blog without permission. Personally, I thought that adding their 7 word reply was covered by fair-dealing, but I didn't fancy pissing them off. So I deleted it. If I'd embedded directly from Twitter it would have been fair game - but some people feel there's a material difference between embedding and copying.

Now what?

This is a complicated problem. I want to see what people are writing in public about my posts. I also want to direct people to the conversations which are happening elsewhere on the web. But people - quite rightly - might not want their content permanently stored by my site.

So I think I have a few options.

Do nothing. My site; my rules. If you don't want me to grab your hot takes, don't post them in public. (Feels a bit rude, TBQH.)
Be reactive. If someone asks me to remove their content, do so. (But, of course, how will they know I've made a copy?)
Stop syndicating comments. (I don't wanna!)
Replace the verbatim comments with a link saying "Fred mentioned this article on Twitter" . (A bit of a disruptive experience for readers.)
Use oEmbed to capture the user's comment and dynamically load it from the 3rd party site. That would update automatically if the user changes their name or deleted the comment. (A massive faff to set up.)

What do you think I should do?

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

@edent — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 12:34:45 +0000

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 - founder of the Alt Text Reminder Bot recently pointed out that there's no alt text in the archives.

Here's a snippet of Twitter's JSON for an image I posted:

"media" : [
   {
      "expanded_url" : "https://twitter.com/edent/status/1579574033720705025/photo/1",
      "indices" : [
        "66",
        "89"
      ],
      "url" : "https://t.co/J1hr0ZfbTl",
      "media_url" : "http://pbs.twimg.com/media/FevGM32XEAA0FX2.jpg",
      "id_str" : "1579574018776174592",
      "id" : "1579574018776174592",
      "media_url_https" : "https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FevGM32XEAA0FX2.jpg",
      "sizes" : {
           "small" : {
                "w" : "680",
                "h" : "510",
                "resize" : "fit"
              },
              "medium" : {
                "w" : "1200",
                "h" : "900",
                "resize" : "fit"
              },
              "thumb" : {
                "w" : "150",
                "h" : "150",
                "resize" : "crop"
              },
              "large" : {
                "w" : "1236",
                "h" : "927",
                "resize" : "fit"
              }
       },
       "type" : "photo",
       "display_url" : "pic.twitter.com/J1hr0ZfbTl"
     }
],

Lots of different media sizing options, but no room for accessibility.

By comparison, the Mastodon social network gives you the alt text. Here's a snippet of Mastodon's JSON for the same image which was cross-posted:

"attachment": [
   {
     "type": "Document",
     "mediaType": "image/jpeg",
     "url": "/media_attachments/files/109/145/933/102/890/212/original/84ae501e39f45091.jpg",
     "name": "A sign for priority seating. The pregnant person's face has been replaced by 😍. The person holding a baby has a face of 😫. The elderly person with a cane has 🥴.",
     "blurhash": "UhKdk{0LRit6-:t6WCWC-oxaRmWBozt7xaa|",
     "width": 1236,
     "height": 927
   }
],

Mastodon is a friendlier alternative to Twitter and - mostly - gets accessibility right. There's still some work to do

You can fix Twitter's missing alt text using Hannah's Alt Text Archive Tool. That'll get you a JSON file full of your alt text, which you can use to recreate your archive.

Look, it's obvious that Alan doesn't give a flying fuck about accessibility, so I don't expect this to change any time soon.

Instead, people should do what they did when MySpace went to shit; move to a different platform.

Join Mastodon today!

Is Open Graph Protocol dead?

@edent — Sun, 06 Nov 2022 12:34:49 +0000

~~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 it.

Open Graph Protocol (OGP) is one of those products. The value-proposition is simple.

It's hard for computers to pick out the main headline, image, and other data from a complex web page.
Therefore, let's encourage websites to include metadata which tells our services what they should look at!

OGP works pretty well! When you share a link on Facebook, or Twitter, or Telegram - those services load the website in the background, look for OGP metadata, and display a friendly snippet.

~~Facebook~~ Meta were the driving force behind OGP - and have now left it to fester.

The website - https://ogp.me/ - still works.
But the Facebook OGP Discussion Group is now full of spam.
The Developer Mailing List is broken.
The Google Documentation links to a dead Google+ page.
And the GitHub Page has been archived.

Is OGP finished?

