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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 practic
by simondotau 2mo ago
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.
- somedude895 2mo ago[flagged]
- MPSimmons 2mo agoIt seems intellectually dishonest to blanket-label any principled stance that you disagree with as "virtue signaling".
- pickleRick243 2mo agoI think the claim is that the principled stance would be to ignore all X content.
- ceejayoz 2mo agoWhich is just the "yet you participate in society" meme again.
- bbg2401 2mo agoNo, 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 2mo ago> 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.
- azan_ 2mo agoI 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 2mo agowhy is that? Why can't you just use it in read only fashion?
- fabian2k 2mo agoNo 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.
- pickleRick243 2mo agosorry, maybe I wasn't clear. What I mean is that you can create an account to view posts and not reply, i.e. have a lurker account.
- frogulis 2mo agoI 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.
- deleted 2mo ago
- cudder 2mo agoNot 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 2mo ago>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.
- Kotlopou 2mo agoIt'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 2mo ago[flagged]
- smaudet 2mo agoAnd 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 2mo ago> 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.
- smaudet 2mo agoYour "counter" is nonsensical - if you are referring to the concept of a logical "red herring", something to distract by introducing an irrelevant topic, this is not that. Your comment pertained to your (dislike of) use of wikipedia in contrast to the relevant site (X.com). My comment pertains to both of the relevant websites you had related (wikipedia is no more related to x.com than governments, neighborhoods, etc. that you have brought up), and to the specific reason why x.com came to be (it's current "authorship"), and how the directly related collary (grok) is not the thing you randomly brought up... Which if there were a red herring here, it would be wikipedia (as it is not a site whose primary purpose is as a commentary website, nor it used in the same fashion)... But for the topic you specifically brought up, this is entirely relevant, namely, your dislike of another website, and it's direct relation to the general topic at hand. As for the rest, further nonsense. I can just as easily flip the subjects in each statement and they will remain true...my (factual) statement stands.
- sunaurus 2mo agoFor 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.
- Leonard_of_Q 2mo agoI 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.
- mitxela 2mo agoSuppose 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.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- madeofpalk 2mo agoYou 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 2mo agoWhat if the post is like "we discovered AGI (for real this time, not clickbait)" - will you pretend AGI wasn't discovered?
- addandsubtract 2mo agoThat would A) still be clickbait, and B) be posted on a corporate blog, not just X.
- fWEFVEEGLKJH 2mo ago> (for real this time, not clickbait) That sounds likes something a clickbait author would write.
- mahboi 2mo ago20 weird tricks Anthropic used to make AGI that will shock you
- madeofpalk 2mo agoIf it's important enough, it'll be elsewhere.
- dandellion 2mo agoI 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).
- LightBug1 2mo agoI'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.
- slowmovintarget 2mo agoNot 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.
- pibaker 2mo agoI 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 2mo agoLike 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.
- vrganj 2mo agoWhy 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 2mo ago> 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.
- sureglymop 2mo agoIt'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.
- simondotau 2mo agoMaybe if people didn't make services like XCancel, the impracticality of X would be more salient.
- mitxela 2mo agoIt 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.
- roryirvine 2mo agoNitter existed well before Twitter first experimented with requiring a login wall to read posts. People used it because it provided a lighter, cleaner interface, because it avoided Twitter's user tracking, and because it was reasonably useful without Javascript. (I don't disagree that X has moved beyond the pale, but Nitter was a real boon in the past)
- nativeit 2mo agoThat assumes the people who need XCancel most are aware of its existence, but from what I can tell only folks like us are.
- mitxela 2mo agoIn the time before xcancel, nobody was aware of xcancel, that's correct.
- johannes1234321 2mo agoThere 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.
- phyzome 2mo agoToday, for me, the reason was because I wanted to pull up a years-old tweet that had a video of a local road flooding.
- xyst 2mo agoI don’t use Twitter but assholes continue to reference posts on this cancerous site. That’s why this service exists lil bro
- m3kw9 2mo agoYeah i don't get it, using xcancel is like "that'll show ya" in a weak manner. You are seeing the same tweet.
- fwip 2mo agoTrue, but with Xcancel, you don't have to sign into X, and you're also denying X some user data and engagement metrics.
- tjoff 2mo agoBecause for some reason people link to it here.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- muyuu 2mo agoXcancel helps people migrate away from X, or simply stay outside of it. The fact that X is trying to shut them down, plus the fact that they silo replies and interactions in the first place, should be a good hint that X themselves don't regard that degree of openness to work in their favour.
- davkan 2mo agoThey have something I want. Usually that’s to check an account for a status update on a service or organization, or view a link that’s been sent to me. I was fine with occasionally wading into the shit pile for something I want. It’s fine, the door is open and I don’t live there. Get in get out. But now they want me have a shit address and shit suit and a shitmail. They want me to say hey its me mr shit can you let me in so can I have some of that delicious shit? Instead I think I’ll just put on a hazmat suit and steal the few pieces I want from their shit pile and get out. Boycotting them is pointless. Holding to your principals does nothing but hinder your own usage of the internet and does not help bring about the end of X or whoever else. The 0.5% of X users using xcancel disappearing overnight would have no impact. These monoliths of Internet consolidation are not worth our consideration. Steal their content, block their ads, get on with your life.