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simondotau 6 hours ago [-]
If you don’t like X, I don’t understand why anyone would use a service like XCancel, which effectively helps maintain the cultural relevance of X.
On a practical level, I’m also wondering what consistent legal standard people want when it comes to things like terms of service and individuals' copyright. It's unworkable to maintain one rule for the awesome people we might like and and another rule for the horrible despots we might not like.
sureglymop 5 hours ago [-]
It's because X is chosen (wrongfully) as the main communications channel of all kinds of important public institutions and people (police departments, city administrations, politicians, etc.).
Of course that's a real issue since the whole thing is login gated and inaccessible. But unfortunately it is the reality. So I think something like XCancel is needed.
simondotau 5 hours ago [-]
Maybe if people didn't make services like XCancel, the impracticality of X would be more salient.
mitxela 5 hours ago [-]
It isn't. We know this because there was a time before xcancel and people just accepted they needed an account.
It can happen - nobody would post an Instagram link to HN. But for X it did not happen.
Notice the EU's Digital Markets Act is a liability shield for Nitter instances hosted in the EU.
nativeit 2 hours ago [-]
That assumes the people who need XCancel most are aware of its existence, but from what I can tell only folks like us are.
roryirvine 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
LightBug1 1 hours ago [-]
Well, I stopped using Shitter first. Then I stopped using xCancel as a conduit for Shitter. Never happier.
IF those public institutions want to to connect with all their constituents, then move to a better platform. Not the other way around.
sunaurus 5 hours ago [-]
For me, it's just the easiest fix whenever somebody shares a tweet with me, and it fails to load, or shows me some forced login popup. I just click between x and .com in my URL bar, write "cancel", and it suddenly just works.
mitxela 5 hours ago [-]
Get the Libredirect extension and this will happen automatically (to a server that is actually working).
LightBug1 5 hours ago [-]
I used to be you. Now I just dismiss the tweet.
Shitter is now irrelevant for me. If you want my engagement or attention or response or to keep up with you, move to a better platform.
I used to care enough to keep up with Shitter on xcancel. Now it's just faded into irrelevance. YMMV, particularly over time
Shitter isn't the gospel of human experience and creativity and expression. It's just ... Shitter.
Kotlopou 5 hours ago [-]
It's a standard coordination problem: I don't like X, but some discussion happens there (e.g. plenty of competent mathematicians responding to the Navier-Stokes situation) and I cannot force people to move elsewhere.
simondotau 5 hours ago [-]
I think Wikipedia has become a cancerous blight on world politics, and I would love to see Wikipedia die so that a Mastodon-like distributed alternative could rise from the ashes.
But I still use Wikipedia.
smaudet 5 hours ago [-]
And yet, wikipedia is not owned by an evil (incompetent?) oligarch who made his mission to make the platform as shitty as possible...
That's what Grok as for.
Apples and Oranges...
simondotau 5 hours ago [-]
> And yet, wikipedia is not owned by...
That is a red herring. A corporation can act ethically. A charity can act disgracefully.
A government can protect people. A neighbourhood association can bully them.
A billionare can be philanthropic. A group of children can terrorise a community.
mitxela 5 hours ago [-]
Suppose you're on HN and someone posts a link to X. Is the correct reaction
1. Pretend it isn't there.
2. Flag it and pretend it isn't there.
3. Flag it and read the content somewhere else in case it's relevant.
madeofpalk 5 hours ago [-]
You can knowledge it's there, and just not read it. There's lots of links on the internet that I don't click.
I'm sure there are people who genuinely need to receive information that's only on that site, but personally I'm enjoying the feeling of the joy of missing out.
mitxela 5 hours ago [-]
What if the post is like "we discovered AGI (for real this time, not clickbait)" - will you pretend AGI wasn't discovered?
addandsubtract 5 hours ago [-]
That would A) still be clickbait, and B) be posted on a corporate blog, not just X.
fWEFVEEGLKJH 5 hours ago [-]
> (for real this time, not clickbait)
That sounds likes something a clickbait author would write.
simondotau 5 hours ago [-]
4. Click the link
5. Accept that you won't click on the link
vrganj 5 hours ago [-]
Congratulations, Elon Musk has just forced you to either feed his propaganda machine or successfully locked you out of the conversation.
frumplestlatz 4 hours ago [-]
Given its extremely liberal content moderation policy, how is X a propaganda machine?
> right-wing content was shown most prominently, regardless of users' political leaning.
> Left-wing users saw almost the same amount of left-wing and right-wing content, even though they only followed left-wing accounts. But only 14% of the political content sent to our right-leaning users was left-wing.
