2018-05-18 21:34:21

So any twitter user will know what's bound to happen come August. Rather than just passively let it happen while causing all kinds of havoc over it on Twitter, I've started this petition which for those who don't know what I'm talking about, will explain it all. Sign, contribute if you can, and pass it around.

2018-05-18 21:39:14

I signed it.

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2018-05-18 22:18:46

Signed it too. Hope they'll re-consider their decision or even that they see this petition at the first place.

2018-05-18 23:08:31 (edited by Ethin 2018-05-18 23:10:38)

I'd like to point out two things: first, this petition is a bit too technical for most everyday people; they won't know what an API is, and some won't care about accessibility. (I mean no offense when I say that this petition almost seems like one of those "because I'm blind" or "for the blind only" plea bargains). I don't mean to be so critical but making a petition is no simple task. You need to explain why Twitter should not kill the streaming API not just for accessibility but for other purposes. You need to explain how it would help (or fail to help) or otherwise aid all the users of all the various twitter apps out there if twitter keeps this particular API, not just isolate yourself to the blind, visually impaired, and/or disabled communities. Second, you must realize that even if Twitter sees this petition, they may not choose to acknowledge it. This does not mean that they are against disabled people, or that they dislike the petition, or they find your petition inane in any way; they may have reasons that us, as users, are unaware of for denying your petition. And... a third thing, just came to me... a hundred signatures is an extraordinarily small amount, and twitter most likely won't do anything because of it. Reasons and signatories are two very important things when it comes to petitions.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
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2018-05-18 23:59:57

@4: you raise some valid points indeed, but I think we can all stop to take a moment and commend @1 for trying. Certainly, it's up to Twitter what they do with it, but OP is taking a stand in their own way, and that deserves a hats-off. I don't use Twitter so am not affected by this change but I can certainly see why it is concerning since I've built Twitter API interactions from scratch. From a developer's perspective it's a breaking change.

Also, the security risk involved in having things like Direct Messages go to a server before the client is notified due to Twitter's new "We'll only send to the server script approach" is scary. Think what developers have access to now.

2018-05-19 00:57:43

Sadly I am going to have to agree with ethin.
And thats not exactly because I care as such about well agreeing with him.
These online pititions are at most spam encouraging sites.
We sign them because they make us feel good, I signed it because it makes me feel good.
But they are non binding.
We would get the same reaction if we did a ddos attack on twitter with hundreds of spams from a botnet or 2.
This is a legal way of sorts of doing just that.
Its not going to matter, it won't change twitter's views.
We will have to embrace the new technology when it is written and setup.
We should actually be asking twitter to release the new system to devs and to get it out faster if at all possible.
I am sorry, but the whiny helpless blindy approach aint going to work.
Worse its not like a site will change things.
If I got a pitition I wouldn't give it a second thought.
Sign it if you want to feel like something is being done.
Then prepair for a lot of spam later on.
If you and others want to try to  fight the good fight legally go ahead I guess.
It won't solve anything.

2018-05-19 01:41:32 (edited by Ethin 2018-05-19 01:50:12)

@5, I know how complicated writing a wrapper around an API can be, especially a very complicated one with authentication, security and other things. But the new solution Twitter may be introducing may be a revolutionary or better API than the old, and I feel that the OP and any of the people complaining about it has not taken this into consideration, especially when not all the details of the API are well-known. Filling change.org with petitions that may prove to be useless just to preserve the status quo when something wants to change it once and a while only fills up change.org's database of thousands to millions of petitions with useless crap.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-05-19 01:58:15

@7 agreed re: the new API might be better than the old one. I'm not arguing about a yea or nay on the API either way, because I don't care about Twitter and also don't know enough about the new API. I'm only saying that OP is at least trying to do something about what they believe in. Too often we're quick to shoot each other down.

OP, I hope people pay attention to and sign your petition like you want.

2018-05-19 03:11:57

@8, I agree. I just thought I'd post my peaces of advice/warnings before anyone got too overconfident.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-05-19 04:03:32

@9, with you there.

2018-05-19 04:10:18

@10, was that a compliment or a criticism? I've always been curious what some people think of me so... smile

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-05-19 04:30:05

Neither compliment nor criticism; only stating that I agree with your post smile

2018-05-19 06:54:36

@Ethin: Valid points. I kind of did try to explain everyone even though admittedly, the streaming api holds the most impact on the applications popular among blind folks. However, I did explain that it would be a huge loss for developers who make a living off of making their extremely well known twitter apps. I'd also like to think that way about the api potentially being better than the streaming api, but the reality is that's not the case. The http webhook api will allow functionality similar to that of the Rest API, at a steep prohibitive price. We're talking $2895 a month for 100 to 250 users, and any more than that by a large amount requires developers to contact Twitter for enterprise pricing, which unless given a major bulk discount, is also prohibitive. Even Twitterrific is saying that they couldn't see themselves trying to work their way into the new system, and they probably come the closest to being able to afford what Twitter is asking for. It's basically a ploy to get people to use the native apps that are constantly in flux, or the web which introduces slowdowns with refreshes and cursor jumping depending on the browser.

2018-05-19 06:57:48

Also, 100 signatures was never my main goal. Change.org puts that on any petition under 100 signatures. I was a Kickstarter backer for twitterrific at the beta tester level, so I did contact Sean about the petition and passing it on to the backers as a backer update, and if they're still around causing a mass amount of signatures. But a petition is just step 1, within that I may have to try other things to drive the message.

