Cider9986 · 34 replies
neilv · 7 replies
A non-technological way to give negative feedback to Twitter/X is to stop using it, even "just reading an occasional post".

Continuing to read things on it, even through Nitter, is in the interests of Twitter/X and of the people who continue to support Twitter/X by posting there.

Tell the people who use it no. The decent people won't hear them on Twitter/X, and the decent people will wonder what's wrong with them if they persist in supporting that thing.

Tech industry circles nowadays are sometimes tinged with individualist selfish "take whatever you can" thinking, and anarchic or even underhanded methods. Including the thinking "an express no doesn't mean no, if i can find a way to take it from them anyway."

Grassroots collective social action can work, if it isn't constantly undermined by selfish and short-sighted taking.

lrvick ·
I agree with everything you said and abandoned my Twitter account and everything on it years ago for these reasons.

Everything, except for your usage of anarchism to imply chaos or disorder, which is a common misunderstanding. Anarchism, particularly the flavor I subscribe to which is Social Anarchism, is a pursuit of social order, freedom, and prosperity without centralized authorities like Musk.

wolvoleo ·
> Tech industry circles nowadays are sometimes tinged with individualist selfish "take whatever you can" thinking, and anarchic or even underhanded methods. Including the thinking "an express no doesn't mean no, if i can find a way to take it from them anyway"

I agree with that though. It's better to circumvent than to submit and do what you're told.

The same way piracy keeps streaming services somewhat honest, I'm sure that if piracy didn't exist, subscriptions would be even pricier.

Wowfunhappy ·
I don't think it's good to make myself less informed. I have no intention of chatting on Twitter casually or browsing it for fun, but if a major announcement is posted only on Twitter—and I don't know why people keep doing that, but they do—I want to read the original source.
alightsoul ·
We have to move people to mastodon or bluesky. Stop using x Twitter
arjie ·
> Tech industry circles nowadays are sometimes tinged with individualist selfish "take whatever you can" thinking, and anarchic or even underhanded methods. Including the thinking "an express no doesn't mean no, if i can find a way to take it from them anyway."

Is that particularly tech industry? Software and media piracy, ad block tools, etc. are all based on this principle.

8note ·
> Tech industry circles nowadays are sometimes tinged with individualist selfish "take whatever you can" thinking, and anarchic or even underhanded methods. Including the thinking "an express no doesn't mean no, if i can find a way to take it from them anyway."

i see twitter's takedowns as the same? its claiming ownership over content it only has a license to

nitter is an instance of collective social action - it only works because people who want to post on and use twitter then mirror stuff to nitter

beanjuiceII ·
you need a mental check if you think there are not decent people who use and enjoy X
MostlyStable ·
The not needing an account is obviously not minor, but honestly, the UI is just better, by a lot. I made a twitter account a while ago using one of those throw away email address sites, so I have an account that I don't care about that I can use for twitter....but the experience just sucks. I don't know how any stands it, even if they don't mind needing an account.
pronik · 2 replies
I might cut into my own flesh right now, but the funny thing about that XCancel shutdown is that while the website is down, the RSS feeds still work. Almost like they've just been required to shutdown the visible website and they complied with exactly that.
embedding-shape ·
Isn't Twitter archived by Library of Congress or something similar? Can't remember the exact details, but maybe something (enforced by law even perhaps?) is depending on those feeds with punishment sufficient enough for Elon to actually listen. Or they don't actually realize those are still online, and there is some lone engineer trying their best to never raise any attention to it and we just made their day a lot worse...
pessimizer ·
Really important for you to mention this. People just love to tell when they know something no one else does. Does "cut into my own flesh" mean that you only think you'll be affected by this becoming common knowledge?
robotnikman · 2 replies
Thats the nice thing about alternate frontends like Nitter, if the main instance goes down you can just clone the repo and make your own very easily, or choose from one of the many alternate instances out there.