And, that might be fine. ~~Facebook~~ Meta are a small company with limited resources. They can't afford to fund standards work indefinitely. And, anyway, OGP is complete, right? It has all the tags that anyone could ever possibly want. Why does it need any improving?

Well, that's not the case. We know, for example, that Twitter have created their own proprietary OGP-like meta tags. Similarly, Pinterest have their own as well. And even Google are going their own way with Rich Snippets.

This is annoying for developers. Now we have to write multiple different bits of metadata if we want our links to be supported on all platforms.

Standards work is never "finished". Developers want to add new features. Users want to interact with new forms of content.

Tomorrow someone is going to invent a way to share smells over the Internet. How does that get represented in an Open Graph Protocol compliant manner?

or or or...

We know from bitter experience that having several mutually incompatible ways to implement something is a nightmare for developers and provides a poor user-experience.

So we create standards bodies. They're not perfect, but a group of interested folks can do the hard work to try and satisfy oppositional stakeholders.

This is my plea to ~~Facebook~~ Meta. If you're no longer interested in improving OGP, OK. You do you. But hand it over to people who want to keep this going. Maybe it's the W3C, or IndieWeb, or Schema.org or someone. Hell, I'm not busy, I'll take it on.

Remember, if you love something, let it go.

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

@edent — Sat, 22 Oct 2022 11:34:42 +0000

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 my crush kept visiting it!??!?!?

So people visited the website and signed in with their Twitter account. Whereupon the app started posting spam. Something which looked like this:

The Twitter API does not have the functionality to record visitors to a profile. This app is lying to users. But it tells an interesting lie. And that encourages people to click on the spam and log in with their own account.

As soon as I spotted it, I reported it via the Twitter Insiders' programme. And, to their credit, they managed to shut it down pretty quickly.

And then it popped up again.

And Again

And again.

It has been grimly fascinating to see how it spreads through different communities and different language groups.

You can watch it spread in realtime using https://twitter.com/search?q=Twoo.fun&src=typed_query&f=live

It has since metastasised into a similar scam called AskForMe.me - again, you can see it worm its way through communities at https://twitter.com/search?q=askforme.me&src=typed_query

In this case, the spam specifically mentions other users and posts fake statistics about how long they've been viewing the profile.

I keep reporting this to Twitter. And they keep shutting it down. And it keeps popping back up!

I don't have access to Twitter's systems - but it seems to me like there are some easy ways to curtail this scam. At the very least blocking those two domains would force the spammers to keep moving to new hosts. Perhaps Twitter could look for new apps which suddenly start posting messages which are quickly marked as spam. Or they could do some fancy machine-learning to identify similarly scammy images.

At the moment, we don't know what the end-game is for this spam. Maybe is it "just" a worm and someone is having a giggle seeing how many people they can infect. Perhaps it is harvesting accounts hoping to sell them to other spammers. Or it could be slurping down the social graph for other nefarious purposes.

Either way, this has been going on for at least five months! I think I've done what I can to inform Twitter. In the meantime, I urge you to warn your followers about this spam.

If you've been infected with this Twitter scam, please visit https://twitter.com/settings/connected_apps to remove it from your account.

Update! Looks like this spam has been doing the rounds since 2018!

Towards a Taxonomy of Twitter Tropes

@edent — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 12:34:19 +0000

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 are irritating.

The Thief of Words

Twitter is an Alternate Reality Game where players get points based on how many likes, retweets, and comments they get. Thankfully, there's no monetary reward (yet) for "doing numbers". Remember when you were a teenager and you heard a stand-up comedian telling jokes, and then you passed off their words as your own in the playground? Yeah, that's all that's happening here.

The Quote Grabber

Similar to the above. Twitter gives users the ability to "quote tweet" - which embeds the original text in your comment. The above person wants to give credit to the author - which is nice - but doesn't actually want the author to see or receive any of that interaction. Sometimes that's sensible - if you don't want to encourage abuse. But all it does is add a little friction to people who do want to engage.

The Obscurer

There are loads of "big" accounts which gained their following by ripping off others. It's usually easy to find the originator of a funny photo, video, or meme. All this person is doing is (obliquely) claiming the prize for someone else's hard work.

The Troll

Back in the day, the saying was "don't feed the trolls". Sadly, Twitter rewards any engagement - be it positive or negative. So people write deliberately incendiary messages in the hope that you'll spread their poison. And people fall for it every time.

