Please set up Twitter→Mastodon crossposting service

[amandasaurus]

I would like to request that an automatic service be enabled for the @openstreetmap twitter account to post to the Mastodon/Fediverse account @openstreetmap@en.osm.town.

I suggest https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/ which I am using successfully for years for my OSM mastodon account @amapanda@en.osm.town. One can set it up to automatically post in any way, (from Mastodon to Twitter, or from Twitter to Mastodon, or both).

I created the @openstreetmap@en.osm.town account a few years ago. I have (today) changed the email address to be @Firefishy's email (grant@osmfoundation.org). I can reset the password at any time (email me amanda@technomancy.org, or IRC am{ap}anda on OFTC. For several years I used a script that posted, but twitter has changed something to stop that working.

The OSMF has a Commitment to Open Communication Channels since Aug. 2020, this is another way to implement that policy. Mastodon provides an RSS feed of posts. If you set this up, people can easily use that to post OSM tweets to other places (which some OSMer think would be quite useful).

Once this is set up, it should run automatically without any further work.

[tomhughes]

Is this is important then do we really want to be running it using some random third party site in Brazil?

Also if you're going to hand over the account to operations we should use a proper role address for it, not Grant's personal email...

[amandasaurus]

On Tue, 10 May 2022 15:05 +02:00, Tom Hughes @.***> wrote:

Is this is important then do we really want to be running it using some random third party site in Brazil?

The software is open source, available here. I would also be happy with Moa.party (source code). I am open to suggestions for other crossposting services.

Also if you're going to hand over the account to operations we should use a proper role address for it, not Grant's personal email...

Tell me another email address to change it to. 🙂

-- Amanda

[amandasaurus]

ping? 🙂

-- Amanda

[Firefishy]

The list of permissions required by https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/ are a little insane.

This application will be able to:

• See Tweets from your timeline (including protected Tweets) as well as your Lists and collections.
• See your Twitter profile information and account settings.
• See accounts you follow, mute, and block.
• Follow and unfollow accounts for you.
• Update your profile and account settings.
• Post and delete Tweets for you, and engage with Tweets posted by others (Like, un-Like, or reply to a Tweet, Retweet, etc.) for you.
• Create, manage, and delete Lists and collections for you.
• Mute, block, and report accounts for you.

[Firefishy]

https://moa.party/ also requires the same set of Twitter oAuth permissions.

[Firefishy]

OK, I have setup https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/ It is on @amandasaurus head if it is hacked or abused!

[amandasaurus]

Thanks. It looks like the devs might be aware of how extreme the permissions are ( https://github.com/renatolond/mastodon-twitter-poster/issues/36 ).

I will wait for a tweet & then check masto that it all worked before celebrating publically.

[amandasaurus]

This is now working successfully. tweet → masto. Thank you. 👍

[Firefishy]

Great. We should review in 6 months.

[amandasaurus]

Has this been disabled? It's not posting anymore? I'm not seeing recent posts https://en.osm.town/web/@openstreetmap

[Firefishy]

Not intentionally.

[Firefishy]

Still fully connected.

OK, I have setup https://crossposter.masto.donte.com.br/ It is on @amandasaurus head if it is hacked or abused!

I guess reliability issues too ;-)

[amandasaurus]

Debugging 3 different systems is ✨fun✨! We don't know what's wrong, so let's turn it off and on again.

Can you please log into the crossposter and disable/remove it, and then set up again? That's the best guess from the maintainers of the crossposter and the mastodon host sysadmin.

[Firefishy]

@amandasaurus @harry-wood https://write.as/renatolond/timeline-for-the-shutdown-of-the-mastodon-twitter-crossposter-instance-at

[amandasaurus]

AFAIK https://moa.party/ is the best (only?) alternative to the soon-to-close other crossposter. Can @harry-wood and/or @Firefishy set that up please. I suggest disabling the old one first, to prevent double posts.

@Firefishy The mastodon account is registered to your email address @.***). Let me know if a password reset or email change is needed.

Alas, I'm not aware of any paid cross-posting service.

On Tue, 03 Jan 2023 15:21 +01:00, Grant @.***> wrote:

@amandasaurus https://github.com/amandasaurus @harry-wood https://github.com/harry-wood https://write.as/renatolond/timeline-for-the-shutdown-of-the-mastodon-twitter-crossposter-instance-at

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/622#issuecomment-1369823855, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAAMC4EUTZHVR7IAX2YWXTWQQYWNANCNFSM5VRQI26A. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***>

-- Amanda

[hwood-vivup]

The crossposter.masto.donte.com.br one has now stopped working. Do these things use the twitter API? Maybe moa.party is about to break too with the news of introducing API charges? Anyway I did swap my own account, and @OSMLondon to use it, and at least it's still working today, so yeah. Let's swap to that now.

It does need somebody with login details for both systems. I don't think I had the openstreetmap mastodon details.

[amandasaurus]

On Tue, 07 Feb 2023 12:54 +01:00, Harry Wood (vivup) @.***> wrote:

Do these things use the twitter API? Maybe moa.party is about to break too with the news of introducing API charges? Anyway I did swap my own account, and @OSMLondon to use it, and at least it's still working today, so yeah. Let's swap to that now.

AFAIK the old crossposter was intentionally shut down. You know what it's like when people start using your free stuff and it takes too much time to maintain. AFAIK it wasn't shut down by Twitter.

I don't know what's going to happen with the Twitter API change.

I think we should change it moa.party.

I wish someone would offer to host something like this as a paid service.

It does need somebody with login details for both systems. I don't think I had the openstreetmap mastodon details.

The @@.*** account email is still Grant's email. I can change it to someone else, but right now Grant can log in and change it.

-- Amanda

[amandasaurus]

Hi. Any update on setting up the crossposter?

[amandasaurus]

I think I can interpret this as a “No”. 🙂 I've reset the password for the account, and I'll try to stay on top of manually cross posting. I still think this should be set up automatically. One can leave a comment here, or email me and we can sort it out. 🙂

Happy Social Mediaing

[Firefishy]

I was waiting to see if twitter was going to make the API $$$ as they were threatening... I remain super not comfortable with giving effective full credentials to an known 3rd party. Make a media plan, and target each platform ;-)

[harry-wood]

Just to complete the record here, moa.party also got shut down. They were actually warning of a shut-down in early February but it took a while to happen. I used it for my personal tweets, and it lasted a few more months, ceasing properly on 7th May. So I guess it's good that we didn't needlessly share access tokens with them.

I suppose it took a while for twitter to actually enforce API charging. Now I can't see anyone offering cross-posting, I suppose because it's too expensive to do :-(

[mnalis]

Has there been some changes about this? I don't know details (I've heard talk about number of articles being limited), but it seems that some API might still supposed to be working without paying, at least for some amount of articles?

E.g. I use gratis tier of https://dlvr.it that reads data from RSS https://biciklijade.com/atom.xml and it posts them to https://twitter.com/biciklijade, and it seems to work fine (it worked 2 days ago for me). It also allows posting to Mastodon (although the free tier is quite limited, so only 2 social networks are allowed, among other things).

I think it also allows using twitter directly as a source (instead of RSS). Would something like this help?

[amandasaurus]

Update: Twitter.com has blocked those website for ages. The CWG no longer uses this, nor needs this sort of functionality.

[mnalis]

(ref: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/update-on-how-to-request-social-media-posts-or-other-cwg-support/111482/4 and below for details)