Can a non-user currently read twitter threads?

September 28, 2023 10:59 AM

If I search for a person's Twitter account in a browser and click on their link, I get old random tweets, not current ones. Is it possible right now for a non-account holder to read a person's current public tweets? How about tweets and responses? If not, is there a site that republishes people's tweet threads?
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: No, you can't. I am usually either shut out of Twitter entirely or I get old tweets (I refuse to get an account).

I know there was this thing called Nitter for awhile I used to read tweets when I had to, but that's been in and out of working for quite some time now and I don't know if it even works any more.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:17 AM on September 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: nitter.net is currently working, for the time being.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:25 AM on September 28, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Ugh, OK thanks for confirming that.
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 11:26 AM on September 28, 2023

Best answer: This has been the bane of my existence for three months now. On June 30th, Twitter's Chief Trolling Officer shut off most public access to their account feeds, blaming content scrapers / harvesters or something (when we all know it's actually his own fault for firing / driving away his best staff). So now I'm an expert in getting around his stupid decision.

Nitter.net has been my first goto. Firefox has an extension that will automatically forward Twitter links to nitter. Nitter.net frequently gets overloaded (or "rate limited") in which case you follow the onscreen prompts to try another relay, like nitter.1d4.us .

However, Nitter requires HLS-something to view video clips, which doesn't work for me, and that's when I turn to twstalker.com . It works the same. Creepy name, don't know the history of it.

In both cases, you literally take the Twitter URL and replace "twitter.com" with "nitter.net" or "twstalker.com".

So tired of this disruption (and the constant URL editing). Can't wait for him to just get fed up and unload the company; he can go back and focus on what he's actually good at, and the Twitter team can begin unwinding all this self-inflicted damage.
posted by intermod at 11:44 AM on September 28, 2023 [8 favorites]

This is so annoying that, from the Twitter app, you can't even open some tweets without logging in to a browser. Super annoying!
posted by bluedaisy at 12:22 PM on September 28, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have an account for work that I never bothered to log out of.Even logged in, most of the time it seems like people's tweets are presented in random order.
posted by amandabee at 11:00 AM on September 29, 2023