Tell HN: PayPal Blocks GrapheneOS

If you follow specific profiles/channels/pages and just read the feeds from them as if they were news, you are removing the toxic part (mostly infinite scrolling) and getting a resourceful feature.

If for some reason someone you need to follow is on X (twitter) only, you have to choose between losing a source or compromise with the platform.

I personally belong to the former group (and possibly you do, too), leaving behind sources, but not everyone likes it that way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

secretsatan•4h ago

But it’s still supporting a man who’s a toxic as they come and working hard to distort reality and undermine democracy, you won’t wash that toxic off.

philipallstar•3h ago

Allowing more voices on the platform might've made it more toxic (who knows - you're not the judge of toxic) but at least we have left- and right-wing toxicity, instead of only left-wing. And we get a lot of additional non-toxic voices, which was the actual point.

secretsatan•2h ago

You think there wasn’t right wing toxicity before?

philipallstar•2h ago

Again, there's no point using a word like "toxicity".

ImPostingOnHN•2h ago

> Allowing more voices on the platform might've made it more toxic (who knows - you're not the judge of toxic)

Allowing the nazi voices definitely did. And while that dude isn't the judge of what is toxic, a majority of people are.

I don't know what you personally want to call it when someone posts condolences about a tragedy or massacre killing many people in their home country, and the nazis pop up to reply "you're next, [racial slur omitted]". Pretty sure most people would call that toxic, so it's toxic, even if a small minority of people disagree.

nxor5

alexnewman•4h ago

And hacker news is a diverse pluralistic utopia

spiderfarmer•4h ago

Whataboutisms do nothing to refute genuine criticisms.

mieses•4h ago

what about throwing stones in glass houses now?

phoghed•3h ago

If someone thinks Twitter is an echo chamber to the extent they can’t fathom how people tolerate it (and it isn’t just an appeal for easy upvotes), but they happily post on HN, they’ll be able to clear up their initial confusion with a bit of self reflection.

VCFundedGenYer•3h ago

I thought "reddit moments" were bad, I never thought there'd be something worse.

docdeek•4h ago

There’s likely some information on there that some people must want to share if services like Xcancel and Nitter exist and allow you to share it without being on X itself.

expedition32•2h ago

There are unfortunately a few times a year that I need to read something posted on Instagram, Facebook or X.

And they all require accounts that I don't want to have.

strus•3h ago

Sir, you are controlling the buttons you push. I.e. it's up to you who you follow and what exactly you read on Twitter - just like any other social network.

There are news that are circulating much faster on Twitter than anywhere else (for example about war in Ukraine). There are people and companies that post only on Twitter and nowhere else (especially in tech).

vvillena•3h ago

> it's up to you who you follow and what exactly you read on Twitter

The Twitter experience is a highly algorithmic feed where tweets from the people you follow are not guaranteed to be in chronological order, or even shown to you at all. The default experience also mixes it other tweets "you might be interested in", that is, things they want you to see.

There's also the fact people could freely see tweets and follow discussion threads, that's now locked behind an account requirement.

tome•2h ago

> The Twitter experience is a highly algorithmic feed ... that is, things they want you to see.

Not on Nitter! Which is the point, for me at least.

angoragoats•3h ago

Sir, you are voluntarily using a website owned by an unstable Nazi, who purchased it because his feelings were hurt and people were making fun of him there. Now his brain droppings make it into everyone’s feed by default, from what I understand.

> There are news that are circulating much faster on Twitter than anywhere else (for example about war in Ukraine).

I am certain that Twitter is not the only place where you can find these updates, if you really care for up-to-the-minute news. But I don’t.

> There are people and companies that post only on Twitter and nowhere else (especially in tech).

These people and companies are (knowingly or unknowingly) supporting a Nazi billionaire and they are not worth paying any attention to until they change their behavior.

phoghed•3h ago

Reddit is worse imo just because of how the site is structured and the power of mods.

philipallstar•3h ago

Yes - community notes were a surprisingly decent alternative to more gameable authority structures.

jandrese•2h ago

Community notes tend to be a day late and a dollar short though.

philipallstar•2h ago

But still the best solution so far.

angoragoats•3h ago

Option A: You occasionally encounter power tripping mods on a site where you are free to create your own community and become the mod yourself.

