6 ms·

If all Nitter instances get shut down, that's another reason for people to stop putting information into the Twitter/X walled-garden. Nitter has had the effect

by neilv 3y ago

If all Nitter instances get shut down, that's another reason for people to stop putting information into the Twitter/X walled-garden. Nitter has had the effect of a pressure release valve, for the people who object most to Twitter/X. Without the Nitter compromise, more people will stop linking to Twitter/X threads, indulging people who still post there, etc.

Dalewyn 3y ago
I am quite sure the people who use Nitter or otherwise detest Mysterious Twitter X are a vocal minority of people.
- timeon 3y ago
  I do not think that people without account are minority.
  - echelon 3y ago
    They just aren't the ones posting on the platform.
    - timeon 3y ago
      I have misunderstood you/OP. In this case you are right. I was commenting from perspective of someone that do not have account but came across the twitter links on sites like HN.
  - Tanoc 3y ago
    I'm struggling heavily to find the traffic statistic that I read a year or so ago, but it said that point seven to point nine percent of all Twitter traffic came from Nitter. Considering that at the time there were three different third party front ends that is no small amount, I think somewhere around thirty million visits daily.
- davorak 3y ago
  Comparing traffic, pre sale, of logged in twitter users vs traffic generated by those without accounts would give insight into what percentage of users have to take action to continue to use twitter normally. I spent a 1-2 minutes googling and could not come up with numbers though. I know I am part of the percentage of people that used to read twitter without an account, or at least not logged in, and now read twitter a trivial amount.
- tentacleuno 3y ago
  I use Twitter, and I detest it. It's mostly spam. This actually came up in a conversation yesterday, funnily enough: I'm mostly using Twitter because I'm curious as to how much worse it's going to get. So far, I've seen them allow NSFW paid-for advertisements, doxxing of well-known figures, daily crypto mention farming spam (with highly suspicious, easily-detectable patterns, spread across ~10 accounts per day), obvious engagement bait to benefit from ad-revenue sharing, fake interaction spam, and plenty more. As an excerpt, the @support account on Twitter is completely dead, too -- if I remember correctly, the last reply to an issue was around August / June of last year. So clearly they don't have the staffing needed to support... well, the support, and they seem to have issues admitting that. That becomes even more clear when you look at the spam on the platform: obvious spam patterns are completely ignored, with reports going to the wayside, and crypto / NFT spam being left up to victimize someone who doesn't know what it really is. It's quite grotesque. Even though a lot of people may use the platform, quite a substantial amount of people also speak out about how much worse Twitter has got since the acquisition -- while I have nothing against Elon Musk, I find it quite amazing how badly the platform seems to be doing ever since he's been at the helm.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    None of what you said contests what I said.
  - TheChaplain 3y ago
    I find it quite useful, with the exception of the porn ads. But I strictly follow python developers, bsd people and retro computing enthusiasts. None post any politics. I think any social media platform can be good/bad just like people in general, it all depends who you interact with.
lucb1e 3y ago
> Twitter/X walled-garden I think the MIME type should be `X-Walled-Garden/Twitter`
- teddyh 3y ago
  Internet media types (previously known as “MIME types”) with “X-” prefixes are now discouraged.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    For many in this thread, X is now discouraged as well. /s
    - lucb1e 3y ago
      I don't understand, how is this sarcasm?
      - teddyh 3y ago
        They mean that X the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, is now discouraged, since Nitter is no longer a viable method for accessing it.
xwowsersx 3y ago
I'm with you that this is disappointing, but folks who use these sorts of tools tend to be a bit naive about the impact of them going away. It's a little silly, to be honest. Best numbers I could come by is X does something like 100B impressions/day and x.com saw 1.2B visits in the month of December. Will some people stop seeing X posts on Nitter? Sure, maybe. Will it matter to X? I doubt it.
- muppetman 3y ago
  Exactly. Even the reddit blackouts etc did nothing really - sure a few people left in a huff and all that jazz, but Reddit is still trucking along happily. The only time I've seen the "eff it, we're leaving!" thing actually work was with Digg v4.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    I have seen a considerable degrading of quality on reddit since the blackouts. I use reddit for quality subject discussion in topics ranging from pressure cooking to circuit design but I also use it for general crappy banter and time wasting, and the people who would contribute useful content in the former have decreased in number while the latter have increased making the signal to noise much worse. It doesn't help that they have started placing content from more obscure subreddits onto people's front pages seemingly randomly, so people wander into places and have no idea what the culture is they are contributing to and add content which is wildly out of place. To get subject matter discussion which is reasonable I have been wandering back to bespoke forums, which isn't necessarily bad, but they still have a lot of issues. A lot of other content has moved to discord, but I won't get into how I feel about that.
  - neilv 3y ago
    Although, I'm surprised how often I'm seeing the key comments I was searching for deleted. I haven't been keeping stats, but maybe around half the time. Some Reddit metrics might've hardly noticed the blips, but if they had metrics for early-Reddit qualities, such as for smart (or clever) comments, helpful information, humor, or goodwill... I suspect those would be bad. Where they're not bad might be non-frontpage subs that are still cruising along with their earlier communities. But those communities started in earlier Reddit, and I suspect that today would not have started there.
HackerThemAll 3y ago
Don't despair. I've never heard of this Nitter, and I'm living quite a successful life.
martin82 3y ago
I think leftists who are losing their minds over Elon Musk's Twitter are a loud minority. If Nitter goes down, nothing at all will change. Twitter will continue to thrive and people will continue to use it and link to it.
- lobocinza 3y ago
  I hate that Twitter is a walled garden but I understand why it is like that today as the well has been poisoned. To be honest I gave it try and it looks like today Mastodon/Bluesky are worse and Twitter better due to the migrations.
hn1986 3y ago
i agree. Redirecting proxy for Nitter instances (alternative) https://twiiit.com/ https://twiiit.com/ https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances

by neilv 3y ago

Dalewyn 3y ago

I am quite sure the people who use Nitter or otherwise detest Mysterious Twitter X are a vocal minority of people.

