XCancel service is suspended until further notice
Comments
phforms
usernomdeguerre
The unfortunate part is that each individual who attempts to leave is fighting the Network Effect[0]. It's fighting against the human organism's basic social nature.
If every person wants to leave the platform but X person stays because Y person is there, and Y person stays because Z person is there, and Z person stays because X person is there then it's a feedback loop. Each person wants a better solution or platform, but none end up leaving because of the network effect.
Breaking that dependency involves the individual user but can't be overcome by the individual alone. Over time, the network re-asserts itself and monopolizes the connections.
jdc0589
about once a year I try signing up for X after friends tell me I really should be on there for news in certain niches.
multiple times now I've signed up with a fake name/handle/email/etc..., sometimes from a VPN, and within 10 minutes a friend usually tells me they see me as a recommendation to follow (they can tell, by the handle).
Insta delete, every time.
nullocator
This isn't a criticism, but I do think this comment actually raises part of the problem. There are people on twitter telling people they should be on twitter, and it's apparently effective enough that at least some people are still signing up or trying to at least. The world needs more of the inverse, people telling those they care about who are on twitter to get off it.
immibis2
You should prefer to donate accounts to circumvention efforts rather than deleting them.
zzzeek
explain?
mahboi
It's gotten ridiculous. I get it if they have a login wall. I've had a Twitter account for years for occasional reasons. But suddenly it thinks I'm a bot and wants me to scan some QR code, download an app on my phone separately, and take photos of my hand. For whatever reason, that didn't work on my phone, maybe cause it's a Samsung A16 (not to be confused with a16z) they decided is too poor to generate ad money.
Maybe they have legit reasons for all that, but it's not my problem. It's not worthwhile to me to view stuff on there anymore.
J-Kuhn
Photos of your hand?
What is next? Run some arbitrary command? Make photos of your feet?
We really ought to think what is an acceptable way to verify that someone is an actual human.
ErroneousBosh
You know, as a television personality, Jeremy Clarkson is a pretty polarising figure. The gammons see him as all that's wrong with Britain with his pro-EU views, the cartoon student lefties are whining about "oh it's all just about him zoomzoomzooming about dangerously in fast cars", some people actually like him.
But whatever your views, you cannot deny that without his blend of journalistic acumen, wit and humour, and sheer talent, the world would be a poorer place.
Because, quite simply, it would be a world without the "Oh no! Anyway..." meme in it.
And every time I see a link about Twitter losing users or blocking some third-party client, guess what I think?
ssl-3
> And every time I see a link about Twitter losing users or blocking some third-party client, guess what I think?
All we know is, he's called the Stig
asdff
I don't understand who all these people are who keep saying 'but I need twitter for my local politicians.' Like really? I have not followed any local politicians or authorities twitter and I still get relevant information. Believe it or not, which you might not if all you do is parrot these comments and I have seen this very comment line of thinking parroted for YEARS about twitter, most people do not follow the city hall twitter if they even have a twitter, and they get by fine. I mean people are citing they need to follow their utility. Are you kidding me? Your utility will post a highly localized service outage that might only affect 1 block of a city or less to their world facing twitter feed? And not simply alert customers via their phone on file as they've done for me forever?
ruszki
Where I live currently in Europe utility companies need to inform me even in an offline way. There is no need for internet for this.
I'm reading the news with a two week delay for almost a decade, and I haven't missed anything worthwhile. There are exactly zero reasons to read Facebook/Twitter for it. For example, the value of the current US administration's word is zero. When they say something, there is no change in probability distributions in anything anymore. This two week delay makes this very obvious on the occasions when I checked the latest state of some issues. But others are the same, just for different reasons: in reality you have a very small effect on any highly politicized topics. When parents trust their kids less than politicians, then there is not much to do with everyday tools, like arguing (there are some places where there is a value, but those won't ever move the needle).
immibis2
The current American government is basically entirely comprised of people who were terminally online on Twitter and communicating with the right politicians - those people got everything they wanted. This seems like evidence that it actually does matter.
sippingabonedry
Remember when Obama was lauded as the first 'online' president, with everyone from Redditors to news media gushing about his BlackBerry? What is the point you are trying to make, aside from "VC-funded apps and smartphones and how we use them have naturally evolved since 2008"?
mahboi
I've always had this thought that the Trump administration's views of other countries comes disproportionately from insanely online users on Twitter and Reddit, who might actually be bots too. Like the thing about not working with European countries "that hate us."
bpt3
> Your utility will post a highly localized service outage that might only affect 1 block of a city or less to their world facing twitter feed? And not simply alert customers via their phone on file as they've done for me forever?