Option B: a power tripping drug-addled Nazi billionaire owns the entire site and can change the site behavior for every user on a whim, with no recourse.

This doesn’t seem like a hard choice to make.

phoghed•2h ago

An echo chamber isn’t inherently bad, and moderation is required to maintain any semblance of a well functioning online community.

Reddit can be good if you stay in your niche and off the default subs. Twitter is good if you similarly curate your experience and don’t let it push you into garbage.

I don’t use either much anymore.

philipallstar•3h ago

> Who TF wants to use Twitter? Its the worst echo chamber out there.

It's certainly more diverse than Bluesky, if this is an echo chamber-measuring contest.

tonyhart7•2h ago

>>Who TF wants to use Twitter? Its the worst echo chamber out there.

>>then proceed to use bluesky

lmao

Gareth321•2h ago

It's crazy to see the same people accusing X of being an echo-chamber suggesting Bluesky without a hint of irony or interospection.

haunter•3h ago

Unbeatable (just like reddit) if you want live sport replays. /r/soccer uploads goals before it happens on the broadcast I watch on my TV

Also the Asian community (Korea, Japan etc) is incredibly strong on Twitter. They don't really care about the whole politics around the platform.

majorchord•2h ago

Hundreds of millions of active daily users. Snobby tech nerds who care about privacy and morals are a niche of a niche, relatively speaking.

sliqqq•2h ago

Everybody who's not totally limited in their mindsets. Twitter/X is uncensored. I think open minds who are hungry for the raw, real truth prefer such platform, rather than one that's regulated by one political party of one particular country.

kova12•2h ago

It is censored

teiferer•2h ago

It doesn't become more true if you claim that multiple times around here. X under Musk is well documented to censor widely. It's just that the direction of censorship has shifted under him, so your particular bubble might get more left alone now.

> hungry for the raw, real truth

Haha sure. Why not go to the original where Tweets are actually literally called Truths?

jubilanti•2h ago

If X is so open, why do I have to register an account to see practically anything? Why are they banning mirrors? If an open source project banned mirroring, there'd be an outrage.

Why did Elon ban PaulG and many for posting a link to Mastodon?

Why did so many get suspended for sharing the location of Elon's private jet?

Why did Elon ban a journalist after reporting a dossier on JD Vance? https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-dossier-leak-hack-iran-ken...

Why did Elon ban a journalist who interviewed the guy who hacked a conservative activist? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/twitter-suspende...

Why did Elon ban a journalist for reporting on Tesla? https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/15/23512158/elon-musk-twi...

iamnothere•2h ago

The point of services like this are to access the content without actually using the service and feeding them data for ads.

If you aren’t a polyglot, the only ways to follow news about global conflicts and non-Western politics are Twitter or Telegram. Pick your poison.

himata4113•4h ago

urgh, there goes my automatic redirect... any alternatives?

Although, I don't see how this will hold up in court as they're pretty much an archive-like site hosting UGC.

r721•4h ago

>any alternatives?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49449576

r721•4h ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437283 (1149 comments)

matesz•3h ago

Ex-x account holder here. Even if the world is going to fall and details about this even will be accessible exclusively behind X login wall, I am not setting up the account there again, NO WAY.

I wholeheartedly recommend you do the same - remove your account and forget about it. Almost certainly you won't miss it, as I didn't miss it. And there is a big chance you will get a big sight of relief, as I did.

If you really must, use https://twitterwebviewer.com/ which imo has better interface than Nitter.

Banditoz•3h ago

I disagree. Nitter's big pull was lightweight SSR, this site is not that. Nitter also actually _looks like_ Twitter more than this site!

0xblinq•3h ago

I do want to remove my account there.