I highly recommend the extension libredirect, which will redirect you to instances of your choice (or just stick with the defaults). It doesn't just work for Twitter/X, but also Reddit, Tiktok, Youtube, and many others

Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/ Chromium Instructions - https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension

the_lucifer ·
+ for folks using Kagi Search, you can set up a search engine level redirect (which is what I used to use for redirecting Twitter/X links to Xcancel before the takedown)
MallocVoidstar ·
> you can just clone the repo and make your own very easily

This is not the case for Nitter. It requires real X accounts to run, quite possibly hundreds or thousands for a major public instance. Creating X accounts currently requires phone number verification.

arjie ·
Yeah, but most of these will fall. I used to use one or two of these to scrape my friends' posts because I stopped using Twitter and they'd inevitably all disappear in time. It's like chasing the latest TPB. In the end, I just logged in a headless browser and told an agent to fetch daily.
prism56 ·
My xcancel RSS still works fine too!
Venn1 · 1 reply
I've already encountered two instances of something I was interested in learning about being linked using Nitter / XCancel, and those links are now quite deceased.

Please link to primary sources. If I need an alternative method of accessing the site, I'll figure it out.

akkartik ·
A key design decision was you only need to replace the domain in the URL. So you need only replace it back. It's not like archive.is where I need to also save the original.
klntsky ·
Is there something like a balancer that redirects me to an instance that is not down?
corvad ·
I guess X never heard of the Streisand effect...
raffael_de ·
oh, that's great. i thought the project is dead.

how would you (EDIT: publicly) host such a nitter instance while avoiding the risk of legal consequences?

since old.reddit (EDIT: on mobile) is closed for visitors without an account it would be great if there was also a neddit project.

nunez ·
Yeah, nah. The cat and mouse game has begun. X will turn up the heat like Reddit did/is doing. I just created a redirect for (twitter|x).com to 0.0.0.0 and called it a day.
VCFundedGenYer ·
Stop using Twitter. Get on Mastodon.
DavCreator ·
we do a lil magic and just add another x to xcancel.com => https://xxcancel.com

points to a working nitter instance.

swyx ·
> How to obtain many sessions easily (public instances) The easiest way is to buy them here: https://hstockplus.com/accounts/twitter-x-accounts?sortBy=pr...

> This way, you relay the account register process to the seller. These tokens are sold in the format username|password|2fa_code|cookies (including auth token, id and ct0), which makes it very easy and convenient for us to use.

is this legit? this sounds extremely shady. maybe an ad?

agnosticmantis ·
Any user scripts that automatically redirect to a working instance?
maxlin ·
Publicly suggesting using a shady service to buy masses of accounts instead of just using the damn service. Mental
a3qhg ·
There are some extremely sketchy instances with "are you a robot" click dialogs that redirect to exploit URLs.

I would search for other options not listed. I'm not going to name them here because X is lazy and reads HN for scheduling takedown notices.

someonebaggy ·
Will this list automatically update as instances hit rate limits or break for other reasons? Some public instances only have one account to log in with, some have thousands and use residential proxies.
add-sub-mul-div ·
We could stop thinking of them as walled gardens we're trying to get into and start thinking of them as quarantines for the Eternal September population.
throwaway27448 ·
How do you get API approval?
Abimelex ·
Hot take: All those instances keep the service relevant giving it more reach than necessary. Just shut it down. Cancel Twitter and jump on the BlueSkye or Mastodon train.
shevy-java ·
Streisand effect.
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alex1138 ·
What do we want the web to look like? Lock everything down behind logins, in the name of 'security' when the real goal is nyeh nyeh nyeh you can't see anything, sign up so we get more user metrics
LightBug1 ·
Simpler solution:

If you're on Shitter, I'm not interested in your content.

Not even through proxy.

Get on another platform then hit me up if you want some engagement.

kamma4434 ·
With or without the original interface, twitter is still a dumpster fire
pessimizer ·
This is a silly fact that doesn't matter, because nobody knows where they are anymore. Even worse, this goofy gloating post ensures that these are about to taken down, too. Nitter can literally be run for a single user, so if a hundred people set it up for their own personal use, I guess that's also more working instances than before the takedown. A real victory if you're dumb.

So for everyone who managed to find another working nitter instance after a long hard search, or in whose friend group one person stood one up so all their friends can use it - fuck you I guess. Somebody wanted to brag on HN about how Musk somehow shot himself in the foot by reducing nitter usage by 99.9% in one day, so now your hoster, and maybe you personally, are getting a legal letter from one of the richest men in the world.

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Petersipoi ·
Awesome. Let's all start using this on HN so we end up with a bunch of broken links in a few years
tolerance ·
People refuse to let the concept of microblogs as conventional communications platforms die. Why?