They have killed old.reddit now. It forces you (or at least me) to login. Same with regular Reddit. Most threads I get an authwall after the top comment.

(Im now entirely on HN and Lemmy)

I agree. I think of these alternatives as off-ramps, not replacements. In 2023 I ditched my Reddit and Twitter accounts thinking it would be very difficult. Today, the idea of losing the off-ramps no longer bothers me.

I started using Reddit after the Digg 4 fiasco. I mostly lurk. I like things like the localllama subreddit. If I log in to contribute it’s a high effort post with good information.

Reddit can go ahead and extract as much value as possible by turning their site into a slop factory. I won’t be around to see it. I haven’t visited for a week after near daily use for 15 years.

Reddit 4 isn’t for me.

But a few other people will make an account to continue reading

They aren’t gonna care because they aren’t making any money off of you anyway

It is apparent that HN users do not comprehend how useful X is to normal and ordinary people who are not terminally online, and who are not "influencers" and are not "junkies" of social media.

X, and Facebook as well, are homes to companies, politicians, news outlets, government organs, and non-profit orgs. Any public service is going to have an X account to pump out announcements and updates about whatever is within their remit.

For example, you can follow local law enforcement agencies, local and national weather services, your senators and congresspeople, your health care providers, and much more. You can get urgent updates about traffic construction, accidents, and emergency response in your area. You can receive updates from your respresentatives in government, about their campaigns, about current issues and legislation, about good news and bad news.

The network effect here is strong. Even if all ordinary users and individuals decided to pack up, delete their X, and move to BlueSky or Mastodon, the official mouthpieces will stay on X and stay on Facebook. They will be there, and be available to the ordinary individuals. They'll be sending out updates to everyone who follows. That's the utility of X, and it's only become stronger and more robust over the past decade.

So it doesn't matter how the techies feel, it doesn't matter if there is no longer a viable "read-only mode" and it doesn't matter if you stay or if you leave, because the "normies" are there, the "normies" have legit accounts, and they're monitoring the accounts that have something to say to them.

X is the perfect named because it describes the core interaction after trying to view something on the site. Lmao.

Have you considered reaching out to users who actually create and own the material published on Twitter to work out a deal whereby xcancel.com would be permitted to publish their posts (regardless of what the cease and desist says)?

I think the signal on X has been deteriorating for years. Many valuable communities that existed purely on Twitter have scattered across the internet after Elon's transformation, often to many disconnected small communities across X, Mastodon instances, BlueSky, and reddit.

> I don’t get why ai labs and staff didn’t move to Bluesky or something more open.

Why would they, specifically? There's nothing particularly open about them.

If X is a high signal comment layer, than X must be able to tell real from fake bot posts while not sharing that info with users.

And an equally polarising and delusional userbase, like X, just on the other side of the spectrum.

No thanks.

I agree with Gabe Newell's take, however it absolutely is _also_ a money issue (which Steam went a long way to alleviating with regional pricing). Median PPP ratios for other continents are: Asia ~2.76x, Africa ~2.76x, Europe ~1.58x, etc.

Currently new AAA titles debut for 60 to 80 USD. I'm wondering what the piracy situation would look like in the USA, if this was, say 160 to 220 USD; because that is what paying US prices feels like to the median person.