It doesn't match your very contrived example specifically, but yes essential services in my major metropolitan area provide more useful and timely information via twitter/X than other sources. People don't or can't register for updates from the city or county, so government organizations have no means of publishing information for public consumption other than social media, and twitter was the de facto standard.
Also, many local schools, clubs, etc. used it as their "official" source for updates for years.
You are definitely out of the loop if you can't access it, and places are glacially slow to change.
aperrien
Is it possible to help or encourage our local municipal services to have either an RSS or BlueSky feed? At this point, it's becoming apparent that putting all the information eggs in the twitter basket is/was a bad idea. This is a place where open source standards should shine.
TFNA
I'm not going to say RSS is inherently inaccessible to normies, because the blogosphere of 20 years ago saw even elderly non-techies happily using it. However, I think the trends in computing in the years since, where most people use the internet solely through popular phone apps, mean that RSS is no longer going to see any significant use. So, a municipality is not doing a palpable service to its constituency by moving communications there.
mahboi
We even saw it with RSS. Everyone using RSS was lamenting Google Reader going away. Isn't the client supposed to be the most easily replaceable part of RSS?
1over137
Normies dont think in protocols, they think in apps.
ssl-3
It's weird that people still lament Google Reader going away.
We've had RSS for about 27 years.
Google Reader was around for less than 8 of those years, and it has now been 13 years since it died.
samizdis
How about municipal councils looking around at any remaining "mainstream media" local outlets and committing to post relevant notices/updates on their websites?
This is something I wanted to push while working on newsroom CMS projects: giving direct input access to the CMS from external bodies - police, fire, ambulance etc. Posts could be vetted/edited by newsrooms, as with any externally filed copy, but turnaround would be a matter of half-a-minute or so. Either that or enable direct publishing permissions to said authorities.
immibis2
The most practical way would probably be to create that feed yourself based on their Twitter feed. You could automate it using some Nitter-like service (please do not scrape public Nitters, but you can run your own Nitter and scrape it as you like). It is generally easier to do something like this yourself than to convince someone else, who does not care at all, to do it. I don't know how you would advertise it.
multjoy
This is an area where Mastodon ought to shine. Departments/organisations can create their own instances, with named users. Interested constituents follow those users with their client of choice. Direct following means you avoid the federation dramas.
No algorithim means that people get the updates they want when they're posted. Users get a familiar-looking client to bang out the quick updates.
Obviously the issue is someone will need to run it, but if you're not open to public signups then the moderation burden doesn't exist and it's just a case of keeping things updated.
mahboi
On the last point, it's a lot harder to manage than you're making it sound. A public org isn't going to gate signups.
multjoy
You wouldn't let Joe Public create an email account on your mail server, why would you let them do so on a mastodon instance?
mahboi
Sorry, I misread your first comment. So only the org can post and people can only view. Doesn't seem like people would follow it then.
multjoy
But that's not how Mastodon works.
Like email, I sign up for a Mastodon account on a server that suits my tastes. I then follow other accounts, on other servers, using a client - I use Ivory on the mac & iPhone (because it's made by the same company who made Tweetbot) - and those accounts show up in my feed in chronological order, like Twitter in the old days.
iso1631
All my local groups are on facebook. It's horrendous. Could do with a browser plugin which only shows posts I want to see, it might even be good enough to send me back to facebook
sailfast
This would be totally doable except for a couple of recent changes during the DOGE take-over where federal agencies mandated communication on X as their primary means.
This is clearly illegal as all comms need to be posted in different accessible places as well as the federal register - but that never stopped anybody in this administration from a bit of grifting to drive users to their own platform.
I’m bummed about this service being taken down. I will now just not be able to see updates from folks in the AI field that choose to post there and I’ll rely on aggregators instead.
arppacket
This is what we should have done the moment a Nazi bought Twitter in order to create a "vibe shift".
xigoi
Shitter was already bad before Elon bought it.
dburkland
Thanks for the laugh
whalesalad
> at some point we have to ignore the X site completely
I've been doing that for years. Since just prior to Elon's purchase of it. Nothing of value in my life has been lost.
fuzzfactor
Things like twitter aren't supposed to be worth money anyway :)
In an ideal world nothing would be able to change that.