timeon 3y ago
I do not think that people without account are minority.
- echelon 3y ago
  They just aren't the ones posting on the platform.
  - timeon 3y ago
    I have misunderstood you/OP. In this case you are right. I was commenting from perspective of someone that do not have account but came across the twitter links on sites like HN.
- Tanoc 3y ago
  I'm struggling heavily to find the traffic statistic that I read a year or so ago, but it said that point seven to point nine percent of all Twitter traffic came from Nitter. Considering that at the time there were three different third party front ends that is no small amount, I think somewhere around thirty million visits daily.
davorak 3y ago
Comparing traffic, pre sale, of logged in twitter users vs traffic generated by those without accounts would give insight into what percentage of users have to take action to continue to use twitter normally. I spent a 1-2 minutes googling and could not come up with numbers though. I know I am part of the percentage of people that used to read twitter without an account, or at least not logged in, and now read twitter a trivial amount.
tentacleuno 3y ago
I use Twitter, and I detest it. It's mostly spam. This actually came up in a conversation yesterday, funnily enough: I'm mostly using Twitter because I'm curious as to how much worse it's going to get. So far, I've seen them allow NSFW paid-for advertisements, doxxing of well-known figures, daily crypto mention farming spam (with highly suspicious, easily-detectable patterns, spread across ~10 accounts per day), obvious engagement bait to benefit from ad-revenue sharing, fake interaction spam, and plenty more. As an excerpt, the @support account on Twitter is completely dead, too -- if I remember correctly, the last reply to an issue was around August / June of last year. So clearly they don't have the staffing needed to support... well, the support, and they seem to have issues admitting that. That becomes even more clear when you look at the spam on the platform: obvious spam patterns are completely ignored, with reports going to the wayside, and crypto / NFT spam being left up to victimize someone who doesn't know what it really is. It's quite grotesque. Even though a lot of people may use the platform, quite a substantial amount of people also speak out about how much worse Twitter has got since the acquisition -- while I have nothing against Elon Musk, I find it quite amazing how badly the platform seems to be doing ever since he's been at the helm.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  None of what you said contests what I said.
- TheChaplain 3y ago
  I find it quite useful, with the exception of the porn ads. But I strictly follow python developers, bsd people and retro computing enthusiasts. None post any politics. I think any social media platform can be good/bad just like people in general, it all depends who you interact with.

lucb1e 3y ago

> Twitter/X walled-garden I think the MIME type should be `X-Walled-Garden/Twitter`

teddyh 3y ago
Internet media types (previously known as “MIME types”) with “X-” prefixes are now discouraged.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  For many in this thread, X is now discouraged as well. /s
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    I don't understand, how is this sarcasm?
    - teddyh 3y ago
      They mean that X the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter, is now discouraged, since Nitter is no longer a viable method for accessing it.

xwowsersx 3y ago

I'm with you that this is disappointing, but folks who use these sorts of tools tend to be a bit naive about the impact of them going away. It's a little silly, to be honest. Best numbers I could come by is X does something like 100B impressions/day and x.com saw 1.2B visits in the month of December. Will some people stop seeing X posts on Nitter? Sure, maybe. Will it matter to X? I doubt it.

muppetman 3y ago
Exactly. Even the reddit blackouts etc did nothing really - sure a few people left in a huff and all that jazz, but Reddit is still trucking along happily. The only time I've seen the "eff it, we're leaving!" thing actually work was with Digg v4.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  I have seen a considerable degrading of quality on reddit since the blackouts. I use reddit for quality subject discussion in topics ranging from pressure cooking to circuit design but I also use it for general crappy banter and time wasting, and the people who would contribute useful content in the former have decreased in number while the latter have increased making the signal to noise much worse. It doesn't help that they have started placing content from more obscure subreddits onto people's front pages seemingly randomly, so people wander into places and have no idea what the culture is they are contributing to and add content which is wildly out of place. To get subject matter discussion which is reasonable I have been wandering back to bespoke forums, which isn't necessarily bad, but they still have a lot of issues. A lot of other content has moved to discord, but I won't get into how I feel about that.
- neilv 3y ago
  Although, I'm surprised how often I'm seeing the key comments I was searching for deleted. I haven't been keeping stats, but maybe around half the time. Some Reddit metrics might've hardly noticed the blips, but if they had metrics for early-Reddit qualities, such as for smart (or clever) comments, helpful information, humor, or goodwill... I suspect those would be bad. Where they're not bad might be non-frontpage subs that are still cruising along with their earlier communities. But those communities started in earlier Reddit, and I suspect that today would not have started there.

HackerThemAll 3y ago

Don't despair. I've never heard of this Nitter, and I'm living quite a successful life.

martin82 3y ago

I think leftists who are losing their minds over Elon Musk's Twitter are a loud minority. If Nitter goes down, nothing at all will change. Twitter will continue to thrive and people will continue to use it and link to it.

lobocinza 3y ago
I hate that Twitter is a walled garden but I understand why it is like that today as the well has been poisoned. To be honest I gave it try and it looks like today Mastodon/Bluesky are worse and Twitter better due to the migrations.

hn1986 3y ago

i agree. Redirecting proxy for Nitter instances (alternative) https://twiiit.com/ https://twiiit.com/ https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances