Would love to redirect more often to shitter instances with https://xxcancel.com.
But there seems to be a bug loading images (e.g. profile pictures or attached pictures to tweets) in Firefox.
I generally agree but I'm still frequently linked to X and I'm either unable to view the content because I don't have an account or I don't click because I don't want to visit the site. These services allow me to access the user content without having to go through X, itself. I wish hackers/the tech industry moved off of X like most users but here we are.
It's not the fault of the users when there's no viable alternative
Bluesky is founded by the same founders of Twitter and is not open and has ridiculous policies, Mastodon is the same, even less popular and even more tyrannical
So the choice for most users, including myself, is tightly moderated spaces run by awful people, or a website run by a literal Nazi, but that at least doesn't ban me on sight
The Musk twitter acquisition (and the sieg heil at the inauguration) were pivotal moments where a good alternative could've surfaced but instead we got twitter 2.0 (and moving from Twitter to Twitter 2 seems entirely pointless even if it wasn't badly moderated on top of that)
Mastodon devs have said many times that the mainstream fediverse, the original community that federates among itself, has a distinct culture and values that they wish to maintain in perpetuity. That is "policies". Yes, the tech allows parallel ecosystems of servers that don't federate with that original community, but when people talk about "Mastodon" like the OP did, they aren't talking about offshoot ecosystems.
That is emphatically the weakness as well. I too loved the idea of "they all have their own policies," until it came to be that those policies ended up being utterly childish "I'm taking my ball and going home the second anyone says any little thing I don't like."
IMO the reason why BS just ended up being Twitter 2.0, or 1.2 even, or why Twitter went down its path in the first place, is that the US and EU are no longer producing enough content to justify ownership or continuous iterations of such a system.
Otherwise it wouldn't have been forced upon who begrudgingly got funding secured. Any of then-GAFA could have bought it and none wanted to touch it.
The bad moderation on those platforms, I think, is a desperate attempt to align platform cultures to the moderating entities' standards that are no longer comprehensible to users, if known at all, like a kid on a push car moving away from the park trying to steer it back.
It seemed fine until 2015 or so, streaming hundreds of novel tweets per second per user, many with novel images. Then things went downhill. Musk can't be the sole villain in it.
Bluesky has the same moderation issues as Twitter. There are people complaining their recommendation feeds are full of macho men nudity and/or furry images, or flooded by far left infights(not like relative to self-proclaimed centrism but FAR left), or straight up getting banned after they've specifically chosen the most appropriate contents, things like that.
Weird thing is that my feed is largely fine other than those gotten banned went back to Twitter. Only politics topics I get are neutral, concerns in global economy, some US and more often Ukraine. No dick pics or furries or antisemetism, just cats, more cats, food pics, infosec stuffs, all as I were back on Twitter in 2009 or so.
But there are enough reports of negative experience, so moderatuon is likely still a bit problematic. Or that compounding with lack of passionate users.
There is a VERY GOOD reason to do this, and this is because they are still very powerful and prevalent.
Closing your eyes and ears and going NAAH NAAH NAAH I'M GOING TO PRETEND IT DOESNT EXIST is a wildly stupid way to approach things like twitter when they are still so influential.
I appreciate experimenting with "boycotting," but when the dust settles and the thing is still very much there, you have to engage with that fact.
It's just a gorgeous free lunch tavern if you didn't even understand English through LLM and American right wing politics was just the cash pile for patrons to shovel into the fireplace.
There's some likely made up charts online[1] for country stats of Twitter right now, and Twitter is allegedly 2.5x more popular than it is in the US in the top two countries, which are incidentally known for strong-ish purchasing power and near-nonexistent English literacy.
Musk's ongoing massive self humiliation is largely contained to the US/English speaking space. Other parts of the world with no strong cultural understandings and pathways from the US and its politics, which is quite substantial still, are fine, ish. Things like LLM auto translation haven't made a change to that situation; it only strengthened the reverse of that pathway.
If you think Musk is far right you will have a really bad time in coming years.
Musk holds very few far right views in comparison to parties very close to power in many EU countries for example.
He is against mass immigration, especially from Islamic countries. That is a very mainstream view though. There is nothing 'far' about it.
In the same vein there is no reason to bother with social networks owned by literal far left supporters, i.e. nearly all the others. Combined these two statements lead to the conclusion that hardly any social networks are worth bothering which is something I can get behind.
Of course there is, don't be silly. There's also no alternative at the moment, or for the foreseeable future. Sure, there's some knockoffs that try hard, but they're still jokes.
For someone who's been on Twitter for a long time, these alternatives function as a good off-ramp that's easier than quitting entirely and abruptly. I deleted my account a few years ago knowing I'd still be able to see some of the content without viewing their ads or contributing my own content.
Assuming you're American and assuming you ever cast a vote you'll have voted for the party which pushed slavery, from which the KKK was born and which pushed for segregation and the Jim Crow laws, i.e. the "democratic" party.
Seriously, we have a problem labeling anything not left “far right”. It is of course by design and has always been (who is not with us is against us). Not that right is any better, but at list they don’t label everyone across “antifa” or whatever.
That said, i do not endorse Musk, especially his infamous gesture.
You don't need to go anywhere to see that Musk is far right. If you're going to claim otherwise, you're gonna need to bring some solid evidence.
The "left" spans such a huge range right now that to be "not left" is basically far right. A Republican opposing Trump is _extremely_ rare (and usually excommunicates them from the party) while on the left, you have AOC, Omar, etc actively sharing a party with Fetterman and Manchin. Right/far-right was a thing in the 2010's but not any more.
Is there a list of things or beliefs that make someone "Far right"? Is there a list or reason why being labeled "far right" (by others, not oneself) should be disqualifying, or worthy of having your services abused? Nitter and its forks are in violation of the X.com terms of service, which is why they are facing legal challenges. Those challenges may be easily routed around with other technology, but Nitter and its forks are still violating the services brazenly. Are "far right" people beneath the law? Is it okay to steal from someone on the "far right"? Is it okay to commit violence against someone on the "far right"?
The right spans such a huge range right now that not to be right is to be "far-left". A "democrat" opposing the OmniCause ("climate, migration and 'palestine'") is _extremely_ rare and usually gets excommunicated from the Party, e.g. Fetterman and Manchin (whom you for some reason listed as 'democrats' even though the Party does its best to label and shun them) while on the right you have people ranging from Massey to Trump, Vance to Rubio, Wiles to Collins.
So maybe it is in the eye of the beholder? I certainly see far more labelling coming from the "left" side of the spectrum than from the "right" side although they're certainly catching up lately now that the communist zombie has risen from its grave again. On the "right" the general idea of the "left" seems to be that they're 'stupid', 'naive' and 'uninformed' while on the "left" the general idea of the "right" seems to be that they're 'evil', 'narrow-minded', 'racist' and '*-phobe'. Neither of these general ideas are true but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.
Ah, AfD, the party with female lesbians leader, right? typical far right, point taken.
Otherwise, yes, I think labeling any party which works within the legal bounds as “far” is dangerous. Because there are legit far groups which should not be permitted on both sides of the spectrum. And we better know what is legitimate and what not.
I made a thing that uses Nitter to have a revchron timeline of people in the tech space. No algorithm, every post shows up (unless you filter out an account). Feedback is appreciated: https://techtwitter-lime.vercel.app
What do you mean by "how"? The code is freely available, you can spin it up at will too in just a few minutes. When they disappear, sometimes it's because the maintainer doesn't want the headache, and sometimes it's because a they're threatened to remove it.
I guess I never bothered reading the code so for whatever reason I assumed it required some extraordinary circumvention to host it that isn't very accessible
what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that self-hosting this is trivial then
so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible? why do people opt to host these for others over teaching how to run your own for example?
> what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that self-hosting this is trivial then
Yes. It comes encouraged.
> so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible?
