Goodbye Twitter: Techdirt Will Soon End Our Automated Posting
from the bye-twitter dept
Over the last few months we’d been wondering if it was worth pulling Techdirt posting from Twitter altogether, but had been too busy with other stuff to make a decision, and now it looks like Twitter has made the decision for us. Last week, Automattic informed us that Elon Musk was demanding a ridiculous amount of money to continue allowing its Jetpack service to use the API to enable WordPress sites to automatically post to Twitter. Automattic publicly announced this week that it would not pay, and that WordPress sites would no longer be able to automatically post to Twitter.
Twitter decided, on short notice, to dramatically change the terms and pricing of the Twitter API. We have attempted to work with Twitter in good faith to negotiate new terms, but we have not been able to reach an agreement. As a result, the Twitter connection on Jetpack Social will cease to work, and your blog posts will no longer be auto-shared to Twitter.
You will still be able to share your posts to Twitter manually by pasting the post link into the body of your tweet.
We were told that the automatic sharing of Techdirt articles as tweets would end over the weekend, though they’ve still been showing up. Honestly, we’ve got too many other things we’re working on to turn off the autosharing ourselves, so they’ll keep appearing as long as Elon allows it, but I assume that’s not much longer.
And… that’s fine. I’m sure we could probably find some hack to keep posting, but why bother?
We’re actually joining a large number of others who have left Twitter, including news organizations like NPR and PBS. Lots of others have left as well, either by choice or when pushed. NY’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, the MTA, announced recently that given Twitter’s increasing unreliability it will no longer use it for alerts.
Lots of other accounts have left as well, including many fun ones that used to make Twitter such a fun place to be. Inoreader, one of the world’s most popular RSS readers has now dropped Twitter feeds because of the new API fees. Same with Feedly. A bunch of official weather services have been exploring other options, after Twitter blocked many of their accounts from posting (though some were re-enabled after complaints).
Of course, just yesterday Twitter (again realizing that it hadn’t thought any of this through) announced that it was restoring API access for government weather and travel alerts. But, just the fact that this is all based on Elon making stupid decisions, learning they are stupid, and having to backtrack should be concerning for everyone.
So, we’re fine. Elon has every right to cut us off from posting our content to Twitter. But, really, our Twitter feed drove little to no traffic anyway, and it has limited value. It seems like a bizarre decision to cut off a service that powers 43% of the world’s websites, making it way more difficult for those services to put their content on Twitter, but Elon (I’m repeatedly told) is some sort of intergalactic business genius, and I’m just some guy who writes words on the internet.
We are looking into alternative services, but not alternative ways to post to Twitter. As I’ve made clear, I’m quite enthusiastic about a few different protocol-based systems out there, including ActivityPub (Mastodon), AT Protocol (Bluesky) and nostr. So we’ll be looking at ways to automate posting to all of those over time. Protocol systems not subject to the whims of some random dude seem like a much safer and more sustainable bet. This is also why Techdirt has been available for decades via RSS, and you can always follow us that way, or by just visiting the page once a day.
Filed Under: api, automated posting, elon musk, protocols, wordpress
Companies: automattic, twitter
Comments on “Goodbye Twitter: Techdirt Will Soon End Our Automated Posting”
Y’all better make sure to keep using the account somehow. Elon might reassign it to someone else.
Re:
The bare minimum is to keep it locked at least.
Unless Elon is THAT desperate to get eyeballs onto his own pit of Hell…
Re: Re: NPR handle
Melon was going to give NPR Twitter handle to other people while NPR was still onboard, do you think he will care if you locked the account and went AFK.
Re: Re: Re:
That comment was made BEFORE we knew that.
And we all knew that deleting the account was not gonna help anyway…
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National Pumpkin Radio will be happy with the windfall.
Re: Re:
That sounds like a better choice than “Natural Power Racists”
Re: Re: Re:
But less truthful than Nothing Practical Received.
Re: NPR should do this too
Just keep tweeting automatically all hours of the day and night. Every tweet is a poop emoji. Pass it on.