Edit: not my downvote btw, where did that come from? - - corrective upvote instead contrary to bot action
ruszki
Not since then, but before it, I could read smart people's opinion there about random topics. Of course, when the takeover happened, almost all of them left already years prior.
There is no such place since. Most of them went back to anonymous internet presence, if at all.
burnt-resistor
Support and platforming of neo-Nazis and nation state sockpuppets are big reasons to avoid X. Boycott, divest, sanction, and shun those who intend to harm society.
rustystump
maybe my brian is memory holed but twitter used to not require an account which made the whole public square gov thing very valid even if u were banned for political reasons u could still read and be informed.
x requiring an account to even read content from gov officials has to be a massive insane deal breaker for anything gov official.
i hate x, not because of elon but because it is still just twitter where the format breeds the most disgusting human interactions possible. Everyone is performative in every interaction which leads to a net negative. Instragram and meta cannot even claim such a divisive crown although they win on other fronts.
No, bluesky is just yet another twitter with the same fundamental problem because the format is the issue not the politics. At least on bs i can generally read without logging in tho so it wins for me.
mulderc
Maybe it is different elsewhere but I have seen little reason to use X at all and none of the public services or institutions seems to use it all that much. If they do post to it, they are also posting to all the other major social media services.
All the news you want is available elsewhere and often with far less toxic commentary attached.
philip-b
Is there a way to make Firefox autoredirect to that?
er0k
https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/
Include pattern:
^https?://x.com/(.*)
https://xxcancel.com/$1pelzatessa
Libredirect does exactly that: https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension
tommica
Probably with some userscript?
simondotau
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
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.
asdff
I have no clue what my local government or any such authority could possibly tweet that would be relevant to me. I have not checked their twitter feeds ever and I am none the worse for wear.
LightBug1
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.
Yhippa
It makes me sad that the level of discourse around here is approaching that of Reddit.
simondotau
Maybe if people didn't make services like XCancel, the impracticality of X would be more salient.
mitxela
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
That assumes the people who need XCancel most are aware of its existence, but from what I can tell only folks like us are.
sunaurus
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
Get the Libredirect extension and this will happen automatically (to a server that is actually working).
LightBug1
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
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
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
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
> 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
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
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
What if the post is like "we discovered AGI (for real this time, not clickbait)" - will you pretend AGI wasn't discovered?
madeofpalk
If it's important enough, it'll be elsewhere.
addandsubtract
That would A) still be clickbait, and B) be posted on a corporate blog, not just X.
fWEFVEEGLKJH
> (for real this time, not clickbait)
That sounds likes something a clickbait author would write.
simondotau
4. Click the link
5. Accept that you won't click on the link
vrganj
Congratulations, Elon Musk has just forced you to either feed his propaganda machine or successfully locked you out of the conversation.
simondotau
Yes, and? I can't bend reality to make it otherwise.
vrganj
XCancel can.
simondotau
"XCancel Taken Down Again" is the title of this thread.
vrganj
Indeed. But they've been doing good work and fighting is better than just giving in to apathy and losing by default.
frumplestlatz
Given its extremely liberal content moderation policy, how is X a propaganda machine?
nickthegreek
algo is what can make or break a propaganda machine.
vrganj
Here's a pretty in-depth investigation into the workings of X as far-right propaganda machine: https://news.sky.com/story/the-x-effect-how-elon-musk-is-boo...
> 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.
frumplestlatz
So journalists ran a study with extremely poor sampling, base rate, and classification methodology designed by left-wing researchers and activists groups (including groups explicitly opposed to X), found the conclusions they wanted to find, and spent the second half of their article decrying the lack of heavy-handed moderation that pre-Musk Twitter used to control speech.
All we can actually derive from that article is that X’s new user recommendation system exposed a small number of near-default, low-feedback, synthetic accounts to more content that left-wing “misinformation” researchers classified as “right-wing”.
monocasa
Musk also uses plenty of heavy handed moderation; it's just almost all directed at the left. For instance: https://crimethinc.com/2022/11/25/elon-musk-bans-crimethinc-...
frumplestlatz
They were banned for literally advocating for political violence. The fact that they hadn’t been banned earlier is the only concerning fact here.
The current top article on their website argues for punching their political opponents in the streets.
monocasa
And yet right wingers openly calling for the west to ethnically cleanse the non white races get reinstated.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-mus...
