Public content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X is now inaccessible to non-users

[Dan Robinson]

I found today that I'm unable to view the damage survey posts from several NWS offices since they have been posted on Facebook and not yet on other open locations. Facebook lets you view only the first 1 to 3 posts on a page, then hits you with the "login"screen and blocks you from viewing more. It's essentially a paywall, with the price being the access to your personal data (name, email, phone, browsing) that you grant them by signing up for an account.

Twitter/X is now doing this as well. Social media is now a completely closed-to-the-open-web enterprise. This, coupled with the fact that they are also limiting the reach of external links (aside from mainstream media) and any posts that they deem to be "misinformation", they are now exercising unprecedented control over what you see and how you can use the internet

(See the screenshot below.)

 

[Mike Smith]

Regardless of DOGE, the NWS has made a number of incredibly poor decisions the past month.

 

[Randy Jennings]

Is this isolated to a couple of offices, or was this a system wide change? In general I have found NWS staff dislike Facebook because it keeps views without likes suppressed and doesn't show things posted recently. I have always seen offices post on both X and Facebook at about the sometime.

Side note: See if you can find what you want in: ArcGIS Web Application

 

[Dan Robinson]

Here's a screenshot. It happens on any public Facebook page when you're not logged in:

 

[JamesCaruso]

I found this out yesterday simply trying to view the hours of a local market. Any business or other organization that wants to be accessible to the public is incredibly foolish (and doomed to fail) if they rely on Facebook as their only online presence.

 

[Jamie H]

I wonder how much businesses using these platforms know that views are now being supressed?

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Regardless of DOGE, the NWS has made a number of incredibly poor decisions the past month.

Sounds like Meta's decision, not theirs.

 

[Drew Terril]

Sounds like Meta's decision, not theirs.

That's the way I'm reading it. I honestly thought they'd already done that as it's been difficult for a while to see things via browser without logging in.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Twitter/X and Amazon are now doing this as well. On X, you can see individual posts via direct links, but you cannot see any users' feeds without being logged in. Logged-out users see an algorithmic curation of that person's feed rather than the chronologic list of posts. Amazon will not let you read things like product reviews without being logged in.

This is truly a full capture of the internet by big tech, granted by its users voluntarily.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Twitter/X and Amazon are now doing this as well. On X, you can see individual posts via direct links, but you cannot see any users' feeds without being logged in. Logged-out users see an algorithmic curation of that person's feed rather than the chronologic list of posts. Amazon will not let you read things like product reviews without being logged in.

This is truly a full capture of the internet by big tech, granted by its users voluntarily.

Within the past few weeks, I've noticed that if I open google.com in a private tab or otherwise without being logged in, it now pops up an intrusive "suggestion" to create an account... and this pop-up takes focus out of the search box, cutting you off after you've typed the first 3 or 4 characters of your query. In other words, they're making the experience of using search without logging in as miserable as possible without outright banning it (yet).

There seems to be a coordinated push by big tech to conquer this territory and normalize the requirement that you must sign up and log in to have any interaction with major platforms, even read-only. It fascinates me how rife big tech has become with what appears from the outside to be this kind of coordination amongst ostensible competitors. It's happened with everything from product enshittification like what we're discussing here to forcing their white collar workers back into the office for no reason and other labor issues.

 

[John Farley]

Every time I think Facebook and other similar sites can't get worse, they do. They have pretty much bought the current regime in Washington and know that there will be no consequences to them for anything they do. Based in changes in the number of reactions to certain kinds of posts I have made in the past few months, i also think they are increasingly taking steps to reduce how many people see posts that express opinions they do not like.

 

[Jamie H]

I manage many social media accounts for work and one thing I notice is on X that the suggested posts and trending topics are almost always controversial or blood pressure raising. Anger gets clicks, clicks get revenue, repeat.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Even Bluesky is another cesspool of ragebait if you default to their algorithmic feed (or just go to their home page without being logged in). Right now you can view full Bluesky user feeds without being logged in, but from what I've seen in recent weeks, user activity has been waning significantly. I don't check it that often any more as there are only about a dozen posts daily from people I follow, though I don't see any of the garbage non-weather content as my muted word list is pretty well-fortified there. It appears that platform is not going to take off in any meaningful way.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Social media is now a completely closed-to-the-open-web enterprise. This, coupled with the fact that they are also limiting the reach of external links (aside from mainstream media) and any posts that they deem to be "misinformation", they are now exercising unprecedented control over what you see, whether or not you can be heard and how you can use the internet. The ingesting of audiovisual content into AI systems (that their user agreements require) also accelerates the subsuming of photographers' work into the system that fuels big tech's corporate profits, more than it already does on a massive scale via the advertising revenue generation alone.