Or just constantly have a browser tab opened with techdirt.com.
Re:
This is the way.
Re: Re:
This is the way.
insert standing applause meme here
I can’t wait to put up that @techdirt twitter handle and start posting my own techdirt stories!
/s
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
So transparently false.
In the time it took you to write this newest anti-Musk / anti-Twitter screed, MM, you could’ve turned off autosharing (and turned it back on) ten times!
Plus, so what? Your automated TD tweets get almost no engagement anyway. Certainly no loss to the Twitter community to see you go. Bye!
Re:
It’s interesting that it never ever crossed your mind that TD values reporting on Twitters decisions (that likely impact a large portion of wordpress users) more than the do mucking about with twitter auto-post settings.
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Bye? And yet here you are.
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Why does it not surprise me you have no concept of opportunity costs? Or how technology actually works.
Re: Re:
Because he’s never shown any grasp of how anything else works, either?
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The only thing more hollow than National Pumpkin Radio is that laugh you just attempted.
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Not for the “pedo” comments, nor because he smoked weed on Joe Rogan’s show, nor because he’s polluting outer space with those satellites, but because he went republican? The faux-morals are so visible. If Elan is a fool, he was a fool a long time ago. Maybe if he identifies as a woman, or a martian, all will be forgiven…
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I’m surprised you didn’t say “attack helicopter”. Are you trying to change up the one anti-trans joke you have?
Re: please read the article
I’m pretty sure jacking up the API costs has nothing to do with going republican.
And no, Elon coming out as trans would not change Techdirt’s opinion, because it is completely irrelevant to the stuff Elon’s been doing that make Twitter a worse platform.
Also, why on earth would anyone care that Elon smoked weed on Joe Rogan, lol. Out of everything he’s done, that’s the “terrible thing” that should have turned people against him?
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Re: Re:
Two agree with me without even knowing it. Everyone knows that if Elon would’a stayed in his crazy lane, without exposing his conservative inclinations, he still would be welcome with open arms. People would been like, “yeah, Twitter needed trimming anyway”.
Predictability is quick and obvious with the woke…everyone else sees the glasses on your forehead, except you.
Re: Re: Re:
Not…really? I mean, some people would probably less quick to judge him as an asshole, but most people would see what he’s doing to Twitter as shitty behavior regardless of his political leanings. Someone can be “liberal” and still fuck things up to the point where people who would otherwise be aligned with that someone politically thinks said someone is doing a shitty job.
Then again, if he were “liberal”, he probably wouldn’t be so welcoming towards extremist right-wingers, so there is that…
Re: Re: Re:2
All anyone really needs to say is “Hyperloop”.
That was years ago now.
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That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day, Anon.
Re: Re: Re:
Put the crack pipe down.
Re: Re: Re:
Tell me you don’t read Techdirt without telling me you don’t read Techdirt.
Re: Re: Re:2
More like “Tell me you read Techdirt without understanding Techdirt.”
Re: Re: Re:
I’ll ask you explicitly, then: What does jacking up the API costs, causing WordPress to drop Twitter auto posting, causing techdirt to stop auto posting on Twitter, have to do with Elon’s politics?
Re: Re: Re: Everybody knows an accusation is a confession
“Everyone knows”
You could have stopped writing right there.
Re: Re: Re:
Watching far-right dingbats explain how their own brains work in the form of spurious accusations is one of my favourite forms of entertainment, thank you for this
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Or was always a white power sort of fool.
But I’m sure you don’t, treasonous cur.
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nor because he smoked weed on Joe Rogan’s show
This is what you think triggers liberals?
That horse dewormer really fucked you people up.
Re: Re:
I think that’s less about the weed and more about that dipshit Rogan.
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Actually yes, for that.
Who gives a shit about the weed? Rogan on the other hand…
Yes, for that too.
He didn’t go Republican, he went full I’m-super-fucking-rich authoritarian with thin skin and zero impulse control.