But when I was doing it, I got a big warning that anyone could come up and register that handle for themselves. So I instead ended up just deleting every post, my personal details, and left the account alone (not using it anymore).

I know they do this intentionally (it's bad intentions all over the place on social networks nowadays, except HN, of course).

I'm terrified of somebody else just creating the account with the same handle I used to have, and impersonate me across old friends and contacts.

What do you suggest?

bean469•2h ago

You can just inform your friends that you will be deleting your twitter account

0xblinq•

garo-pro•3h ago

It's quite unfortunate, a lot of people or organisations I am interested in - AI for example - only post on X, and perhaps it's only a matter of time until services like bird.makeup also get taken down. Also, accessibility wise it's sad too, X's web interface is not the best out there and without login you cannot do really much.

alpineman•3h ago

Is it so hard for them to crosspost automatically to all platforms? I always wonder why they don't post elsewhere in this day and age

dec0dedab0de•3h ago

If AI really is democratizing technology, it won’t be long before we get back to everyone having a personal website.

I remember blowing everyone’s mind when i wrote a php script to scrape my bands myspace to keep our website up to date with show details. It was like a magic trick.

That sort of power is in the hands of the masses now, they just don’t know it yet.

maelito•3h ago

Just switch to Bsky.app or mu.social (european version, same global network).

embedding-shape•3h ago

I'm well aware of what bsky.app is, and for others, there is a "Help" link at least, except it's not super clear. But on mu.social, how can I learn about what it actually is? It's missing a "What is mu.social?" link or something. Ironically, they have a "Donate" link/button, but no "About".

SSLy•2h ago

https://hello.mu.social/

embedding-shape•2h ago

How do you find that from https://mu.social? Starting to wonder if I'm slightly blind.

MadameMinty•1h ago

Click either "Privacy" or "Terms" on the right, and then go home. Trivial and intuitive. /s

embedding-shape•1h ago

Ah, they've done the "app on root domain, information on sub-domain" move rather than the classic "information on root domain, app on sub-domain", a brave choice indeed :)

nicole_express•3h ago

My hope is that this reduces the relevancy of Twitter; a lot of people who consider it a moral reason not use X.com proper end up still using Nitter/Xcancel to keep an eye on discussions, which has helped reduce the reason to leave the site.

But in reality I suspect that group isn't actually large enough to have much impact, especially since some will just give in and register on the Everything App.

OhMeadhbh•3h ago

I was a twitter beta tester in 2005 when it was a SMS to intarwebs gateway. IMHO, it stopped being relevant sometime around 2008.

ljm•2h ago

Going cold turkey on Twitter (and Facebook and the like) was amazing, but the problem for a while was that you'd still end up browsing it by proxy because it would all get screenshotted for Reddit.

It's been a long time since I've seen them (thank god), but the worst culprits were subs like facepalm, white people twitter, leopards ate my face, and pretty much any left-leaning or liberal sub.

They did a fantastic job of platforming the ideologies they stand against simply by screenshotting the most vocal advocates and talking heads and sharing them so commenters could get angry. That shit lived rent free in the subscribers' heads to an unhealthy degree and for everybody who hate-engaged, there were plenty more who saw it as an introduction.

One day I'll do for Reddit what I did for the rest of social media but for now it's easy enough to stay off Popular and All and just stick with the smaller subs with a specific subject matter.

OhMeadhbh•3h ago

I stopped virtually all social media (except commenting on YouTube videos and telling people they're wrong in HN comments) years ago. No twitter, no mastadon, no bsky, no facebook. I keep hearing myspace is going to re-launch and I would consider getting an account there for the purposes of irony.

But... instead of tweeting for an hour a day, I spend that hour reading long form dead tree format texts. I'm not saying this is what you should do, just offering it as an observation that it is an option.

mvdwoord•2h ago

You are so awesome for that.

freewilly23•2h ago

yeah i have been doing the same for a few months now.. deleted all social media accounts and blocked sites like reddit, twitter etc., so i don't get into the trap of 'only quickly checking'. hn is the only social media site i still visit.

it's done wonders for my mental.

ttoinou•2h ago

Somebody should relaunch that dead tree format into a new tree format

contravariant•2h ago

No need, it's like emacs, it has a stable cult following that keeps the whole thing going even as alternatives come and go.