And simply criticizing Musk is enough to get a shadow ban
frumplestlatz
Andrew Anglin, the subject of the first article, was re-banned in 2023 for the same reason that crimethink, inc was banned.
The subjects of the second article are particularly odious right-wing conspiracy theorists and racists that lost their reach, which they believe was connected to arguing with Elon.
That seems like an action you’d be in favor of, and also it counters the propaganda claim — but regardless, their claim that they were shadow-banned, that the cause was direct intercession by Elon, and that the motivation was their merely disagreeing with him, is unsupported by any evidence.
monocasa
He had already been banned for the same reason, and Musk unbanned him in the same wave that had him ban crimethinc.
vrganj
I'm not sure where you got any of that from. Where are you reading anything about the researchers working for Sky News, a Comcast subsidiary (!) being "left wing"? What are you basing your criticism of sampling and classification on?
I provided a study that literally won the Royal Statistical Societies' "Statistical Excellence in Journalism" award [0]. You provided unfounded dismissal and conspiracy. The burden of proof is on your side.
[0] https://rss.org.uk/news-publication/news-publications/2026/g...
zem
at the very least whoever posts the link has presumably accessed it, so we should normalise pasting the full text in here
amelius
I wish HN would simply ban links to X.
browningstreet
If you think that's remotely viable, you'll be very surprised what most of the YC partners believe and post about on X.
mitxela
HN is a venture capital fund. That will happen if and only if it becomes profitable to do so.
simondotau
If you want to make the rules, start your own club.
tjoff
Because for some reason people link to it here.
dandellion
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
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
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
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
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
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.
phyzome
Today, for me, the reason was because I wanted to pull up a years-old tweet that had a video of a local road flooding.
johannes1234321
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
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_
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
why is that? Why can't you just use it in read only fashion?
fabian2k
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
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.
MPSimmons
It seems intellectually dishonest to blanket-label any principled stance that you disagree with as "virtue signaling".
pickleRick243
I think the claim is that the principled stance would be to ignore all X content.
ceejayoz
Which is just the "yet you participate in society" meme again.
bbg2401
No, it's not. Don't be so intellectually lazy.
The author of the comment higher up is describing a person who is boycotting X because they are strongly against its stewardship and moderation but regardless continues to find ways to indulge themselves in the content produced by users of X, for other users of X.
How else should we describe the position held? It's clearly not entirely principled and veers directly into performative action (i.e. virtue signalling).
I admit I'm not nor have been a Twitter/X user so am able to look at the situation without a sense of entitlement or attachment.
ceejayoz
> The author of the comment higher up is describing a person who is boycotting X because they are strongly against its stewardship and moderation but regardless continues to find ways to indulge themselves in the content produced by users of X, for other users of X.
Yes. Because we have to participate in a society in which sometimes, that's where the info is. Some towns only post their announcements on Facebook/X! Some people prominent on my framework of choice are only on X.
> How else should we describe the position held? It's clearly not entirely principled and veers directly into performative action (i.e. virtue signalling).
Virtue isn't a binary. I can reduce my externalities, even if I can't eliminate them.
cudder
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.
asdff
>Things like utility companies' and emergency services announcements
I am shocked you get this served via twitter instead of usual service notices for these things. I don't use twitter and I still get these notices and other news.
m3kw9
Yeah i don't get it, using xcancel is like "that'll show ya" in a weak manner. You are seeing the same tweet.
vrganj
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
> 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.
xyst
I don’t use Twitter but assholes continue to reference posts on this cancerous site. That’s why this service exists lil bro
ocd
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
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
> 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?
[1] https://openrss.org/blog/government-updates-belong-in-an-ope...
cebert
You go where your people are. I think it’s very reasonable to post updates on Facebook and X.
Freedumbs
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
> 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.
andsoitis
New branding: cancelXcancel
gaganyaan
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.
Lord-Jobo
Classic “we must show good faith and good will before the judicial system by keeping our stuff offline, until proceedings are complete”
“Does the other side need to show any good faith?”
“No, in fact the judge is more likely to side either then the more angry and aggressive they are”
“….great”
cube00
The fact that so many large companies are still on X is so wrong.
embedding-shape
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
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.
melodyogonna
Why?
frumplestlatz
Why is it “so wrong” to meet your audience where they are?
harrisoned
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
The comment I replied to said "large companies", not government, and I don't see the equivalence.
maipen
Why is it wrong? Is it wrong to require people to use certain tools? I don’t think so. It’s the same thing as requiring dress code to go to the tribunal or anything formal.