What does this even have to do with morals? He’s made a series of absolutely terrible business decisions and ruined an imperfect but useful social media platform.
True, but he was a rich fool, and that gets you far further than is deserved.
Ooh, transphobia! So witty and edgy!
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Elmo’s still never honing to know your name no matter how much you Stan for him.
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Speak for yourself. I didn’t like Elon Musk when he was receiving glowing coverage. I just thought there was something off about him. Also, I thought that privatizing space travel would mean that pictures of celestial objects would not be in the public domain.
It’s just that my suspicions proved correct and the rest of the world caught up.
Re: It's spelled Fascist
Not “Republican”
uh oh
Elon will retaliate by turning TechDirt over to a Nazi incel horde. Get yourself a good trademark lawyer and get in line to sue him till he’s bluer than his checkmarks.
Re:
To be fair, Mike probably has a few lawyers just begging to defend him after the email thing.
And the EFF is still a good fallback.
Still, be careful, Elon is crazier than Floridian opposums. Might also wanna invest ina stabproof vest and some time at the range, just in case.
And yes, I know what I’m implying.
Re: Re:
Eh, if you’re in Florida, you’ve bigger things to worry about than opossums. I hear the politicians are roving the state in packs these days…
Re: Re: Re:
My sister is an emergency doctor in Miami and she tells me stories about how she talks with COVID-deniers who have COVID. Here’s what it’s like:
Dr. Abram: “You have COVID.”
Florida Man: “No I don’t. What’s really wrong with me, Doc?”
Dr. Abram: “I just told you, you have COVID.”
And yes, the politicians are making it worse. Fortunately, there are some good people there working against the tide of crazy, and my sister is one of them.
Re: Re: Re:2
My sympathies for her having to put up with idiots like that, I’d never be able to keep that job as I highly doubt I’ve have the patience to be nice when faced with that level of denial.
‘It’s either Covid or terminal stupidity, so would you prefer to be in here because you caught a contagious virus or because you’re so gorram stupid that it’s somehow affecting your health?’
Also interdimensional. He may be a 3D being (or so I’ve heard), but he’s famous for playing 4D chess, and plays 12D chess as well.
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Hey, playing 12D chess badly is also playing 12D Chess…
I’ve said before that I figured the trigger for a Twitter deathspiral would be all the external sites dropping their integrations. Once those are replaced by widgets for Mastodon or whatever, the implosion is going to be in full swing.
*This comment has been flagged by the community…
Elan Musk is the 2nd coming of Steve Jobs.
*This comment has been flagged by the community…
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I’d think that a Musk stan would at least be able to spell his first name right.
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Huh. Maybe I just missed the context you intended your bit of humor for.
But that’s okay. You also don’t have enough content there to be flagged.
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I’m sure you’ll all be missed by…somebody.
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No one will miss you.
RSS FTW
Love Techdirt via RSS! Techdirst RSS is the best RSS.
'I'd have left already but you're not even worth that much effort.'
‘The only reason we were still on the platform is because we had more important things to do and it cost us no effort to have posts automatically put up’ is such a delightful offhanded burn.
Twitter sucks
We all know it, and Musk’s driving it right into the ground at 800 mph-but it’s not affecting most of us because we’ve already moved on.
If it was his intention to destroy Twitter, he’s certainly succeeded.
It’ll be a husk of itself in the next year, and then Musk will whine, “I thought I could make it run better! Why did it fail?”
Clueless to the end.
This is why you don’t let selfish billionaires take over media without knowing what they’re doing.
Billions of dollars wasted down the drain, for a cesspool that desperately needed draining.
It’s drained now.
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Goodbye Masnick!
I’m no longer reading Techdirt, you write tabloids, there’s no real journalism here.
Re: see ya AC
I’m no longer posting comments, you eat altoids, there is no real intelligence here.
Re: How will TD ever get by without you?
No.
Please.
Come back.
Re:
Definitely apply for a refund, okay?
Mastodon, please
Re: Mastodon
Mike on Mastodon
Hope that helps!