The Ghost Writer

It is public knowledge that some accounts hire funny people to post on their behalf. Perhaps that's acceptable when it is obviously a marketing account. But there's an unwritten expectation that people post for themselves on their personal account. That dude you think is funny is just using a bunch of writers who are tasked with increasing engagement. There's no authenticity. It's just turning Twitter in to pay-to-win ARG.

The Branter

Ugh! Quirky brands can piss right off. Perhaps it was funny, once, when a couple of brands spontaneously started shit-talking each other. But now it is about as innovative and entertaining as any "word from our sponsors".

The Lack of Due Diligence

This is becoming more unbearable during the war in Ukraine. A seemingly sensible and sober journalist will find an outrageous Tweet claiming to be a "deep source" and treat it as though it were gospel. All notion of critically investigating sources goes out of the window in the race to be "first" with breaking news.

The "Journalist"

News aggregator accounts are nothing new. But there's a pernicious type of Tweeter who screams "THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA AREN'T COVERING THIS!" while linking to a two-day old story. These sort of accounts add no real value to your experience - but they give you a fake sense of urgency and they tickle that part of your brain which craves new and/or secret information. Just follow a news outlet directly.

The Bias Confirmation Engine

This is one of the few Tweets where I had a specific person in mind! There's a type of account which posts fan fiction about current events. Utterly made-up stories about people from "the other side" of a debate. All it does is make you feel smug and secure that the people with a different viewpoint are bad. No proof is ever offered, just a long stream of unverifiable annecdata.

The "helper"

Lots of people disagree with me on this one! Personally, I see it as a form of pollution, at worst, and virtue hunting at best. Every time you share something false, outdated, or irrelevant you are decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio of useful information.

The Holier-Than-Thou User

It me! Using a social network effectively is a skill. Understanding complex media is a skill. These skills take time to learn, and there are very few teachers. Media literacy is a critical part of interacting with the world and there are very few resources to help people.

That was the end of the original thread - but I couldn't resist adding a few more.

The Desperate For Attention

As I've said, Twitter is an ARG where the score is based on interactions. Posting "Cats are better than dogs. RT if you agree!!!" or "Who thinks sports stars should set a good example to kids?" is a cheap and lazy way to gain interaction. Shortly after your 30th birthday, you'll find yourself in a pub saying "who remembers ?" as a quick way to get a conversation started. Happens to us all!

The Mansplainer

I've moaned about this guy before! Men - and it is usually men - seem to think any question is directed to them. They are physically incapable of seeing a question-mark without taking it personally. It is downright disrespectful to assume the person asking the question hasn't done a cursory Google. And it's even more infuriating when you blunder in with your unfounded speculation. If you don't know the answer - don't engage.

And on and on…

In truth, I could have added a dozen more of these. And, also in the spirit of truth, I'm sure I'm guilty of most of them.

I'll reiterate - social media is a game and that means there will be people who will use all sorts of tricks to get the highest score. Part of your role in this game is to ensure that you don't reward the grifters, scammers, cheaters, and grinders.

Spend your attention wisely and - as ever - play nicely.

Augmented Reality Twitter Conversations!

@edent — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 11:34:27 +0000

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 to view a conversation object as AR.

Play!

You can play with it yourself at TweeView.ml/ar. You will need to download this AR target image.

It works best printed onto matt white paper, then mounted on card. I had to print it twice on the same piece of paper to get the required blackness.

Build!

This is built on several bits of open source tech.

The first part is A-Frame and AR.js

Next is ForceGraph AR

I recommend copying them to your local server rather than relying on a CDN.

The of your HTML page needs a target the AR window can attach to:

Construct the graph which will be displayed in the browser:

In order to generate a "target" (that's the physical object that is being tracked) use the AR.js Marker Generator. That will deliver you two things.

A .patt file. This is a digital representation of the pattern.
A .png or .pdf file. This is the thing you print off and show in front of your camera.

Finally, you'll need a graph object in JSON format to pass to ForceGraphAR.

You'll then end up with something like this:

Grab the code

All of this is available as open source on my GitHub repo.

Enjoy!

Twitter trialling "bot" account identification

@edent — Fri, 10 Sep 2021 06:34:43 +0000

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.

In a recent blog post - Rethinking Twitter Verification - I mused that it would be great if Twitter let you mark specific accounts as robots.