SaltyBackendGuy•2h ago

Yizahi•2h ago

Well, I'll just don't read Xitter then (not that I did it anyway). Let that dump bubble and isolate itself, if they wish it so hard.

mnls•2h ago

You can still selfhost it. You might lose the privacy benefit and you got to have an account to get session token etc but the tracking is way less than using X's app/browser and Nitter is extremely lightweight on resources both at server level and at client.

ChrisArchitect•2h ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437283

Related since:

Twitter Viewer

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49449576

neuronsong•2h ago

Stopped using social media a few years ago (deleted all content and stopped using the accounts). Finally got annoyed enough and wrote my own NopeMod in tampermonkey last year that scans all pages I visit and disables URLs of links I do NOT want to visit. X/twitter/facebook/etc...

progbits•1h ago

Proposal: Ban twitter domain for HN submissions.

Reasoning: inaccessible to HN users. OP should find another source or mirror.

tistoon•1h ago

Proposal: if you don't have X account and live in a cave, don't even come post on HN. This is about news. X is now a big player with latest top news in many topics.

MisterTea•55m ago

My cave has running water and gigabit internet you insensitive clod.

Abdul Ballout drove a car into CSD-goers in Berlin on 25.7. Were affected parties able to discuss better on Twitter or Bluesky? As philipallstar wrote, in a chamber of only left-wing voices, the discussion is not better.

spiderfarmer•4h ago

> you have to choose between losing a source or compromise with the platform

I thought so too. But after leaving 3 years ago it turns out: Not a single source is that important.

Also, as the importance increases, the likelihood of seeing the same information outside that hellhole increases linearly.

vvillena•3h ago

The platform compromise is a new thing. One of the reasons people used Twitter was its open nature, enabling its use as a bulletin board where anyone could post a message and being sure that the message link was free for anyone to see. This isn't the case anymore, as X forces people to make accounts to see messages.

baxuz•2h ago

It's incredible how this comment is downvoted for stating facts

teiferer•2h ago

Even facts can be stated in many different ways.

dadoum•3h ago

A half of Twitter's point for me was the trending section, that you don't have any control on now (you used to be able to disable the personalization of that section but since X you cannot, if you want the actual trends you need to go in a subsection). The whole section is full personalized ragebaits (because at some point I used to reply to those), now it just makes the experience of trends quite unbearable and I can't change that.

jandrese•2h ago

Even if you tried to ignore ragebait the X algorithm is going to prioritize them because it is highly tuned to promote high engagement content. Any given feed is going to have white supremacy, flat Earth, climate change denial, immigrant hate, vaccine harms, and of course Elon shilling for his AI products.

OroPla•2h ago

Twitter doesn't really work without an account. Projects like Nitter solved that.

Especially annoying when Twitter is a source for something.

vintermann•2h ago

I'm pretty sure the Ukraine war news on Twitter are mostly what's bubbled up from less accessible forums (like Telegram channels).

This site is a good alternative for tech news.

iamnothere•2h ago

A number of decent news accounts cross post on Twitter. I wish they would pick a platform other than Telegram or Twitter but it is what it is.

A lot of non-Western accounts were recently demonetized so maybe they will move elsewhere. Although the best ones don’t seem to be doing it for money, they usually have some personal grudge.

dist-epoch•2h ago

> a power tripping drug-addled Nazi billionaire

Are you anti-drugs? Do you think drug users are bad people or using drugs is condemnable? I'm asking because anti-fascists are typically pro-drugs. So I'm confused.

vintermann•2h ago

Were you on drugs when you wrote that post?

You don't think drug users are bad people, so surely that's just a neutral question...

Or maybe there are times where drug use can still be a problem, whether it makes people bad people or not.

Don't drink and drive. Don't do drugs and buy media companies.

dist-epoch•2h ago

I don't see any qualification on parent post, only saying Musk is bad because he's using drugs.

