Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 07/05 – Twitter Chaos: The Real Fireworks

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

Chaos at Twitter emphatically did NOT take the 4th of July weekend off. Instagram’s Twitter clone looks like it’s going to take advantage of this chaos to launch now. The Reddit app apocalypse has happened. Oh, and the mods for Reddit AMA’s have downed tools. And how drone technology is disrupting the traditional Fireworks industry. Sponsors: Kolide.com/ride Notion.com/ride Links: Instagram’s Twitter competitor, Threads, briefly went live on the web (The Verge) The Reddit app-pocalyse is here: Apollo, Sync, and BaconReader go dark (The Verge) The Reddit moderators who coordinate many celebrity AMAs will no longer do so (The Verge) Fireworks Have a New Competitor: Drones (NYTimes) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Wednesday, July 5th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. Chaos at Twitter emphatically did not take the 4th of July weekend off. Instagram's Twitter clone looks like it's going to take advantage of this chaos to launch now. The Reddit app apocalypse has actually happened. Oh, and the mods for Reddit's AMAs have downed tools. And finally, how drone technology is disrupting the traditional fireworks industry. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. To quote the Thomas Jefferson song from Hamilton, what did I miss?

Yeah, seems the relative quiet of Twitter from recent months couldn't last forever, beginning right about the start of last weekend. People started noticing things were going wrong with their usage of Twitter. Somewhere around that same time, Twitter itself announced that it would no longer let users browse, tweets, user profiles, or comment on threads on the web without logging into Twitter. first. Instead, they were redirecting non-logged-in people to Twitter's sign-in page, which, okay, no more free-loading. You've got to be a user to see tweets. Though, given that Twitter is, by and large, an advertising-supported platform, you'd think they'd want to reach as many people as possible with their tweets to have as wide a possible netcast for advertisers. But again, okay. Soon, however, the complaints from users grew into a torrent. Twitter users globally,

reported multiple site issues, including seeing rate limit exceeded messages or cannot retrieve tweets error messages. And Elon Musk was quick to tweet explanations for this. First, Elon claimed the Twitter login requirement was a, quote, temporary emergency measure as, quote, several hundred orgs were, quote, scraping Twitter data extremely aggressively, end quote. So again, okay, I mean, we've been hearing that the scraping of data by AI companies is what has led to the abrupt change in policies at Reddit. So again, this is all plausible, right? Question mark. But Elon also tweeted that also to combat the scraping issue, Twitter was all of the sudden rate limiting everybody's ability to view tweets.

Verified Twitter accounts were temporarily limited to reading 6,000 tweets per day. Unverified accounts only 600 posts per day and new unverified accounts only 300. Again, due to what Elon termed as, quote, extreme data scraping. This was later amended to 10,000 posts a day, 1,000 for unverified, and new unverified users still at 500 posts per day. This is why folks were unable to read tweets, to view them, to post them, engage with Twitter generally, which is problematic for Twitter because, for all of the Strom and down of the last year, Twitter primarily makes its money still.

when people checks notes, engage with its tweets to serve ads around. So, limiting the amount of engagement people could have with tweets would seem to be a case of cutting off one's nose despite one's face. Now, of course, there was a ton of theories as to what was actually going on here. An early theory that I believe has been debunked is that Twitter's cloud computing deal, I believe with Google, expired on June 30th. Several developers said that Twitter appeared to be dedossing itself due to a bug in Twitter's web app. This was actually duplicated by several people, and it looked like the original not allowing unlogged people to view tweets was the problem that Twitter itself kept trying to access its own tweets, but couldn't because of the non-logged-in

ban, which that would be ironic, wouldn't it? I will note that at the time of this writing, early afternoon on July 5th, Twitter has quietly backtracked on the unlogged-in thing and is letting anyone view tweets even non-logged-in people. In the midst of all this, Twitter also announced that Twitter would in the next 30 days force users to pay for Blue in order to use TweetDec. A new version of TweetDeck would support full composer functionality, spaces, polls, and more, but that you'd still have to pay. And, unfortunately, of course, this coincided with TweetDeck basically becoming unusable for a lot of people. Twitter employees themselves were saying that removing support for legacy APIs is what broke TweetDec, and the company would be moving users to the new version of tweet deck, so all would be fine eventually.

But remember, Elon and Twitter blamed all of this originally on scrapers. In fact, Twitter claimed that any advance notice it gave about rate limiting tweets would have allowed those bad actors to evade detection. They were forced to make these changes without warning anybody, even it appears, other Twitter employees, in order to catch them. So, if this was a big sting operation one assumes that Twitter will be announcing soon the identity of the bad actors that they caught this weekend. Right? So, of course, lots of people noted that Twitter offering no timeline for its temporary reading limits and new CEO Linda Yaccarino seemingly mum about all this, maybe she was on vacation, might this whole situation create a perfect opening for competitors? Well, Blue Sky said it was forced to temporarily pause new signups over the weekend

to resolve performance issues caused by what it said was, quote, record high traffic. And, after much speculation, sometime around the fourth, we got confirmation that Instagram's long-rumored Twitter competitor Threads will, in fact, launch on iOS on July 6th tomorrow, according to a pre-order listing in the App Store for the standalone app. So Zuck noticed what was going on, picked this moment to make his attempt to stick a dagger into Twitter's heart. Instagram has, in fact, briefly launched a basic Threads web UI, offering an early look as to to what to expect of threads before it's launched tomorrow. The service appears to have more than 250,000 users already, quoting the Verge. Meta briefly made threads available on the web before

pulling profiles offline a few hours later. The Verge was able to access Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's first thread, is that what we call them, using the web app and many other brands and creators including Netflix, Gary V, and Instagram. Let's do this. Welcome to Thread, Zucks, thread, said. The web interface is fairly basic for right now, for viewing threads with options to like, comment, repost, and share, all prompting you to download the mobile app for the time being. If you're in an unsupported country like markets in the EU, then you'll only be able to view threads right now. Much like Twitter, you can view an account's main post in one section and the full reply

history in another. The head of Instagram, Adam Osseri, already has nearly 2,500 followers, and Mark Zuckerberg has less than 2,000, so it's safe to say that early threads access has only been been provided to a few thousand testers so far. Fedaverse integration won't be available immediately at the launch of threads, but it's clear Instagram is looking to add this soon. Profiles include an Instagram username and link with a threads.net label that includes the following description. Soon you'll be able to follow and interact with people on other Fediverse platforms like Mastodon. They can also find people on threads using full usernames like at Zuck atthreads.net, end quote.

More social media chaos that I missed. Major third-party Reddit apps Apollo Sync and Bacon Reader have officially shut down as Reddit prepares to enforce its new API rate limits shortly. Quoting the verge, Apollo, an iOS app that became a rallying point for the recent protests against Reddit's imminent API pricing, no longer loads any content from the platform. When I open it up, all I see is a spinning wheel. Developer Christian Selig confirmed to me that Reddit is the one that turned things off, not him. Would have been nice to have been given a time, he says, in an email to the verge. Bacon Reader, another popular app shows an error message for me.

Request failed, client error 429. When I tap the tap to refresh link, I just get the same error message. Sync, an Android app has stopped working too, displaying this message, error loading page for a 1. We've additionally found a tweet showing an error and lemmy comments about lack of functionality in a fourth app. Reddit is fun or RIF, but at the same time, we published this article 1, Verge Staffer could still see content on the app when not logged in.

Developer Andrew Shue told me that there's a reason for that. My colleague wasn't able to log into his account, though. When reached for comment, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt pointed to the company's fact sheet about its API changes, which was just updated on Friday, as well as a Friday evening post from a Reddit admin, confirming that the new API rate limits would be enforced shortly. According to the fact sheet, the rate limits were technically supposed to go into effect on July 1st. I'm not sure what time zone Reddit was measuring. that by, but if we're basing it on U.S. time zones, that means that Reddit decided to enforce the limits a few hours ahead of when it said it would. This week, I asked Selig if he planned to still use Reddit

after Apollo shuts down. Honestly, not sure, he said, I'm certainly using it a lot less, end quote. And the moderators of R-slash-I-A-M-A have announced they will no longer coordinate celebrity ask me anything since, according to them, Reddit, quote, has all the funds they need to hire people for tasks done by volunteers. Quoting the Verge, Reddits' AMAs featuring notable people have become an iconic aspect of the platform, giving regular users the chance to ask questions of people they may otherwise never have a chance to speak with. Bill Gates has done 11 of them. The AMAs are usually a fascinating mix of interesting perspective and personal anecdotes, even if the person being featured is usually doing some sort of self-promotion. And sometimes the entertainment is reading how the AMAs go south.

R-S-I-A-M-A has more than 22 million subscribers, so the subreddit offers a potentially big audience for anyone thinking about promoting what they're working on or just looking to chat with the Reddit Hive Mind. But now that the community's moderators will no longer be actively working with notable people and their teams, it will be that much more difficult to trust that the person doing an AMA is the real deal. The moderators, who are unpaid volunteers, will stop doing the following activities effective immediately, according to their post, quote, active solicitation of celebrities or high-profile figures to do AMAs, email and mod-mail coordination with celebrities and high-profile figures and their PR teams to facilitate, educate, and operate AMAs.

We will still be available to answer questions about posting, though response times may vary. Running and maintaining a website and scheduling of AMAs with pre-verification and proof, as well as social media promotion, maintaining a current up-to-date sidebar calendar of scheduled AMAs with scheduled reminders for users, sister subredits with categorized cross-posts for easy following moderator confidential verification for AMAs running various spots, including automatic flaring of live posts, end quote. Moving forward, we'll be allowing most AMA topics, leaving proof and requests for verification up to the community, and limiting ourselves to removing rule-breaking material alone, the moderator added. This doesn't mean we're allowing fake AMAs

explicitly, but it does mean you'll need to pay more attention, end quote. In a DM with the verge, the community's lead moderator said that the key change will be that the team is retiring its IT infrastructure and bots that they've built, including an entire website for things like scheduling AMAs and submitting verification info that is now offline. That appears to be true. A link to a step-by-step guide for doing an AMA doesn't load for me, and neither does a different link on the same domain that I received from an auto-reply when I tried to email the moderators. The team took the website down, quote, primarily because none of the people on our team with the technical qualifications to run it had any interest in doing so

anymore, according to the mod. The mod says they let Reddit know this was a likely outcome all the way back on June 1st, a day after the Apollo for Reddit developers said he could be on the hook for $20 million per year under the new API pricing, but apparently did not get a response to that message. Our primary concern and reason for taking the site down temporarily is that Reddit's management made critical changes to a very popular website without any apparent care for how those changes might affect their biggest resource. The community and the moderators that helped tend the subredits that constitute the site. Brian Lynch and Courtney Sweringen wrote in the op-ed. Moderators commit their time to the site to foster engaging communities. Ms. Taylor's sudden termination is just the most recent example of management's making changes without thinking through what those changes might mean for the people who use the site on a daily basis, end quote. Many moderators have made similar comments during the latest protests.

In their post, though, the R-Sash-I-A-M-A mods noted that they haven't participated in the recent protests, which were focused on Reddit's new paid API pricing, pushing out some third-party app, and on the company's treatment of moderators who kept their communities private. Quote, this does not imply that we think things are being managed better now, they wrote. Rather, it reflects our belief that such actions will not make any significant difference this time, end quote. They're aware that their change and approach will likely make the community worse, but that's kind of their point. Will this undermine most of what makes I AMA special?

Probably, the moderators wrote, but Reddit's leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks. we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we'd be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so, end quote. Finally, today, given the recent holiday, I couldn't resist going with this. According to the New York Times, drone shows are increasingly replacing traditional fireworks displays. In fact, research says the global drone light show market is projected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2021 to $2.2 billion in 2031. Quote, drone shows are in some ways the newer, hipper brand of fireworks, and they're quieter, safer, and better for the environment. Fireworks providers like Vitali face a tough decision. Invest in the expensive equipment and

regulatory clearance required to get into the drone business or believe that demand for fireworks will remain steady even as a new type of competition skyrockets. Change is coming. Fireworks providers bring in most of their revenue around the 4th of July, and some of the organizers of those events are shifting to drones. Places like Salt Lake City and Boulder, Colorado, plan to use them instead of fireworks for Independence Day celebrations this year, citing the reduced risk of forest fires and pollution. But not everyone is convinced the light shows will suffice as a replacement. Galveston, Texas is reverting to fireworks after using drones in 2022. And Reddit pages about the drawbacks of drone shows bemoan the fact that drones don't evoke the booming sounds that fireworks do. Drones are much more

sophisticated, said Chris Hopkins, who co-ons Celebration fireworks and Star Flight drone shows. They just don't have the same visceral reaction. Pivoting is a big, big investment. Hopkins invested in drones last year, eager to take advantage of the creative liberties they offered. In the past, I could have hinted at the Demogorgon, he told Deal Book referring to a monster in the Netflix show Stranger Things. Now I can have the Demogorgon. It was an expensive gambit. Drones cost more than $1,500 each, and he soon learned that a good show required at least 75. Then there was the hassle of filling out a nearly 200-page application to the Federal Aviation Administration for regulatory clearance and finding people skilled at flying the devices.

Some companies are sticking with fireworks. I know there are some companies that are doing that. I guess our philosophy is we're going to do what we do best. Heather Gobet of Western Display, a fourth generation fireworks company in Oregon told deal book, Gobet, who bought the business from her parents about eight years ago has decided that dealing with the expertise, certifications, and expense of acquiring drones is prohibitive. Instead, she will team up with companies that offer drone shows when customers demand them. Besides, she has other challenges to worry about. The industry is grappling with supply chain snarls, labor shortages, an aging generation of pyrotechnic experts, and costly compliance, end quote.

All right, as you can maybe tell, this show was released quite late because I was driving back from Vermont. Now, I'm not sure what is going to happen for the rest of this week, not just because of vacation, because I'm home now, but because, well, it's been a slow news environment. I'm going to wake up tomorrow, look at the headlines, and see how much news there is. If there isn't much, I'll give it until at least. the afternoon and see what is shaken loose. If enough has happened, we'll release another late show tomorrow. If not enough has happened, I'll give it till Friday morning and release an early show that day. So you'll either get two more shows this week or maybe one more, but it's

entirely dependent upon if there's enough news to tell you about. So we'll see. Talk to you tomorrow-ish.