Twitter changes caused failure of service

[rsalsbery]

Twitter has made some more changes to reduce the number of Bots connecting to them. Because of this, you cannot view Twitter without logging in first essentially making the Embed feature no longer function on DAKboard. We are making this case to see if we can get the Embed feature to continue to work with Twitter.

[TheLastLich]

Hope to have this back! Twitter was a major part of our Dakboard

[cocarrig]

Unfortunately things are not looking good so far to restore this. With anonymous view removed our embedding is no longer functioning. We did think we may have a path forward by recommending the display device have an active session with Twitter, but embedding still will not display the content in another tab unfortunately.

We may need to remove the feature entirely for some time, until this changes or if the pricing for the twitter API is reduced to a reasonable cost to consider.

[TheLastLich]

You might know this but all of Twitter is affected (their developer network):
https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-for-websites/timelines/overview
You can see it here.

The most active thread for Twitter Community also covers this problem:
https://twittercommunity.com/t/again-list-widget-says-nothing-to-see-here-yet-if-logged-out/198782/108

It appears that this is yet another problem caused by the great Elmo.
I would guess they don't want to or can't afford the AWS bill.
Hard to tell if this is temporary or permanent (I'm going to guess this is permanent)

Any work around will always be appreciated. Hope it comes back! Thanks to everyone involved.

[cocarrig]

Hi Team,

Unfortunately we did need to remove the block for Twitter all together for now. We will be closing this case for now.

We will keep our ear to the ground if another integration opportunity presets itself, and do as much as we can to get this back into DAKboard.

[rsalsbery]

As of this morning, it appears that Twitter has allowed the use of Embedding again but only from browsers with an open Twitter session. This means that you need to have a separate page open with your authenticated account active, or an active session cookie running in the same browser as the Embedded Twitter block.

This solution still will not work with our systems as we do not have a way to support your active accounts and do not recommend using this method as it can expose your account through your Display. We have reopened this case for now as we look into possible ways around this.

[TheLastLich]

do not recommend using this method as it can expose your account through your Display

lets say this is a home office that does not have this problem. What do you recommend I do to get it back?

active session cookie

Do I log in on the Rasperry Pi that it is hosted on?

Apologies for these questions but wanted to get back to functionality asap. Thank you.

[rsalsbery]

The following steps are not recommended as they can lead to instability when using a DAKboard OS device. If the DAKboard OS becomes unstable, the only way at this time to correct the issue will be to reimage the SD card. These steps also require you to log into your Twitter account permanently on whatever Display device you are using. The workarounds are below:

DAKboard OS device (CPUs, Mirror, and Wall Displays):

You will need a USB mouse and keyboard. Connect the USB mouse and keyboard to your DAKboard OS device and perform the following steps:

• Press ctrl+f4 to close the Chromium browser
• Click on the Pi icon (Raspberry or Orange) then find and open the Terminal
• Type sudo nano /home/pi/startup/chromium.sh to edit the chromium shell script
• Remove the "--incognito /" line from under each section in the script (there should be 3 in total to be removed)
• Press ctrl+x then the Y to save the file then ENTER
• Then from the terminal cursor type sudo reboot or unplug and replug the device to reboot your system

Once your device has rebooted perform the following steps:

• Press ctrl+F4 to close the Chromium Browser
• Click on the Pi icon (Raspberry or Orange) and access the Chromium browser
• Navigate to Twitter.com
• Log into your Twitter account
• Then reboot your DAKboard OS device.

As long as you have a Twitter Block already on your Screen it will start working.

For Non-DAKboard OS devices

• Make sure you are not using an Incognito Browser
• Open a new tab and navigate to Twitter.com
• Log into your account
• Switch back to the Tab your DAKboard Screen is on

NOTE: These changes will only work as long as Twitter allows embedding when an authenticated account is open in a browser. Doing this will allow Twitter access to your data per Twitter's Terms of Service and DAKboard is in no way responsible for this.

[TheLastLich]

Hey thanks for taking the time to write this up! Was out on vacation and was not paying attention to the boards.

For Non-DAKboard OS devices

Make sure you are not using an Incognito Browser
Open a new tab and navigate to Twitter.com
Log into your account
Switch back to the Tab your DAKboard Screen is on

Does not work at this time on a Rasperry PI Chromium Browser.

I will check in bimonthly here and with a few other sources to see if there was a solution.

Appreciate you taking the time on this annoying issue for all of us who used the feature.

[mdegroot44]

I have modified chromium.sh as directed and tried the steps below as of late September, 2023 and can confirm that this does not work at this time. I am running on a Dakboard OrangePi device.

• Press ctrl+F4 to close the Chromium Browser
• Click on the Pi icon (Raspberry or Orange) and access the Chromium browser
• Navigate to Twitter.com
• Log into your Twitter account
• Then reboot your DAKboard OS device.

As long as you have a Twitter Block already on your Screen it will start working.

[rsalsbery]

Can you supply me with what your chromium.sh file looks like? Did you remove all the entries for Incognito? There should be more than one as they run with various versions and it is possible the wrong one was removed. Check that and see if that is the issue or post your chromium.sh file here and I will see if I can identify the issue.