Yes, unless the other end forbids it and really cares about controlling clients. If they do and manage to detect that you are using alternative client they could block based on that. In times where that happens and there are client devs who care, it becomes a cat-and-mouse.
We need a multiplexer in front of all these instances. One that works like a load balancer, health checking the individual instances and adding/removing them from the pool automatically. That would allow people to create new accounts, serve their own instance and attach them to the muxer.
I assume the source code repo is still up somewhere, so I assume it's the domains that are being taken offline, not the code, and anyone can then trivially spin up their own instance.
Absolutely not! Such low life gutter talk is not acceptable in polite society and shouldn't be allowed in any professional atmosphere. Or am I again trying to elevate HN?
Maybe your cultural values aren't my cultural values. Maybe you need to consider who you are excluding by suggesting that using a curse word is unacceptable?
Cursing has a long tradition in lower economic class culture, in some minority cultures, in queer culture, heck in mainstream cultures worldwide we say "shit", etc. You want them all to conform to your one view of how professionals should be? The curse word isn't directed at you, it isn't directed at anyone you know, or even at a person.
No, I think maybe I'd rather live in a world where people are colorful, use language that's authentic to them, and include more people in the dialog.
>>Maybe you need to consider who you are excluding by suggesting that using a curse word is unacceptable?
I am. Thus the complaint. I would think the general audience here is of a higher caliber than low-class cultures whose values and education can't rise above profanity.
Profanity is fine, even among the well-educated and elite classes. I think you're being a bit puritanical here. I've encountered this attitude before (my octogenarian dad loses his mind when I say "fuck", which I do many times daily), but there's really nothing behind all the pearl clutching - sometimes people curse, and that's Just Fine.
Ah, so racism and classism it is then. Can't be having those "poors" here on our spotless orange site. Want to say something homophobic and or sexist before we continue?
many working instances right now: https://codeberg.org/shitter/shitter/wiki/Instances
Example: https://shitter.thepixora.com/search?f=tweets&q=elon+musk
Wont show any pictures in Firefox for me. Works in Chrome. Can this be fixed? Thank you!
If only someone would "just" fucking build a viable replacement for Twitter. It's a weekend's work with the tools now available. C'mon. (pokes stick)
Bluesky is founded by the same founders of Twitter and is not open and has ridiculous policies, Mastodon is the same, even less popular and even more tyrannical
So the choice for most users, including myself, is tightly moderated spaces run by awful people, or a website run by a literal Nazi, but that at least doesn't ban me on sight
The Musk twitter acquisition (and the sieg heil at the inauguration) were pivotal moments where a good alternative could've surfaced but instead we got twitter 2.0 (and moving from Twitter to Twitter 2 seems entirely pointless even if it wasn't badly moderated on top of that)
Otherwise it wouldn't have been forced upon who begrudgingly got funding secured. Any of then-GAFA could have bought it and none wanted to touch it.
The bad moderation on those platforms, I think, is a desperate attempt to align platform cultures to the moderating entities' standards that are no longer comprehensible to users, if known at all, like a kid on a push car moving away from the park trying to steer it back.
It seemed fine until 2015 or so, streaming hundreds of novel tweets per second per user, many with novel images. Then things went downhill. Musk can't be the sole villain in it.
Huh? It is remarkably open and the policies are not really an issue.
Weird thing is that my feed is largely fine other than those gotten banned went back to Twitter. Only politics topics I get are neutral, concerns in global economy, some US and more often Ukraine. No dick pics or furries or antisemetism, just cats, more cats, food pics, infosec stuffs, all as I were back on Twitter in 2009 or so.
But there are enough reports of negative experience, so moderatuon is likely still a bit problematic. Or that compounding with lack of passionate users.
... so? Being linked to it is not an obligation to bother with it, neither is FOMO.
Closing your eyes and ears and going NAAH NAAH NAAH I'M GOING TO PRETEND IT DOESNT EXIST is a wildly stupid way to approach things like twitter when they are still so influential.