> The neutral users saw twice as much right-wing content as left-wing content. And barely any of the political content shown to our X users was non-partisan.
> Over half of the political content shown to our new X users came from accounts categorised as extreme. Of the content from extreme authors, 72% of posts came from right-leaning accounts.
simondotau 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, and? I can't bend reality to make it otherwise.
vrganj 5 hours ago [-]
XCancel can.
simondotau 5 hours ago [-]
"XCancel Taken Down Again" is the title of this thread.
vrganj 4 hours ago [-]
Indeed. But they've been doing good work and fighting is better than just giving in to apathy and losing by default.
amelius 5 hours ago [-]
I wish HN would simply ban links to X.
mitxela 5 hours ago [-]
HN is a venture capital fund. That will happen if and only if it becomes profitable to do so.
simondotau 5 hours ago [-]
If you want to make the rules, start your own club.
5 hours ago [-]
dandellion 5 hours ago [-]
I don't have an X account, and I only use xcancel when someone sends me a link. The reason it's impossible to completely avoid both of them, at least in my corner of the world is that a lot of public organisms seem to think publishing information online exclusively on Twitter is okay, and if you complain they tend to ignore you (I admit I haven't tried complaining about it on Twitter, which seems to be the only thing that works these days).
slowmovintarget 2 hours ago [-]
Not every org is going to run their own site. I have a similar frustration with companies that post on Facebook or Instagram. I deleted my Facebook account years ago.
If they post on Reddit, it gets lost in the sea.
LightBug1 5 hours ago [-]
I've stopped using xcancel even for that. If anything is important enough, it will reach me via other channels. Particularly from any contact who give af ... if they don't it's not important.
pibaker 5 hours ago [-]
I want to read stuff from twitter not because I like the twitter culture but because sometimes something happens and the only place you can learn about it is twitter. Like it or not Twitter is still the most relevant platform for tech related information.
smaudet 5 hours ago [-]
Like it or not network effects can be overcome, but not with this sort of prisoner's dilemma thinking.
Everyone using something was never a (good) reason to use it.
Leonard_of_Q 5 hours ago [-]
I never liked Twitter and I don't like X as a medium but they were and still are used by others as a communication channel. To partake of what is communicated without having to sign up and/or subject myself to the barrage of nonsense spewed through X I use a self-hosted Nitter instance. This way I get to follow those X links without needing a (real, active) account. For passive X users Nitter offers a far better - lighter, faster - experience than X itself. This makes Nitter (which is what Xcancel - a misnomer since it doesn't cancel X - is based on) especially useful for those who only use X because others used it to distribute information.
johannes1234321 5 hours ago [-]
There are places like government agencies, public transit org aisations, and similar organisations, which still use it as adhoc quick notification channel. If I want to see if a train route ist interrupted it's the best source. However using it once in a while (not via app or such) has long loading times and nagging screens for sign in, cookie compliance and so on, which makes the whole thing an annoyance ...
Of course the right thing is to lobby those organizations to switch. But that won't help with the immediate situation.
somedude895 5 hours ago [-]
Exactly. If you boycott X, shouldn't you also boycott the people who are on X? But this kind of slacktivism has always been more virtue signaling than anything.
azan_ 5 hours ago [-]
I don’t want to crate account there because I’ll get into endless useless discussions. And you can’t use this website without an account.
pickleRick243 5 hours ago [-]
why is that? Why can't you just use it in read only fashion?
fabian2k 5 hours ago [-]
No idea how it looks right now, but at some point Twitter started to block reading replies without an account. And sometimes it blocked even more, so you could not follow links to read.
frogulis 5 hours ago [-]
I think this changed recently, but at least prior to that, when not logged in, you only saw the initial post and none of the replies.
5 hours ago [-]
MPSimmons 5 hours ago [-]
It seems intellectually dishonest to blanket-label any principled stance that you disagree with as "virtue signaling".
pickleRick243 5 hours ago [-]
I think the claim is that the principled stance would be to ignore all X content.
ceejayoz 5 hours ago [-]
Which is just the "yet you participate in society" meme again.
cudder 5 hours ago [-]
Not really, unfortunately. If it were just a bunch of bros laughing at fascist memes amongst themselves I would happily boycott everything, but unfortunately a lot of "public" service announcements and discourse also happens on 卐itter. Things like utility companies' and emergency services announcements, city council decisions, public transport notices, official statements by MEPs/local politicians/companies, etc. Not to mention a certain demented orange geriatric who happens to control nukes and posts his daily threats and declarations of war there.
