I always use xcancel instead of X. I don't have a twitter account and I don't want to sign in. I just occasionally want to read what some people had to say about something. Even this is usually a mistake. It's probably better taken as entertainment.

My point is: companies stop making your product suck, and people won't have a reason to try and fix it for you.

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.

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

[1]: https://andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox

You can find the content you were looking for on the original website

*if you log in to an account

A big reason many people use Nitter instances is that X has become very locked down for unauthenticated users.

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.

There needs to be a free, non-ad, non-login environment people can use to access this information posted by public entities.

This comment also applies to facebook too, which I think is even worse than twitter.

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.

A nice UI around such API probably can be one-shotted with modern LLM-coding models and tools.

Or, you can go the hard way and vibecode something around buying twitter accounts (just several bucks per each) and proxies.

What I'm trying to say, that with modern tools it is incredibly easy to bypass the restrictions on reading twitter without an account, even if they manage to take down all the nitter instances, try to make finding nitter source code harder etc.

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.

regardless, no matter how hard elon turns the screws on their customers, people will continue to use twitter/X because "that's where everyone is" and places like HN will continue to allow these links because "that's where the news is" despite healthier alternatives like the Mastodon network and Bluesky existing.

whatever. i've redirected x to 0.0.0.0 when the first warning shot was fired and called it a day. rocks are looking like a great place to live under right about now anyway.

[1] https://armanckeser.com/writing/redirecting-x-com

It feels like an end of an era.

Bluesky is here anyway.

Hell, you’re arguably on a Twitter alternative right now.

Apparently XCancel is an instance of Nitter. According to Wikipedia, "Nitter is designed to allow access to X without tracking, advertisements, or the need for an account. It only supports browsing, and cannot be used to sign in or interact with the X community."

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

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.

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.

I wouldn't even mind seeing advertisements.

I just don't want to have an X account.

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?

[1] https://arweave.org/

Insta requiring login Facebook requiring login

Bad:

X requiring login

I wish legal issues wouldn’t exist for this project and X would stop attacking projects that provide information for free.

Privacy is important more than ever as many of us don't want to login into X.

I guess we're seeing Musk-defending-freedom-of-speech in action.

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!

The consistent view is one regarding IP in general - not reverse engineering your morals based on the case.

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

But it is simultaneously the best place to get real time information and after reddit the best place to find human/bot generated content so I do still need access to the data.

Trusting Zuck to fill the gap with Threads is a moron's endeavour and Mastadon is too fragmented we need a centralized good actor to fix this.

Just use the site, people

Cost me $500 (to a good charity, oh well) and guess what, I was fucking right. I have subby-tendancies but some of you put me to shame. Me personally? I don't like the taste of rubber.

lol, go try to just even sign up for a new X account and let me know how that goes. god damn sycophancy.

yes, he can enforce whatever ToS he wants .

The browser extension "Libredirect" will transparently redirect you to a working one or one of your choice.

I understand that he is a vile POS, but I don't understand people supporting him and using his products.

Despicable behavior.

I seem to be able to post/access pro-Palestinian content there easily, no other platform lets me do that.

It has also been great for my project and find the right community from scratch.

Lulz

Cory Doctorow argues that the antidote to walled platforms is to restore the legal and technical right to adversarial interoperability. Users and developers should have the legal freedom to reverse-engineer APIs, build scrapers, create cross-platform bridges, and deploy third-party readers without facing lawsuits under anti-hacking statutes like the CFAA or DMCA Section 1201.

Either you cancel X. Meaning: NOT consuming X content.

Or you just visit X.com.

Right? Right?

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.

And yes I've on occasion had the same thought with TikTok - it'd be nice to see the vids that people send me, without making an account. But I'll just have to live my life without having seen that one super funny/interesting/enlightening video, or have to ask for a summary :)

You look very odd and silly if you still want to engage with it and just use a different UI layer (i.e., "XCancel", "Nitter".)

If they want you to have an account to read the post and you want to read the post, create an account, log in, and move on. If you don't want to do that, nobody is forcing you to view a public website. There's alternatives like "Bluesky" out there that might be good for you.