Grmp

[marycrawford]

Twitter is now choosing to let me see about five tweets from any account before I get a "log in to see the rest" popup. I can kill the popup, but the entire page freezes so I can't scroll, anyway.

You may ask "why do you care, if you don't want to be on Twitter" but the thing is, all through the pandemic I have kept a single Twitter tab open to wenella's feed of wonderful Zhu Yilong pics and gifs and it has been a real mood-booster. Ditto for the links to fanart and Guardian-related content on twitter that I can click on, thanks to @clevermanka and @plingo_kat posting them here.

So I want to be a ghost on twitter, and clearly they don't want to let me waft around anymore. Anyone got any way around this? (I know, I could open an account and that would solve it, but that is exactly what I want to avoid.)

Related news, I can't believe that Zhu Yilong made a Lenovo ad in 2018 that looks like it was meant to snare Guardian fans, with Z1L saying "I promised you that we will meet again" against a suspiciously glowy, spacy background... (If they hired Bai Yu to make the counterpart ad, fandom would have told me, right?)

Edit: suggested workarounds in comments, thanks all! I haven't tried out Incognito mode in Chrome yet (since I use Firefox and a bunch of ad blockers, add-ons, etc) but what does seem to work is deleting all the twitter-specific cookies from my browser. Which I will probably have to do every day, then.

Edit II, brother of Edit: nitter.net is an open source front end for twitter - very low key, type in the account name you want to look at and go. Thanks to @trobadora for linking me to this!

The developer has also created browser extensions - there's the Nitter one, but there's also a more nuclear option that "redirects Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google Maps, Reddit, Medium, Google & Google Translate requests to privacy friendly alternative frontends for those sites". That is the kind of thing I am here for.

Comments

[cyberbrain]

I've got a twitter account, so I'm not affected but my dear friend who doesn't is constantly annoyed by that new "feature." She hasn't found a workaround yet, sadly.

:o I haven't seen that ad! Do you have a link to it? (I only remember the "boxer lenovo ad" :D)

[yantantether]

I just tried being logged out in an incognito Chrome window and it worked OK - worth a try?

[trobadora]

It's so frustrating about twitter! Until recently just clearing cookies worked, but it no longer does. I found nitter.net as an alternative - it lets you access twitter content without the twitter interface. Because we need our Zhu Yilong content!

ETA: Also, I thought the same about that Lenovo ad! We need a Bai Yu counterpart!

[ivyfic]

I'm having the same problem with Twitter. I don't have an account and am not going to get one, but I keep a tab open for a fan NYT Vertex account that posts the solutions so I can see days I missed.

[satsuma]

I've been having the same issue & no solutions yet that I'm aware of :/

[klia]

I'm surprised clearing cookies did the trick. I have the same issue with IG and had no luck clearing website/private data from multiple browsers -- kind of seemed like IG was reading device fingerprint and/or ISP-assigned IP address, even in "private" mode.

I'm really glad you can still enjoy Wenella's feed, though!

[elenothar]

Me, stalking wenella's twitter page every couple of days? More likely than you'd think. It's always a mood boost. (I have a ghost twitter account that I literally just use to read things, but I totally understand the urge not to even concede that much because urk.)

[nnozomi]

I have kept a single Twitter tab open to wenella's feed of wonderful Zhu Yilong pics and gifs and it has been a real mood-booster.
same same, and thank you for this post which put me onto the nitter.net thing (I have absolutely no understanding of what this is but as long as it works and isn't evil I don't care). Thank goodness for the blessèd Wenella.

[ratbones]

Thank you so much for this post, I have just met Nitter and I am already in love with it. (I'm the person cyberbrain mentioned, lol. I refuse to get an account no matter how often I look at stuff on twitter. Solidarity.)

[tinny]

OOoooooh, thank you!

I have observed the same problem, and heee looks like we're the same about twitter. The only thing I do is look at single posts other people link me to (so no scrolling required thus no problem) AND look at wenella's twitter.

So far, I just resorted to using the one old twitter account I have, but nitter sounds like a much better alternative!