People here overthink so much about this topic.
cferry
> Is it wrong to require people to use certain tools?
As the state or a representative thereof, yes; that's why public service is either run by itself or contracts to operators who must then abide by requirements (like no discrimination, unconditional access to information, social pricing, or similar provisions depending on your jurisdiction), that they would scrape the very day their activity became free market.
In France, even banks, a sector without a public actor in most countries, are legally required to open accounts ("droit au compte"). I don't mean _any_ kind of account, but at least one. On which banks naturally don't make a profit...
Google or Apple on the other hand, have no legal duty to let you in, which means in practice that they can lock you out of public services that they gate access to.
BTW: overthinking is how society moves forward :)
squeegmeister
Because the owner of said tool is a white nationalist
frumplestlatz
I think you’ve confused HN for BlueSky.
throwa356262
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
I've been wondering why ~everyone hasn't already been doing this, so my guess is that Twitter's API doesn't allow it.
abletonlive
Because mastadon is not relevant to anybody but the people on HN. It's 2026, I really can't believe HN is still stuck on mastadon.
parasti
Why even keep using zombie Twitter? I used to scroll Twitter a lot but deleted my account back when. Literally any other social network seems more appealing these days, and not by a small margin.
aucisson_masque
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.
Markoff
I think you mean https://twitterwebviewer.com/en which was also taken down anyway
I ditched xcancel for redirectors like https://twit.0r.cx/
or
CodeWriter23
Good:
Insta requiring login Facebook requiring login
Bad:
X requiring login
lapkaaaa
Why would anyone use any xitter service voluntarily at this point
user43928
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
Or get this: you could read news if that's what you're interested in.
Social media isn't news. It's entertainment.
user43928
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
If you're interested in being entertained, continue to consume. If you want to learn about science, setup a system to consume Arxiv.
TiredOfLife
> Social media isn't news
What is? TV, Radio, Newspapers, Town square, are all entertainment
Freedumbs
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.
butlike
The MOMENT xcancel gets shut down, someone should sue the president for putting official communication on a closed platform.
jayknight
Is he there again? I thought he did everything on his own service, whatever it's called.
mococa
the president? I think all presidents does the same.
xyst
Then take ownership lil bro. Any of those scumbag lawyers will be happy to take your money to do whatever you want.
zem
I wonder if part of the lawsuit required them to link to twitter - it doesn't seem like a very on-brand thing to do.
redbell
> You can find the content you were looking for on the original website:
> Continue to X
This was hard to swallow for me! Why you are redirecting to X, which is the exact opposite of what you are offering?! Don't get me wrong, I use XCancel and Nitter regularly an I like them, it just hits hard!
okeuro49
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
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?
sourcecodeplz
wtf the guy payed what 40billion for this website?
yes, he can enforce whatever ToS he wants .
aaroninsf
Surprised there are still people who think the issue with "X" is that it is a bad product.
It is a bad product, and it is pathological in the way all degraded social media platforms are bad.
But it's also worse than those others, in well documented ways; and it's long past time anyone with integrity found alternatives.
The failure of the "AI" industry to do so is an indictment and serious red flag.
pogue
Any details about what's going on? Is Nitter/their Github still up?
chinathrow
Has anyone ever succeeded going up against Elon legally?
mitxela
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.
solarkraft
So X is down again. Oh well.
VCFundedGenYer
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.
outside1234
Why are people still using X? I mean seriously people, move on and stop using this closed ecosystem that is propaganda around elections.
ck2
every official government entity needs to get off X
every local, state and federal entity
nothing published there can be read logged out or archived
has to be violating law if not best practices
darkwi11ow
Another "victory" for the freedom of information.
krembo
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
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.
joshcsimmons
Good.
X is the public square. The algorithm is superior to any other social media site out there right now. They are right to charge for the API and right to shut down impostor sites.
What did they say around 2020? If you don't like it - BUILD YOUR OWN.
worik
> X is the public square
> They are right to charge for the API
I might just leave that there...
I know it’s hard for some people (for understandable reasons), but at some point we have to ignore the X site completely and make politicians and public services/institutions aware that some people do not have or want access to the site. That is the only way anything might change someday. Maybe I’m just being naive here, but what else can you do?
xcancel was amazing and I hope they can continue in some way. But since I have no actual need to go to the X site, I choose to completely ignore it, regardless of who posts what there. Most important things will be in the news anyway or you just pick it up from talking to other people.