8 ms·
Tell HN: X stopped requiring authentication, nitter works again
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bravetraveler 2y agoHas it? I see this: Instance has been rate limited. Use another instance or try again later.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoPotentially related: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983#issuecomment-1683134811 https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983#issuecomment-168... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38970676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38970676
- bloopernova 2y agoLinked GitHub comment is from August 2023.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoEnablement mechanism; as fallingsquirrel mentions, there are adversarial countermeasures that continue to take place as X updates access requirements on a whim. I assume the "cat and mouse" game to continue as long as X operates. Shoutout to those putting the effort in, and anyone archiving along the way. Edit: I'm unsure how many tech folks are left at X, but publicly available information indicates that the org is in financial peril and its owner is unable to pay the liabilities coming due out of their personal finances [1] without liquidating public equity components of their wealth. It should be assumed that X could shut down at any time, without notice, and any data that has not be archived will be lost to time. I am not attempting to talk about anything here except "this data is at risk, this system should not be treated as if there is any permanence." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41270878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41270878
- self_awareness 2y agoThe amount of opinions predicting imminent destruction of X in the year forces me to treat every comment of type "any time now" with a grain of salt. Also, it's not like other X-like clones (Mastodon) are any different. Mastodon loses replies even if every server is running correctly.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoI’m not predicting when, I am simply advocating to be prepared if it disappears. Mastodon activity can be archived in the Internet Archive, X not always.
- Waterluvian 2y agoI applaud people who do whatever is possible to work around an issue. But it just gives me tremendous anxiety to imagine trying to run a product using hacks like “proxy thousands of guest accounts” This feels like those hilarious and fascinating projects to glue together free tier services or use YouTube or email for data storage or whatnot.
- mananaysiempre 2y agoI mean, we used to call this "adversarial interoperability" (and now half of the time it’s evil scraping or some such, with Cloudflare selling countermeasures...).
- lolinder 2y agoI tried using nitter the other day to view my utility company's tweets and got that message on three different instances before finally giving up. Twitter doesn't work any more without an account, and it's high time we in the tech world led out in refusing to participate in a platform that deliberately locks its content up behind an auth wall. Twitter links don't belong on HN, convoluted sometimes-functional workarounds notwithstanding.
- dumbo-octopus 2y agoYou can view an accounts tweets without logging in.
- lolinder 2y agoThat's new as of the last 48 hours, and threads still don't work. When they restore threading I'll stop flagging Twitter links.
- dumbo-octopus 2y agoNo, it’s not. I’ve been viewing tweets on profiles for months now, all without an account. It is accurate that threads don’t work. I don’t particularly care about follow ups, if it was important they should have said it at the top level. People making a bunch of lede burying 1/N threads and expecting the masses to wade through Twitter’s molasses UI to get to the damn point is why I left.
- lolinder 2y ago> I’ve been viewing tweets on profiles for months now, all without an account. And I tried to visit my utility's tweets Friday night and got a sign in page. And I just tried again and I once again can't see profiles. Maybe it's just inconsistent in enforcing the login on profiles?
- dumbo-octopus 2y ago
- fallingsquirrel 2y agoReally now? Please don't credit X for this. Nitter operators are working hard behind the scenes to keep as many usable IPs and accounts in operation as they can. Give credit where credit is due.
- hkt 2y agoThis is nice and all, but also let's not forget that X can arbitrarily undo this decision too. Remember folks, fediverse.
- OutOfHere 2y agoX will keep playing games to optimize their user count. I suggest not falling for these games. I have already Xed out X from my life.
- paulnpace 2y agoI thought this the point of nitter?
- moralestapia 2y ago[flagged]
- mikeyouse 2y agoAccording to Musk, we're going to have full self driving cars in negative 8 years so maybe look to independent parties when assessing claims that directly impact the wealth of the people making them.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- srid 2y agoSame. They do need to fix the For You feed though. Lots of engagement farming and outrage-y content, despite vehement muting.
- yborg 2y agoMost of the HN crowd is the long tail. The vast majority will continue to use whatever mass surveillance/monetization platform their friends use and so news outlets, government bodies, etc. will continue to post on that platform. You can either throw in the towel and join the masses or continue to use technical means of circumvention to access information there when necessary.
- ffsm8 2y agoVery, very few average people actually use Twitter/X It's significants was always massively overstated in tech circles and various echo chambers.
- dragontamer 2y agoIt's not working for me... I'm guessing it was working an hour ago when this was first posted? -------- EDIT: I dunno what happened. I tried again right now and it looks like it's working. Maybe the first page cache had issues or something on my phone?
- lopkeny12ko 2y ago[flagged]
- keiddifnckfn 2y ago[flagged]
- electrondood 2y ago[flagged]
- lopkeny12ko 2y agoOk, in that case, why do you use X or Nitter at all?
- clot27 2y agobecause good folks are still on that app
- lopkeny12ko 2y agoDo you not see the inherent contradiction here? You want to consume good content on X but you don't want to sign up for an account out of protest because you don't like the owner. You can't have it both ways. So instead you make the experience 100x more complicated for yourself by using a network of proxies to consume the content using other people's accounts. Make it make sense?
- therouwboat 2y agoAtleast I do this often, I might buy stuff from store further away, just because I don't like the local store or I might scrape and download tutorial videos, that I bought, because I don't like their webplayer.
- wkat4242 2y agoIt makes a lot of sense because those proxies disarm the privacy invasion done by twitter. It's not just about its owner. I personally have never used an account even before musk. It's not about principle. At least not for me, I don't really have principles when dealing with big business anyway. They certainly don't when dealing with me. I don't just do this with Twitter but with a whole lot of other services too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41287271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41287271 I'm not running my own nitter because I don't really care about X enough. Probably use it once a month if not less.
- sva_ 2y agoThere are some nitter instances that work, but they probably just use a lot of accounts. Posting them on the frontpage may not contribute to their longevity.
- mgiannopoulos 2y agoA couple of these instances have been working for several weeks now. They don’t always have recent data and have resource limits , but they work.
- hypeatei 2y agoI don't understand the attraction to Twitter especially after Musk took over. If you're not logged in, the site barely works which prevents a lot of people from seeing your post or staying up-to-date. I thought for sure the rebrand + enshittification would completely kill it but I guess some are still latching on for some reason.
- criddell 2y agoIt’s not Twitter itself, it’s the people and conversations. Probably the same reason you use HN.
- badsectoracula 2y ago> some are still latching on for some reason. Reason being the network effect. I'd rather use Mastodon but everyone i'd follow posts on Twitter - even the people i follow on Mastodon at best put the same posts on Twitter and -way more often than not- barely put anything on Mastodon.
- hypeatei 2y agoYeah, I thought the network effect would be "wow this site is even more garbage than before" and then go somewhere else, but I guess not.
- viraptor 2y agoIt did happen. We just learned that the networks in network effect are not that well connected. For example most of the security community did migrate to Mastodon. But there are many groups that make up Twitter and lots of them stayed.
- kmeisthax 2y agoThere's a few communities stubbornly remaining on Twitter for some reason. In particular, communities built around anything coming out of Japan - e.g. rhythm games, anime, or vtubers.
- toyg 2y ago
- clot27 2y agoNo it doesn't, try xcancel.com instead, works most of the time
- Aaronn 2y agoThat's literally an instance of Nitter
- mamonster 2y agoI've been using nitter.poast.org for the last 3-4 months at least. It works fine 90% of the time, but sometimes there are too many people trying to use it and the connection gets timed out. If you refresh 5-6 times, it usually becomes fine.
- criley2 2y ago[flagged]
- artursapek 2y agoThat’s not what I see lol
- ZeroGravitas 2y agoMy, hopeful, thought is that normal people don't like all this stuff and the extremists don't have the ability to moderate themselves, especially as their exposure to other stuff affects their sense of what is normal or moderate. It's a digital version of a Trump speech. Maybe if he could stick to specific pre-approved lies he'd do better, but it's more fun to attack people.
- qingcharles 2y agoIt depends on how you curate your feed. I have one account for literature and it is pretty much free of any junk in the feed.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 38 2y ago[flagged]
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoShould the tittle be changed? The link doesn't explicitly say what the OP says.
- vlaaad 2y ago*Twitter stopped requiring authentication.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- eastbound 2y agoFunny how we talked about it 24hrs ago on HN. Does Elon Musk read HN and did he suddenly realized how much of a mistake it had been, how much it harmed the platform to require login, moving people on to Mastodon or others? Seems typical from him to move in 24hrs.
- a2128 2y agoReally? I just tried visiting a friend's twitter page in incognito mode and it just redirects to the sign-in page. Only big accounts like @X, @POTUS or @iaeaorg seem to not trigger the auth wall
- wkat4242 2y agoIt's kinda funny that the link proposed here is only ads for Twitter premium, lol
- maxglute 2y agoThere's still a few working nitter instances, but they're far from reliable.
- raxxorraxor 2y agoMakes it much more viable to be the platform Twitter tried to be from the start. It seemingly was such a bad move to require auth...
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agoone of the few online sites where "rate limited" errors are a feature and not a bug - as far as I am concerned.