These are all things I want to stay informed on, and given the choice would rather read elsewhere. Often I get the same information from secondary sources and manage to avoid that, but even then on controversial things I prefer to check the source directly.
vrganj 5 hours ago [-]
Why should we let one far right billionaire control how we interact with a large portion of the online space? Why shouldn't we try to exfiltrate the data from him instead of just letting him hoard it?
And regarding copyright, the same company owns an LLM that was no doubt trained through mass copyright infringement. Maybe the legal double standard is on their end?
simondotau 5 hours ago [-]
> Why should we let one far right billionaire control how we interact
We don't. We let six or seven far right billionares do that.
> And regarding copyright
Copyright of tweets are owned by original authors. Unless you have permission, the copyright infringement which occurs is against the individual, not X.
ocd 5 hours ago [-]
I don't see how any government or business (especially the former) can justify using X at this point when it doesn't serve the public interest or the interest of customers who deserve at least some choice. It's as unreasonable for them as using Instagram or a dating app for something intended for broad reach and accessibility.
I don't particularly like Bluesky, but it's publicly readable and has RSS. Any real solution would be protocol or standard instead of yet another closed service, though. For now, I see Nitter and XCancel as a temporary fix until people abandon it for whatever practical, economic, or political reason(s) they may have.
mitxela 5 hours ago [-]
The reason is simple: they were using Twitter when it was publicly readable and had RSS, and they have no selfish reason to stop. (Selfless reasons don't count, everybody is selfish)
trekz 5 hours ago [-]
> I don't see how any government or business (especially the former) can justify using X at this point
Open RSS wrote about exactly this a couple weeks ago [1]. Bluesky being publicly readable with RSS is an improvement. But government offices should be publishing on their own RSS feeds, and the platforms should be secondary, not the other way around. The amount of policy that gets announced on social media without even a mention on their own website is bizarre. Why isn't posting their content off platform legally required at this point?
You go where your people are. I think it’s very reasonable to post updates on Facebook and X.
Freedumbs 5 hours ago [-]
I extend this to people. I understand old habits and what not, but I'm surprised at the culture on social media. Twitter is literally orthodox white supremacy or however they brand it. Quite odd, but not considering current politics. We've decided to devolve.
thrance 4 hours ago [-]
> I don't see how any government or business (especially the former) can justify using X
It makes me so mad. The Paris public transportation company (RATP) owns not one but two whole apps. Yet, whenever there's an incident they immediately reach for X (on which I can't access their posts), while their apps lag behind.
As far as I'm concerned, my government should issue a blanket ban on public actors using social medias for communication.
gaganyaan 6 hours ago [-]
XCancel service is suspended.
Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice. We can't share more details.
You can find the content you were looking for on the original website:
Continue to X
Thank you for your understanding. And the trust you have put into the XCancel project.
cube00 6 hours ago [-]
The fact that so many large companies are still on X is so wrong.
embedding-shape 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, or local governments, or governments in general, seems strange to me too. But then probably they'd use Facebook/Instagram/Whatever instead of Twitter if Twitter wasn't available, and seemingly it's impossible for them to use something that isn't built like a panopticon that also wants to slurp up as much data from their users as possible.
pibaker 5 hours ago [-]
There should be a law mandating government agencies to not limit their electronic communications to private third party platforms.
If they post something on Twitter, or worse, Facebook, they must also provide a copy of the post on their own website. Some kind of online government gazette, if you will.
Why is it “so wrong” to meet your audience where they are?
harrisoned 5 hours ago [-]
The same reason is wrong to require a Google or Apple phone to exercise basic civil duties within government services. You are gating the service, or information, behind a 3rd party ToS, a login, and basically stating that you are not allowed to have it until you hand over personal data to such companies.
frumplestlatz 4 hours ago [-]
The comment I replied to said "large companies", not government, and I don't see the equivalence.
earth-tattoo 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
throwa356262 5 hours ago [-]
Proposal:
Set up a mastodon account that mirrors your (or someone elses) X account.
This way people who want can continue using X, and other people can read & refer to their posts without needing to log into X.
morningsam 5 hours ago [-]
I've been wondering why ~everyone hasn't already been doing this, so my guess is that Twitter's API doesn't allow it.
aucisson_masque 6 hours ago [-]
What was the Chinese alternative ? At this point I’m just going to use that instead, lawyers won’t be able to take that down.
Why would anyone use any xitter service voluntarily at this point
user43928 5 hours ago [-]
The service works just fine and it is a decent way to get the latest news.
For example, rumors about latest AI developments are available there, but not here on HN.
X also works well for media, which on HN you can only see after navigating to an external website.
Many comment sections are rough, but usually not worth visiting apart from the top comments anyway.
I don't like that Ads are hard to distinguish from regular posts.
I believe the main reason for not using X is a political boycott. Many disagree politically, or don't entertain certain delusions about Musk that are popular with progressives.
Freedumbs 4 hours ago [-]
Or get this: you could read news if that's what you're interested in.
Social media isn't news. It's entertainment.
user43928 4 hours ago [-]
I'd be more interested in your concrete alternative recommendation on where to get the rumors/insider news about AI rather than your opinion on how I should use social media.
Freedumbs 4 hours ago [-]
If you're interested in being entertained, continue to consume. If you want to learn about science, setup a system to consume Arxiv.
TiredOfLife 4 hours ago [-]
> Social media isn't news
What is? TV, Radio, Newspapers, Town square, are all entertainment
Freedumbs 53 minutes ago [-]
There isn't much TBH. All newswires are even propaganda by selection mostly. I'd say the newswires that still sort of pretend to be news and usually are only biased through selection: AP and Reuters.
okeuro49 5 hours ago [-]
I wish X would allow browsing threads, which is the only reason I use xcancel.
I wouldn't even mind seeing advertisements.
I just don't want to have an X account.
ArtTimeInvestor 5 hours ago [-]
When I read this, the Arweave project [1] comes to mind.
Isn't this the exact use case it was built for, preservation of news data in a way that it cannot be tampered with and so that it is kept accessible for everyone forever?
There are now about 10 different people running them, and you can also run your own. https://status.d420.de/
The browser extension "Libredirect" will transparently redirect you to a working one or one of your choice.
VCFundedGenYer 1 hours ago [-]
As a reminder - get off Twitter and get onto Mastodon (Bluesky is dead to rights). Those of you addicted to what was formerly Twitter need to move on.
pogue 6 hours ago [-]
Any details about what's going on? Is Nitter/their Github still up?
chinathrow 5 hours ago [-]
Has anyone ever succeeded going up against Elon legally?
solarkraft 5 hours ago [-]
So X is down again. Oh well.
darkwi11ow 6 hours ago [-]
Another "victory" for the freedom of information.
krembo 5 hours ago [-]
Not a popular question here, but what's the difference between xcancel or archive.org, and torrents and other pirate services alike?
(except twitter is user content, yet per their tos xcancel is still piracy)
JuniperMesos 5 hours ago [-]
Torrents can be used to spread information that is in the public domain or licensed freely, just as much as they can be used to spread copyrighted information. Obviously most of what people actually use torrents for is pirating copyrighted media against the wishes of the copyright-holders, but that's not inherent to the protocol.
Nitter instances by contrast are specific software intended to view information on a specific proprietary social media website in ways the owners of that website don't want them to. It's a question for lawyers if X declaring this to be a type of copyright violation will hold up in court, but X is also actively trying to block Nitter instances from accessing the site at all, which is a technological rather than legal mechanism.
draw_down 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
fivetomidnight 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
_giorgio_ 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
lapkaaaa 6 hours ago [-]
They don't want to make it irrevelant, it's only readonly so you can't post. Not everyone wants to create a xitter account just to find 1-2 posts
danlitt 6 hours ago [-]
Because removing public content from the internet for profit is wrong and shouldn't be allowed. One man, or one company, should not be in charge of the free speech of half a billion people.
earth-tattoo 5 hours ago [-]
Ok, let's start a petition to remove the restrictions put on you to make a free public competitor. Oh wait, there are none. Nobody is stopping you!
danlitt 5 hours ago [-]
Why do you think having a free public competitor would solve the problem? Did you think about the problem at all before posting this?
aucisson_masque 6 hours ago [-]
Third party client websites have existed for a long time. It’s just about freedom.
tomlockwood 6 hours ago [-]
I don't want to log on to his stupid ragebait website. I hate him for entirely different reasons to the usability of a shit website. Problem?
On a practical level, I’m also wondering what consistent legal standard people want when it comes to things like terms of service and individuals' copyright. It's unworkable to maintain one rule for the awesome people we might like and and another rule for the horrible despots we might not like.
Of course that's a real issue since the whole thing is login gated and inaccessible. But unfortunately it is the reality. So I think something like XCancel is needed.
It can happen - nobody would post an Instagram link to HN. But for X it did not happen.
Notice the EU's Digital Markets Act is a liability shield for Nitter instances hosted in the EU.
IF those public institutions want to to connect with all their constituents, then move to a better platform. Not the other way around.
Shitter is now irrelevant for me. If you want my engagement or attention or response or to keep up with you, move to a better platform.
I used to care enough to keep up with Shitter on xcancel. Now it's just faded into irrelevance. YMMV, particularly over time
Shitter isn't the gospel of human experience and creativity and expression. It's just ... Shitter.
But I still use Wikipedia.
That's what Grok as for.
Apples and Oranges...
That is a red herring. A corporation can act ethically. A charity can act disgracefully.
A government can protect people. A neighbourhood association can bully them.
A billionare can be philanthropic. A group of children can terrorise a community.
1. Pretend it isn't there. 2. Flag it and pretend it isn't there. 3. Flag it and read the content somewhere else in case it's relevant.
I'm sure there are people who genuinely need to receive information that's only on that site, but personally I'm enjoying the feeling of the joy of missing out.
That sounds likes something a clickbait author would write.
5. Accept that you won't click on the link
> right-wing content was shown most prominently, regardless of users' political leaning.
> Left-wing users saw almost the same amount of left-wing and right-wing content, even though they only followed left-wing accounts. But only 14% of the political content sent to our right-leaning users was left-wing.
> The neutral users saw twice as much right-wing content as left-wing content. And barely any of the political content shown to our X users was non-partisan.
> Over half of the political content shown to our new X users came from accounts categorised as extreme. Of the content from extreme authors, 72% of posts came from right-leaning accounts.
If they post on Reddit, it gets lost in the sea.
Everyone using something was never a (good) reason to use it.
Of course the right thing is to lobby those organizations to switch. But that won't help with the immediate situation.
These are all things I want to stay informed on, and given the choice would rather read elsewhere. Often I get the same information from secondary sources and manage to avoid that, but even then on controversial things I prefer to check the source directly.
And regarding copyright, the same company owns an LLM that was no doubt trained through mass copyright infringement. Maybe the legal double standard is on their end?
We don't. We let six or seven far right billionares do that.
> And regarding copyright
Copyright of tweets are owned by original authors. Unless you have permission, the copyright infringement which occurs is against the individual, not X.
I don't particularly like Bluesky, but it's publicly readable and has RSS. Any real solution would be protocol or standard instead of yet another closed service, though. For now, I see Nitter and XCancel as a temporary fix until people abandon it for whatever practical, economic, or political reason(s) they may have.
Open RSS wrote about exactly this a couple weeks ago [1]. Bluesky being publicly readable with RSS is an improvement. But government offices should be publishing on their own RSS feeds, and the platforms should be secondary, not the other way around. The amount of policy that gets announced on social media without even a mention on their own website is bizarre. Why isn't posting their content off platform legally required at this point?
[1] https://openrss.org/blog/government-updates-belong-in-an-ope...
It makes me so mad. The Paris public transportation company (RATP) owns not one but two whole apps. Yet, whenever there's an incident they immediately reach for X (on which I can't access their posts), while their apps lag behind.
As far as I'm concerned, my government should issue a blanket ban on public actors using social medias for communication.
Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice. We can't share more details.
You can find the content you were looking for on the original website:
Continue to X
Thank you for your understanding. And the trust you have put into the XCancel project.
If they post something on Twitter, or worse, Facebook, they must also provide a copy of the post on their own website. Some kind of online government gazette, if you will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_gazette
Set up a mastodon account that mirrors your (or someone elses) X account.
This way people who want can continue using X, and other people can read & refer to their posts without needing to log into X.
I ditched xcancel for redirectors like https://twit.0r.cx/
or
https://xxcancel.com
For example, rumors about latest AI developments are available there, but not here on HN.
X also works well for media, which on HN you can only see after navigating to an external website.
Many comment sections are rough, but usually not worth visiting apart from the top comments anyway.
I don't like that Ads are hard to distinguish from regular posts.
I believe the main reason for not using X is a political boycott. Many disagree politically, or don't entertain certain delusions about Musk that are popular with progressives.
Social media isn't news. It's entertainment.
What is? TV, Radio, Newspapers, Town square, are all entertainment
I wouldn't even mind seeing advertisements.
I just don't want to have an X account.
Isn't this the exact use case it was built for, preservation of news data in a way that it cannot be tampered with and so that it is kept accessible for everyone forever?
[1] https://arweave.org/
The browser extension "Libredirect" will transparently redirect you to a working one or one of your choice.
Nitter instances by contrast are specific software intended to view information on a specific proprietary social media website in ways the owners of that website don't want them to. It's a question for lawyers if X declaring this to be a type of copyright violation will hold up in court, but X is also actively trying to block Nitter instances from accessing the site at all, which is a technological rather than legal mechanism.