But you are right, so you agree that frequent drug users should not be offered jobs with responsibilities because for example they might drug and drive.

vintermann•2h ago

Reddit voted itself out of my attention by requiring login for old.reddit.com browsing.

D-Machine•2h ago

You can work around this (for now) with the Firefox Old Reddit Redirect extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re.... Not that you're missing much...

Itoldmyselfso•12m ago

Redlib provides an even better experience than old.reddit.com, while also being truly private.

Yizahi•2h ago

Default Reddit mainpage is strictly what you subscribe to. And from a tech point of view, Reddit has old. CSS, it has tree style comments with sorting and collapsing, it has no dumb character limits, and on big screens it properly fills the screen with content instead of dumb emptiness or fluff or just infogarbage (do people remember that hashtags are literally just a useless character dumps, born out of the limitations of the SMS tech).

So no, Reddit is not worse than Xitter both on social and tech merit.

phoghed•1h ago

In terms of echo chamber, which is what I was responding to, it’s absolutely worse.

You may has well have replied that, in fact, its color scheme is more red than Twitter.

mathw•2h ago

1) it absolutely isn't "uncensored"

2) absolute freedom to post whatever you like and have it shoved in people's faces by the algorithm is harmful

3) usually when people are "hungry for the raw, real truth" they're actually chasing a bunch of conspiracy theories

That doesn't work. Many people following me on Twitter only know me from Twitter and I don't have other means to reach out. Some others I'm not even interested in talking to them (not friends, just ex co-workers, ex gf, etc).

mentalgear•2h ago

Pin a post that you leave X (or any major SM): say its your last post because they have become a greedy, amoral cesspool and add links where they can find you instead.

0xblinq•2h ago

How does that even work if I'm removing my account?

Henchman21•1h ago

You’ve said you won’t because you want to protect the name?

rbwkap•3h ago

Fortunately it is almost impossible to set up a new account. The sign-up process is totally broken, links in the docs are stale and everything looks vibe coded. And they want a phone number and possibly an ID.

Nitter is good software, I have no idea how Twitter users put up with this garbage fire.

embedding-shape•3h ago

> I wholeheartedly recommend you do the same - remove your account and forget about it.

I'm not sure this is a great idea, if you have a somewhat unique username or you use that same username elsewhere.

Multiple times, me and others have changed usernames on some platform, and either immediately when you rename, or few seconds afterwards, some squatter will grab your old username, and most platforms don't care about helping you recover anything, so suddenly you've opened up phishing/spam venues associated with your old username.

Personally I'm not sure what the solution is to this, I've resorted to just not deleting accounts where this might happen, but leave the account inactive and unused.

mentalgear•2h ago

Just do the obvious thing: stop posting there, don't view it anymore, and pin a post that you leave X (or any major SM) because they have become a greedy, amoral cesspool and links where they can find you now.

sliqqq•2h ago

Why? X is one of the rare uncensored publishing / communication networks we have. Do you prefer living in a highly regulated, censored pre-gated world where information is hidden if somebody "feels offended" by it or state / ngo actors dont want something to go public?

The brainwashing against free, open, uncensored and community-corrected platforms is crazy.

altcognito•2h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_X

post-it•2h ago

Crazy thing to write on a post about X censoring mirrors.

kova12•2h ago

It is censored. They just don't tell you what they censor you for. You need to post, and then your account gets locked for bogus reason, and that's how you know what not no say. Like in Carlin's joke about words you are not supposed to say, NOBODY GIVES YOU A LIST!

curt15•2h ago

Thanks for the lulz.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/journalists-who-wrote-ab...

teiferer•2h ago

Free and open until Elon Musk doesn't like what you wrote.

n4r9•2h ago

Is it really free, open and uncensored if it suspends journalists for covering the ElonJet story, and artificially bumps Elon's own tweets?

jubilanti•2h ago

If X is so open, why do I have to register an account to see practically anything?