2018-05-19 15:10:55

I signed it before it got to here, but I think it won't have any effect whatsoever, unless we got like 250K signatures.

I'm also generally against the whole, "You're intentionally shutting out the blindies", type approaches on things, makes me cringe so hard.

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2018-05-19 15:47:21 (edited by jack 2018-05-19 15:51:04)

I guess if it gets more signatures than they expect, maybe. You're right about it not really having much effect unless it actually has a lot of signatures behind it. The fact this just started a few days ago and is over a hundred is a good sign though, other petitions I've started never reached that high in the week or so after being up. I will also say, unfortunately, that some folks do seem to think this is playing the blind card. Not entirely. If it's trained helplessness, you gotta lose it. Taking a stand and speaking up for something important is not only encouraged, but necessary if we want to get anywhere. There's no harm in it either, so what could possibly be wrong. And besides, it doesn't apply to blind people alone. Sure, it covers a large portion of those people who do happen to be visually impaired. But what about the sighted people that use these third party apps for their simplicity. Or the developers who will not have as much a strong position in the market they've been serving for so long.

2018-05-19 15:54:22

It is said that contributing to the fund helps, the more people contribute the more people see the petition across the board. Not guaranteed, but you don't know until you try.

2018-05-19 16:01:07

@17, I agree. Like I said, just wanted to state some points you might of missed. smile Also, I've just checked out the webhook aPI for myself... makes me wonder if it will affect applications that solely use Twitter as a sign-on entity too. If so, then that's reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally bad -- tons and tons and tons of apps use that. Furthermore, it will definitely affect apps that have full twitter integration, with posting on feeds and timelines, which doesn't just include mobile apps; it might include apps like wiki platforms and many other things.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-05-19 16:08:41 (edited by braille0109 2018-05-19 16:11:06)

let's see here. 1) taking push notifications away from third party apps will not only! affect the blind. twitter is mainstream, and apps like twitterrific are also mainly mainstream. I mean, the guys have like 500000 followers, so yeah. so I would personally keep the blind card out of this, purely because we're not the only ones affected.
2) some of us have paid for these push notifications. so for twitter to take them away like that, first of all, makes us waste our money, makes devs feel like they ripped us off, and it will feel as if they wasted their times coding it.
3) every up to 250 account, will cost $2800. right, so let's see here. let's assume, that twitterrific has 200000 active users for a second. again, they have 432900 something followers, so we'll assume with 200000. let's divide that by 250, and we get 800. now multiply that by 2800, and you  get 2240000. so essentially, since twitterrific has 800 times 250, without the discount, this is how much they would be expected to pay, since they'd have to pay the 2800 after 800 times 250. now to those of you, who thinks that the new API will be better, do you still think that way?
I'm almost certainly sure, that twitter won't just tell apps like twitterrific to pay them 5 grand, just to let 200000 users to continue having push notifications. I'm also not sure if this is monthly or yearly, but frankly, that won't make a difference. refer to my calculation if needed again.

2018-05-19 16:15:06

And the fact of the matter is the api is not any better, in fact it's worse, than the streaming api. It's like the old rest api, but three way since it's an http webhook api. So, this does mean minute per minute updating, and it does look like push notifications would be done for.

2018-05-19 16:23:44

I just don't want to get spammed by change.org, or mess with filters, I guess I'm lazy, I don't use twitter though I just know how many blind people communicate with it so.

2018-05-19 16:34:23

sadly, have to agree with post 4 here, aspessially with second and third point. Twitter is one of those big companies who, however much do they do bad things, they'll always have endless amounts of customers, there for, even if this patition gets a milion signatures, it's very unlikely that twitter would even notice it, let alone react to it. Another thing is, even those sighted people who use third party apps, they defenetly would have less problems getting use to the web client / twitter for mobile devices, witch means that they wouldn't really feel a need to sign the patition. With all this out of the way, I have already signed this patition, and hope that it has positive effects, and even though I am slowly getting use to the web client and twitter for iPhone, I know that it would take awhile for me to actually get use to using them 24/7 instead of my third party twitter client of chois.

If life gives you communism, become a communist dictator.

2018-05-19 16:46:18

As far as I'm concerned, Twitter is now no better than Facebook. I'll stop using Twitter once Twitterrific stops working. I'm not going to worry about losing my money on the iOS and macOS versions. I wanted to support them because they made the effort to make it accessible on both platforms. I'll just have to move on when Twitter changes the API. The fact that Twitter is a giant company that doesn't give a shit what people think doesn't surprise me. There are other ways of staying in contact with people and obtaining news.

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2018-05-19 17:01:05

@20, that's a surprise. In a way though its the cycle of evolution, really, if we view it from a scientific viewpoint: bad things are made, they turn into good, then back to bad, and so on and so forth. tongue I rarely (if ever) use Twitter, so this really doesn't affect me. I'd start my own service-ish thing if I thought it would be a success, but given my... ahem... questionable reputation... that might not be the wisest idea. If people want me to though, I can begin work on it, see where I go. I've already got a basic website going (OK, very advanced) but I haven't worked on it for a while.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2018-05-19 22:26:53

honestly, though, I rather like whatsapp and hangouts these days. not to mention that apparently microsoft wants iMessage. if these happen, the fuck needs twitter. I can just read my time line, and keep in touch with people on other platforms.