Tweetbot seems to be down again. Was a magical hour while it lasted.
For what it worth, I have been using this one as well and it has continued to work fine.
Tapbots swapped out the API keys Tweetbot was using to see if they were specifically targeted only to be blocked again. I’ll happily give them money for Ivory for Mastadon when it is released.
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I’m sure they knew they were poking the bear on that one, but at the very least it confirms that all of this was intentional and that Twitter is just stonewalling these developers (and their users), which is just such a crappy move all around.
As far as Mastadon is concerned, it still has a very long way to go to be viable for someone like me, who uses Twitter as a news catch all for sports, current affairs and local info. For that Twitter is ubiquitous. By my eye Mastadon is currently just a spot for developer types and people with a political ax to grind against Elon Musk and what they perceive he stands for. It just doesn’t work in its current form for me. Maybe one day, but until then I’m just having to figure out how to make Twitter work somewhat close to how well it did for me with Tweetbot given what’s available and how bad the native app currently finds itself.
Somebody is maintaining a list of which clients (don’t) work:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1O27Co27g2fWRon7gK79R8e4th6Xtort3bm289_2jhjQ/htmlview
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Thanks for the tip on that.
Even during lockdowns etc in 2020, when all our socialising was done online, only 25% of Brits, for example, used Twitter. It’s never been the majority of the “general public”. (Stats are similar for the U.S., with 20% of Americans using it.) I don’t know anyone in my real life who used Twitter, and I’ve always been a weird “online person” compared to them.
(This was was always part of the flaw of “the world’s town hall” brand Twitter tried to carry. As an app it’s always attracted certain types of online person, and it never represented the views of all of society, because the majority of society wasn’t on there and most the time had no idea what was being talked about there unless it made national news.)
Anyway to circle back to your actual question about who is using Mastodon, it will depend on your server. The largest UK server, for example, is mostly regular folk. As others have pointed out (including me I think) it’s mostly like the early days of Twitter. Mostly chatter about hobbies, food, life (and for the UK server it’s Britain so tea, the weather and what stupid thing happened on tv last night). You can join a server that has a specific flavour/theme if that’s more your jam. Lots of my online friends are on a Star Trek instance, for example, and I maintain a separate account on a science instance where I talk about science stuff with other science nerds.
Mastodon should be nothing like Twitter unless there a problem with the moderation of a server. Most servers have rules (no hate, etc.), and servers that have problems are usually cut off from other servers (“defederated”). There are for example known far right servers, but they’re generally not accessible by accident and aren’t connected to the main Mastodon network (I.e. the average user is in no danger of coming across them).
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Agree - I’ve been hearing so much hate about Twitter and how it’s a cesspool but I just don’t see it. Maybe because I primarily follow tech people and sports reporters? Sure, lots of dumb opinions and comments get tweeted from those two groups (especially the latter) but I’d hardly call it a cesspool or anything close.
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It’s official 
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I find it perplexing that some clients work while others don’t. Does anyone have pointers to an explanation?
Well it’s not gonna matter about why some clients work or don’t work anymore. Twitter has killed all third party Twitter apps. 
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The end result remains. With every stunt they pull, it becomes increasingly evident that Twitter as a platform can never be trusted again. The implosion is imminent, please stand back to avoid falling debris.
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Twitter did not remove the third party API itself (which would affect everyone at once), but “only” disabled the API access keys (required to use the API) of specific (probably “popular”) Apps.
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And now it’s officially official:
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I found that too, vastly different from Facebook. I did have some in my field who used to tweet a lot there though and I miss them. I left four years ago and left Facebook at the same time. I am pretty wary of social media all round. I consider Facebook a danger to society frankly. I won’t argue that here of course. I am trying Mastadon, just to see, I will eventually report back here I am sure!
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Nope, don’t care. I used Twitterific for years, but I can still read the people who I’m interested in reading on the Twitter app or twitter.com. I have not seen any increase in the “cesspool” descriptor that others have used. I like the fact that more viewpoints are allowed on Twitter now whereas before they were censored, as we all have learned from the recent news reporting of what the old Twitter establishment did. I checked out Mastodon for a bit but found that it was mostly univocal (left-leaning) and echo-chambery, just like Truth Social and Parler are univocal (right-leaning). I’ll take “all-viewpoints allowed” Twitter any day, and I can hear from AOC and Ted Cruz all in one place.
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Can confirm that Spring finally stopped working, you are totally right, when the access token expires --and it expires differently for each user-- the app cannot refresh it any more.
I don’t know what would frighten me more: that Twitter surprisingly decided to revoke access to all 3rd party clients or that it dit it selectively.
IMHO, the cesspool complaint against Twitter is not about political views, it’s about the way people uphold their positions. The level of aggression is sometimes intoxicating and it’s not that unusual that I have rage-closed Twitter. It’s very difficult to stay moderate, I believe that the way Twitter is designed (character limit, threading, suggested tweets…) pushes people to polarization.
Also, I agree that Mastodon is probably left biased but, if the Mastodon technical solution is viable, it’s a matter of time that new more right leaning Mastodon servers will pop up. And then the battle will not be users spamming or blocking between themselves, the echo chambers wars will escalate to entire federated servers. We’ll see.
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I don’t use Twitter very much other than to harangue the MP for my constituency and his fellow MPs in the same party or to follow a specific satiritcal TV show. If Twitter flew away tomorrow I would not care. Much of its content is vapid.
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I love the information, analysis and jokes which I get via my Twitter lists. I’m feeling bereft now that Spring is disabled.
I just tried the Twitter app but it doesn’t work the way I want. Ie.
- No chronological feeds
- Threads not threaded properly (Ie missing tweets or threading in the wrong direction)
- Minimal filters and UI controls over what appears in the timeline.
I’m not sure what to do next as Twitter app experience is so unpleasant and doesn’t show me the content I want.
The irony is that I would be willing to pay Twitter to get access to Twitter via a third party client. Eg. If they had a paid tier or made third party app access exclusive to Twitter Blue, then I would subscribe to Twitter Blue in a heartbeat - solely for the third party app access.
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Spring has introduced a new feature as part of the last release - you can register a dev app and spring will announce as that.
Just working on some oauth stuff to try it out.