Well! That day is finally here! Some of my bots are now officially marked as such!

This is, as I understand it, a beta test. We'll see how users and developers react to this.

What Is It Like to Be a Bat Bot?

Automated accounts - where a human user isn't manually generating all the replies - are incredibly popular. People follow their local train line to find out about delays, or follow bots which Tweet the weather, or who won the sportball. Do those bots only give automated information? Do people expect to be able to have a conversation with them? Do they dream of electronic sheep?

Follow my bots

Here are my bots which have been given the Twitter bot logo:

Flood Forecast

A bot which lets you know the flood risk for the coming days (England and Wales only)

My Solar Panels

At sunset every day, you'll get a graph of how much electricity our roof has generated

UK Earthquakes

Very occasionally, we get small earthquakes in the UK. This lets you know when they happen

The @UK_Quakes bot was deleted.

RGB Colours

A very silly bot which gives you a random colour to brighten your day

Open Benches

Our crowd-sourced psychogeography project Tweets every time a photo of a memorial bench is uploaded.

Thanks

Huge thanks to the @TwitterDev team for giving me early access to this scheme. You can read more about the trial.

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

@edent — Thu, 02 Sep 2021 11:03:56 +0000

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 few screenshots of "interesting" trees, and a little bit about how it works.

In this example, the user has a main thread that they are posting on: You can see that a few people reply to some of the earlier tweets in the thread.

In this example, the original user only posts once - but some other users have a pleasant chat in the thread. A common pattern is that there are lots of first-level replies - but very little discourse. That's not always the case - here's the Telegraph posting a story to Twitter.

While most people are happy to just comment, a few people have sustained conversations. It can get a little fanatic - I've rotated this sideways to make it slightly easier to view: Two people with very different political opinions have a civilised and productive discussion...

In this rare case, a 2nd- and 3rd-level comment attracts more attention than the initial Tweet.

And, just for fun(!) here's a ridiculously long thread:

What does it look like?

To have a play, visit TweeView.ml and paste in a recent Twitter thread.

You can also look at these three pre-rendered demos:

Notes

This is a demo.
It is read-only. You can't send messages and it won't ask you to log in.
Limitations in the Twitter API means it only works on Tweets in the last 7 days.
This doesn't cope with threads "orphaned" after a parent Tweet has been deleted.
The code is open source, and built on lots of open source components, GitHub.com/edent/TweeView.

Enjoy!

Visualising Twitter Conversations in 3D Space

@edent — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 11:07:12 +0000

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 going on? As I've previously blogged about, Twitter has a new conversations API. That allows you to get Tweet replies in a tree-like structure.

A small conversation looks something like this:

You can see that the initial tweet gets a lot of attention - many first level replies. Then, some of those tweets spawn other, longer threads.

People occasionally delete their tweets. This means some branches of the conversation are orphaned. Which gives us this wonderful set of constellations.

In this example, the more retweets a tweet has - the larger its radius.

In this example, there are a chain of Tweets. While the first Tweet in the chain has the most replies and retweets - the rest of the thread is also heavily trafficked. Those Tweets on the right get plenty of love!

Finally, here's a thread of over 200 tweets from a popular account:

The first couple of tweets attract a lot of attention, and some parts of the conversation branch off into their own little trees.

You can play with these visualisations:

A few points to note:

This is a demo. It may break entirely or perform badly.
The code is open source, and built on lots of open source components, GitHub.com/edent/TweeView.
The Twitter conversation API only works on tweets sent in the last 7 days. So you can't use this on older threads.
Large conversations take a long time to load and can be slow to render.

Enjoy!

Rethinking Twitter Verification

@edent — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 11:03:01 +0000

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 the Verification process for now. In part, I suspect, due to overwhelming false positives and negatives.

The main problem, I think, is that no one knows what "Verified" means. Is the user a celebrity? A journalist? A spoof account? A friend of Twitter's CEO? It's all so unclear.

It seems to me that the answer is expanding Verification to take into account the different types of users of Twitter.

The Mastodon social network has the concept of "Bot" accounts. They are clearly marked as robots and that lets users know they're interacting with a non-person.

Lots of journalists get verified by Twitter - because Twitter wants to integrate with newsrooms. Should a junior fashion reporter at the South Nowhere Bugle get the same sort of tick as the Chief Political Correspondent of the world's biggest news show? It's egalitarian, to be sure, but it doesn't help a user determine if the Verified account Tweeting about Afghanistan is a credible source. Once the journo leaves the industry and becomes a pizza delivery driver, do they keep their tick?

I've written before about people talking to fake customer services on Twitter. Scammers pose as @Bank_0f_ANNER1CA and try to con people out of money. If brands had a big "Verified Brand" or "Certified Bank" label, that would make it harder for scams to proliferate.

I currently work for a Government department (this is a personal blog) - and it can be easy for our departments and initiatives to get Verified. But, again, what does that mean? Twitter does occasionally add "this is a state-affilliated account" labels:

I've no idea what the process is for that - nor how accounts apply or are verified - but it shows it can be done.

Is that really a Mr Feynman on Twitter? Or a cheap numbers-pumping account?

Yes, it spoils the joke if you give satirical accounts a big disclaimer - but it prevents users getting confused and upset.

Twitter has never really known what it is for. That's part of the joy of it - lots of weird experiments unconstrained by a singular product vision. But it is clear that users want to understand who they're interacting with.

My suggestions aren't set in stone, and they certainly haven't been tested with any users. And, obviously, I have no power to change Twitter's roadmap. But I think it's time Twitter spoke to its users and understood what they want out of a Verification programme.

The follow-but-mute antipattern

@edent — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 11:20:46 +0000

I received a rather distraught DM from a Twitter friend last week. They were upset that I was following an account which did nothing but spew out racist bile all day long. Did this mean that I endorsed their hateful views.

I was confused. I didn't recognise the specific account, and didn't recall seeing any of their tweets - but I was following them. How? Why? Was it a hack? I did a little digging, and finally it twigged...

The account belonged to someone I met at an industry event several years ago. In a fit of mutual back-slapping, we'd followed each other on Twitter. It quickly became apparent that he only ever tweeted about his beloved football team. I felt a bit rude unfollowing him so quickly, so I muted him. I do this occasionally - it is polite to follow some people, but that doesn't mean I have to read whatever nonsense they say.

Follow-But-Mute.

Once I realised what had happened, I quickly blocked the prick. But it got me thinking about some of my own behaviour on social media.

There are signals we send just by virtue of existing in public. I hit like on my friends' videos - but I don't always watch them to the end. A mate releases a podcast, so they get retweeted even if I don't actually listen to them. I follow people out of politeness and immediately mute them. If I see someone I find distasteful has followed me, I kick them. A swift block-and-unblock means they stop following me, but don't get notified.

But now I'm wondering if this is all a bit of an antipattern. Do I really need to signal to the world who I follow and who follows me? Would social media be calmer if people weren't chasing for interaction numbers?

Or am I being paranoid? Are people really scouring the history of my favourites to use against me?

This is the peril of the panopticon.

What I learned from reading all my old tweets

@edent — Tue, 18 May 2021 11:45:08 +0000

Every so often, a celebrity is castigated over their "youthful indiscretions" i.e. racist Tweets they sent when they were a teenager.

I don't think I've posted anything too horrific, but I wanted to check. I searched Twitter for a variety of slurs sent from my account - and all seemed clean. But... there's a lot of stuff that's not so easy to find with a simple search.

So I decided to read every single Tweet I'd written since 2008. That's a lot of crap to wade through!

I built a site - Twistory.ml - and every day it shows me what I was Tweeting "on this day". I launched it a year ago and have been reading it faithfully each morning.

This is what I learned:

I'm not racist! And I'm not misogynistic!

Well, that was a relief! I mean, I didn't think of myself as being a bigot - but you never really get an objective view of your past life, do you?

But, not everything I've posted is solid gold...

Bad takes.

Sometimes it was entertaining to see what predictions I'd made which came true. Other times... yeah - looks like I called that one wrong!

I actually think it's an important thing to do. We often remember just how right we are. But it is vital that we recognise when we made mistakes.

Some things easily taken out of context.

Looking at some of my messages with a critical eye, it is easy to see how some things could be misconstrued. What reads as obvious sarcasm to me, doesn't always come across to others. It's depressingly easy to misunderstand something.

Where did all my friends go?

Looking through my messages, I see lots of replies to accounts which no longer exist. Some are people who have delete their accounts. But quite a lot of the accounts were suspended. Did they go full racist? Were they hacked? Were they always foreign bots?