I appreciate experimenting with "boycotting," but when the dust settles and the thing is still very much there, you have to engage with that fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_Elon_M...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/17/opinion/elon-musk-republi...
https://ecfr.eu/article/musks-war-on-european-democracy-how-...
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-x-influence-uk-us-polit...
Hope that helps.
There's some likely made up charts online[1] for country stats of Twitter right now, and Twitter is allegedly 2.5x more popular than it is in the US in the top two countries, which are incidentally known for strong-ish purchasing power and near-nonexistent English literacy.
Musk's ongoing massive self humiliation is largely contained to the US/English speaking space. Other parts of the world with no strong cultural understandings and pathways from the US and its politics, which is quite substantial still, are fine, ish. Things like LLM auto translation haven't made a change to that situation; it only strengthened the reverse of that pathway.
1: https://soax.com/research/twitter-active-users
He is against mass immigration, especially from Islamic countries. That is a very mainstream view though. There is nothing 'far' about it.
It is controversial when you start pointing to individual immigrants already in country Y and saying "hey you, get the fuck out".
And that’s just my quick googling
Imagine going from freeing slaves to hunting people like Ilhan Omar just because she’s not white
Seriously, we have a problem labeling anything not left “far right”. It is of course by design and has always been (who is not with us is against us). Not that right is any better, but at list they don’t label everyone across “antifa” or whatever.
That said, i do not endorse Musk, especially his infamous gesture.
The "left" spans such a huge range right now that to be "not left" is basically far right. A Republican opposing Trump is _extremely_ rare (and usually excommunicates them from the party) while on the left, you have AOC, Omar, etc actively sharing a party with Fetterman and Manchin. Right/far-right was a thing in the 2010's but not any more.
What is “far right”, btw? What are objective measurable criteria?
> The "left" spans such a huge range right now that to be "not left" is basically far right
Jesus Christ, you can’t be serious. But then again, I am not surprised that you are.
So maybe it is in the eye of the beholder? I certainly see far more labelling coming from the "left" side of the spectrum than from the "right" side although they're certainly catching up lately now that the communist zombie has risen from its grave again. On the "right" the general idea of the "left" seems to be that they're 'stupid', 'naive' and 'uninformed' while on the "left" the general idea of the "right" seems to be that they're 'evil', 'narrow-minded', 'racist' and '*-phobe'. Neither of these general ideas are true but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.
What else do you need to agree that he is far right? Wear an SS outfit? Put some people in ovens?
Otherwise, yes, I think labeling any party which works within the legal bounds as “far” is dangerous. Because there are legit far groups which should not be permitted on both sides of the spectrum. And we better know what is legitimate and what not.
what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that self-hosting this is trivial then
so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible? why do people opt to host these for others over teaching how to run your own for example?
Yes. It comes encouraged.
> so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible?
Yes, unless the other end forbids it and really cares about controlling clients. If they do and manage to detect that you are using alternative client they could block based on that. In times where that happens and there are client devs who care, it becomes a cat-and-mouse.
Every individual running their own instance would be the equivalent of every individual having their own Twitter account, which defeats the purpose.
Maybe your cultural values aren't my cultural values. Maybe you need to consider who you are excluding by suggesting that using a curse word is unacceptable?
Cursing has a long tradition in lower economic class culture, in some minority cultures, in queer culture, heck in mainstream cultures worldwide we say "shit", etc. You want them all to conform to your one view of how professionals should be? The curse word isn't directed at you, it isn't directed at anyone you know, or even at a person.
No, I think maybe I'd rather live in a world where people are colorful, use language that's authentic to them, and include more people in the dialog.
I am. Thus the complaint. I would think the general audience here is of a higher caliber than low-class cultures whose values and education can't rise above profanity.
My person in deity "enshittification" is a technical term of art around here, and "Gimp" is both a popular graphics software and a sexual fetish term.
No one besides children and people with low emotional IQ care about such things.
By and large the hacker news moderators and commentariat have demonstrated that they do not welcome those cultures here.
At least I'm living now and not in the past. I do believe in gradual progress.
Uh, shitfuck.