Jon KnightJul 2, 2023

Over on #Twitter I usually use #Tweetdeck as I look after multiple accounts. After Elon's weekend screw up it is basically useless, but a peek under the hood using browser dev tools reveals that this is because it is getting errors from Twitter's own API. HTTP 404 errors. 😲

It's like they've managed to not just rate limit folk but lose a whole section of their API that their own products use.

Show threadJohn
@greenjimll that’s wild, surely there must be something else going on, this isn’t an urgent fix like he’s painting it, why would they pull the plug thus quickly without some due diligence
Jul 2, 2023 at 11:28pmIceCubesApp
Show threademmatonkinJul 3, 2023
@marcar @greenjimll
Probably plain incompetence, combined with stupid actions taken on the wrong schedule by a "CTO" who has never learned the most basic lessons about working with the Web, and a strong disinclination on the part of everyone else to provide info or correct the silly sod (because why would you chuck yourself into the firing line anyway, it wasn't your $44bn!)
Show threadJon KnightJul 3, 2023
@emmatonkin @marcar I do wonder if the missing bits of the API were just hosted on Google's infrastructure and they've "gone 404" because Elon didn't pay the hosting bills.
Show threademmatonkinJul 3, 2023
@greenjimll @marcar
I don't know. There's a faction that reckons he did pay said bill, which would make this chaos more of a voluntary reaction, perhaps choices made in haste and anger having paid serious $. My idle theory is that Emperor Twit bellowed Why Is It So Expensive Generate Me A List, then demanded that the top n hundred processes be halted and then, essentially because he can, he demands rate-limits according to some number he pulled out of his bum.
Show threademmatonkinJul 3, 2023
@greenjimll @marcar
Either way it's fundamental incompetence. The whole "I b0rked my social network to stop data scraping" think is just horrendously dumb and cringeworthy.
Show threadJon KnightJul 3, 2023
@marcar I do wonder if it was anything to do with Twitter trying to pull back from using Google's scalable cloud infrastructure?