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Comments on Proposal: remove Twitter from profiles

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Proposal: remove Twitter from profiles

+10
−3

Seeing the option to list a Twitter profile on one's profile leaves a bad taste in my mouth given recent developments on that site.

I don't think it deserves to be promoted above other social media websites. Why have an input box for your Twitter handle, but not your Truth Social handle? (I'm being facetious to make the point).

Discord kinda makes sense, since the chat channels are on there, but I think Twitter has lost any special status it may have once had.

Proposal:

  • Kill the input box.
  • Add all previously input Twitter profile info to the ends of people's profiles (to avoid the problem of people not being able to modify/remove them once the input box is gone...).

e.g.

Twitter: [@previouslyInputProfileName](https://twitter.com/previouslyInputProfileName)
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1 comment thread

We originally envisioned free-form links, so you could specify the platform and the username/link/wha... (4 comments)
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+10
−1

I definitively agree with the premise of the suggestion, but instead of getting rid of all/most additional input fields and instead of making it a per-instance/per-community thing (which both are generally good ideas), I'd go a step further and suggest to make it a per-user thing.

Mastodon has this feature, where every user gets four pairs of key-value-pairs which they can fill with arbitrary values. If it is a link—great, Mastodon will render it as such[1].

Mastodon profile metadata editor with the four pairs of entries (label/content) as described above

They are then displayed at the bottom of your profile (for my profile the metadata are the wwww.luap42.de, the verified website and the alignment)

Mastodon profile metadata view with some example metadata and data types

I think this might be a good solution, because it gives maximum flexibility and customization. Maybe users don't want to post links to social media but instead want a link to their favorite music video, maybe they want to signify their pronouns, maybe they want to make a silly joke. Maybe they want to do all of that, because that would, too, be possible.

I opine that this is the best solution for ease of implementation (it's literally just eight text fields in the database) for ease of use (it's literally just eight input fields) and for powerfullness of features (it's literally eight input fields you can write arbitrary stuff into). I don't really see any disadvantage, if there are inappropriate contents they can be moderated away as any other profile contents.


  1. Also Mastodon has this really nice feature where you can "verify" the link if there is a matching <a rel="me" href="{profile url}"> element on the page, but this shouldn't be a top priority. ↩︎

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1 comment thread

Why do we need any of this? (3 comments)
Why do we need any of this?
Olin Lathrop‭ wrote over 1 year ago

Why do we need any of this? Users can already put whatever links they want, presented in whatever way they want, in their profile. And, there is no maximum limit or any additional fields to fill in. I don't see why Codidact should have special facilities to point to a few pre-chosen selected places on the internet.

luap42‭ wrote over 1 year ago

I don't get what you mean with pre-chosen, since if you mean specific places (such as "Discord" or "Twitter") that wouldn't be the case [anymore] with my suggestion.

I think some explicit metadata are better because

  1. they are highlighted in contrast to continuous text
  2. they are at an expectable place (on every profile)
  3. they suggest to users the idea of putting these information onto their profile
  4. a metadata box could be put "out of the way" or even be made hidden via userstyles if you don't want to see it, compared to text where this is not possible
Quasímodo‭ wrote over 1 year ago

I'm not experienced with the website magic (apart from HTML and CSS), but I think it may be simple at first sight only, as there will be the question of positioning, prominence and highlighting (as in the screenshot) etc. which I guess different users will have different opinions about.

In that case the existing profile text seems both simpler and by no means inferior.