Why did Elon ban PaulG and many for posting a link to Mastodon?

Why did so many get suspended for sharing the location of Elon's private jet?

Why did Elon ban a journalist after reporting a dossier on JD Vance? https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-dossier-leak-hack-iran-ken...

Why did Elon ban a journalist who interviewed the guy who hacked a conservative activist? https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/twitter-suspende...

Why did Elon ban a journalist for reporting on Tesla? https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/15/23512158/elon-musk-twi...

stvltvs•1h ago

Censorship of things I don't like or don't care about doesn't count. /s

phplovesong•30m ago

Well looking at Elon and his nazi salute then, yeah its "uncensored". Its a clusterfuck of a platform.

teiferer•2h ago

How come twitterwebviewer.com is still up? What do they do differently? Or is it official?

arprocter•1h ago

Thanks for the site - Whac-A-Mole it is, then

Fortunately their URLs aren't obfuscated, so it works with Redirector

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/

unsupp0rted•1h ago

I get loads of value from it and when I'm away I do miss it, because I'm missing information I'd rather have.

dist-epoch•2h ago

How do I follow AI news or discussions on Bsky? It's basically viewed and treated there as worse than nazi propaganda.

maelito•2h ago

This is false. What can I say more ?

JeremyNT•1h ago

Follow AI people and watch their reposts.

Starter packs can help bootstrap it. Perhaps this? [0]

A lot of the biggest boosters of AI are aligned with the politics of Musk, and so they're just going to stay on X. This means the AI discourse is far less on bsky.

[0] https://blueskystarterpack.com/starter-packs/@nimobeeren.com...

Markoff•30m ago

useless advice - Prague firemen are not on bsky, Prague public transport company is not on bsky, Czech state police is not on bsky (though at least this one seems to be unofficially on mastodon), literally no institution here use bsky

https://zpravobot.news/@PolicieCZ

maelito•9m ago

Yes that's the main problem. I'm talking to them too.

Same. My last vice is Reddit, which I really need to quit.

stvltvs•1h ago

I boycotted with the API nonsense a few years ago and noticed I didn't miss it that much. Haven't really been back since. When a web search leads me back, it seems to have gone downhill with lots of low effort and bot-ish posts.

phplovesong•32m ago

Reddit is gone. You can view it without an account. You get blocked by a popup that forces you to register. Its basically facebook at this time.

jsbisviewtiful•32m ago

I pulled back significantly on reddit in that period too. Now I probably look at it 10% tops of what I used to. After being away from it and trying to enjoy looking at it these days... It's not the same as it was and simply not very good now. Most of the good communities died off, closed or got too big, the biggest communities are too big and the quality of posts+comments has plummeted. It feels either overrun with bots or it's the alternative: idiots that post so poorly they appear to be bots.

It was fun while it lasted, but with everything going on it often feels nicer to just not look at the internet and do something else. Rage baiting, copy cat posts and spam have become so common on Insta even that's become harder to enjoy.

It's been wild to see the Dead Internet Theory mature in real time after reading about it like... 15 years or more ago.

nickburns•1h ago

Reddit is a cesspool of mediocrity and groupthink. Hope that helps.

phplovesong•33m ago

I got banned (always for some political stuff, like being too anti trump, anti isreal etc) for the Nth time so i just uninstalled the app. I browse sometimes in bed, but thats only as anon on some libreddit instance. Never poltical stuff, usually just programming and some related subreddits.

sailfast•2h ago

It’s all fine until the entire community you’re trying to participate in decides Twitter is the place to post things.

ahem

Would be great if we maybe chose someplace else to do this as a community… but I guess the eyeballs are there and that’s what is valuable to the folks posting.

commandlinefan•2h ago

I live in an HOA. The only place they post information (like when trash pickup schedules change) is on Facebook.

neuronsong•2h ago

Our HOA is forced to use an email mailing list. Enough older people who don't use facebook... and now younger people who refuse. Maybe ask for a show of hands at the next meeting. Sentiments can change overnight. Especially with the meta stuff happening at the moment.