VincentNov 14, 2022

I see that @[email protected] has made it to Mastodon. I have suspended it from religion.masto.host, and will suspend any other content scraping bots I become aware of.

Thread readers scrape content without the consent of the creator, move it to a website outside of the creator's control, and sometimes monetise it, as discussed here:

https://twitter.com/erynnbrook/status/1099086911463800832

Erynn Brook on Twitter

“Why I don’t like thread compilers: a thread. Please do not compile. I’ve blocked threadreaderapp and it won’t store my threads.”

Twitter
Show threadJuan LuisNov 14, 2022

@amv In case others agree with this take, is there a way a "thread-unrolling" bot would look appropriate to folks? For example if the content was ephemeral and the site ran no ads?

Many people used the bot on the birdsite not because they wanted to exploit creators, but because they found it genuinely useful. I'd love to see discussion of how those useful features can be baked into the #fediverse in a consensual, friendly way.

Show threadJohn ChivallNov 14, 2022
@astrojuanlu @amv I never understood *why* they were useful though? Twitter had bookmarks and proper threading long before the first thread scraper service showed up. Every tweet has a unique URL that can be shared without needing to go to a third party site to find it. What actual benefit did those services provide to anyone?
Show threadJohn ChivallNov 14, 2022
@astrojuanlu @amv (same arguments apply to the Fediverse as well, those services don't appear to add any value here for the same reasons)
Show threadJuan LuisNov 14, 2022
@johnchivall @amv It's basically a "reader view" (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-reader-view-clutter-free-web-pages) for tweets/toots. When reading long threads, the constant paragraph breaks, datetimes, engagement numbers, author photo & biography, repeated over and over again add a huge amount of noise.
Firefox Reader View for clutter-free web pages | Firefox Help

Firefox Reader View removes web page clutter to improve readability. Recent Firefox versions can also read pages out loud.

Show threadJohn ChivallNov 14, 2022
@astrojuanlu @amv ah, fair enough. I'd never considered them as an accessibility tool like that as most people I saw using them used them as bookmarks (and would share a link to the thread reader rather than the original tweet)
Show threadHans Gerwitz
@johnchivall @astrojuanlu @amv I shared this confusion! Probably because I always used Twitter via third-party clients.
Nov 17, 2022 at 7:22amWeb