I'm so tedious

I have a repertoire of about 5 jokes, I talk to mostly the same people, I complain about the same things year-in year-out.

I can't splel

My spelling is atrocious at times. I can blame mobile keyboards - or the fact that Twitter doesn't have an edit button - but it is just me being crap and lazy.

Fights I shouldn't have started

I saw a few tweets of me being needlessly obnoxious to people who would go on to be bosses and colleagues. I have sent a few private apologies. If you feel you're due one, let me know!

To Sum Up

I'm sure there's something daft / dodgy / dangerous that I've Tweeted at some point. We all screw up occasionally. But I'm confident there's no pattern of weird and horrible behaviour on my part.

Reading back my old reflections has been (mostly) fun - it's great to wallow in nostalgia, eh?

"Looks like I´m single again" Why can't Twitter deal with this spam?

@edent — Fri, 14 May 2021 11:01:24 +0000

Twitter has never really solved its spam problem. It is a constant irritation that ordinary people get booted off the service for minor infractions, while large spam rings go unpunished.

For the past few months, some of my old tweets have been getting liked by random women. I'm sure you've see something similar.

The idea is, I suppose, to arouse your curiosity. "Who is this young woman showering me with attention? I'd better check her profile!"

Gosh! Young, pretty, single, and she's interested in me!!! WOWEE!

Scroll down, and you'll see lots of videos of the woman dancing, posing for the camera, and generally Tweeting plausibly generic statements.

But... I've got a nagging feeling that I've seen this woman - and her bio - before. I've seen it a lot.

By my count, there's at least 60 of these identikit spam accounts. They all have the same bio - with the same idiosyncratic punctuation of "I´m". And they all post identical content. Whether it's "Olivia", "Amelia", or "Lucy" - it appears to be the same set of photos and videos. Possibly stolen from some unwitting person's private account.

The avatar changes, as do the captions on the photos. But it is mostly identical media posted in the same order.

If you scroll back far enough through the (identical) spam content, you can usually find archaeological evidence of the previous user.

They all seem to follow this pattern. Accounts which were last active several years ago, which have been re-purposed into spam. A few are more recently active - this one still has the author's pinned Tweet from a few months ago.

I suspect credential stuffing - or the hack of a once-popular Twitter app.

So, what happens if you're daft enough to follow one of these spam-sirens? You get a DM pretty quickly.

This totally real person is watching TV, just like me! Oh, and she has sent an unsolicited "booty" pic - just like a regular girl! Wow! I'd better follow her on this not-at-all shady site…

It is such boring, obvious spam. It doesn't require some super-advanced AI to detect.

If an account suddenly changes its name and profile image - especially on a dormant account - that should be flagged.

Posting content - in the same order - as other spam accounts? Flagged!

Sending DMs with a link to a spam site? Flagged!

Sure, shutting down these obvious spam accounts may lead spammers and fraudsters to try more complex routes to evade detection. It's all an arms race.

But when Twitter doesn't make the bare minimum effort to protect users, then it begins to smell a bit like negligence.

Howto: Remove Twitter's Trending Topics

@edent — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 11:15:44 +0000

Twitter's trending topics are... inflammatory. Probably deliberately so in order to drive engagement. It's a mix of "who shall we hate today" and lowest-common-denominator "celebrity" gossip. I hate it. There are various ways you can block content on the web - but they usually involve installing a plugin to your browser.

Here's a simple hack to remove the sidebar - or, at the very least, make it a lot less annoying.

Go to twitter.com/settings/explore
Set the location to a city whose language you don't speak. I don't speak Japanese, so I set it to Tokyo.

And here's what my trending topics look like now:

I now have zero idea what's going on! I've no idea if those are political scandals, TV shows, or whatever.

You can go one step further.

Set your location to China China usually only has one trend: "Beijing"

Tap "I'm not interested in this"

🥳 Trends is now gone

It would be lovely if Twitter let you customise your web experience. But, in the absence of that, I hope you find this tip useful.

twitter – Terence Eden’s Blog

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Rethinking Twitter Verification

The follow-but-mute antipattern

What I learned from reading *all* my old tweets

"Looks like I´m single again" Why can't Twitter deal with this spam?

Howto: Remove Twitter's Trending Topics

What I learned from reading all my old tweets