I generally agree but I'm still frequently linked to X and I'm either unable to view the content because I don't have an account or I don't click because I don't want to visit the site. These services allow me to access the user content without having to go through X, itself. I wish hackers/the tech industry moved off of X like most users but here we are.
It's not the fault of the users when there's no viable alternative
Bluesky is founded by the same founders of Twitter and is not open and has ridiculous policies, Mastodon is the same, even less popular and even more tyrannical
So the choice for most users, including myself, is tightly moderated spaces run by awful people, or a website run by a literal Nazi, but that at least doesn't ban me on sight
The Musk twitter acquisition (and the sieg heil at the inauguration) were pivotal moments where a good alternative could've surfaced but instead we got twitter 2.0 (and moving from Twitter to Twitter 2 seems entirely pointless even if it wasn't badly moderated on top of that)
For someone who's been on Twitter for a long time, these alternatives function as a good off-ramp that's easier than quitting entirely and abruptly. I deleted my account a few years ago knowing I'd still be able to see some of the content without viewing their ads or contributing my own content.
Of course there is, don't be silly. There's also no alternative at the moment, or for the foreseeable future. Sure, there's some knockoffs that try hard, but they're still jokes.
Would love to redirect more often to shitter instances with https://xxcancel.com.
But there seems to be a bug loading images (e.g. profile pictures or attached pictures to tweets) in Firefox.
I made a thing that uses Nitter to have a revchron timeline of people in the tech space. No algorithm, every post shows up (unless you filter out an account). Feedback is appreciated: https://techtwitter-lime.vercel.app
What do you mean by "how"? The code is freely available, you can spin it up at will too in just a few minutes. When they disappear, sometimes it's because the maintainer doesn't want the headache, and sometimes it's because a they're threatened to remove it.
I guess I never bothered reading the code so for whatever reason I assumed it required some extraordinary circumvention to host it that isn't very accessible
what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that self-hosting this is trivial then
so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible? why do people opt to host these for others over teaching how to run your own for example?
> what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that self-hosting this is trivial then
Yes. It comes encouraged.
> so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible?
Yes, unless the other end forbids it and really cares about controlling clients. If they do and manage to detect that you are using alternative client they could block based on that. In times where that happens and there are client devs who care, it becomes a cat-and-mouse.
We need a multiplexer in front of all these instances. One that works like a load balancer, health checking the individual instances and adding/removing them from the pool automatically. That would allow people to create new accounts, serve their own instance and attach them to the muxer.
I assume the source code repo is still up somewhere, so I assume it's the domains that are being taken offline, not the code, and anyone can then trivially spin up their own instance.
Absolutely not! Such low life gutter talk is not acceptable in polite society and shouldn't be allowed in any professional atmosphere. Or am I again trying to elevate HN?
Maybe your cultural values aren't my cultural values. Maybe you need to consider who you are excluding by suggesting that using a curse word is unacceptable?
Cursing has a long tradition in lower economic class culture, in some minority cultures, in queer culture, heck in mainstream cultures worldwide we say "shit", etc. You want them all to conform to your one view of how professionals should be? The curse word isn't directed at you, it isn't directed at anyone you know, or even at a person.
No, I think maybe I'd rather live in a world where people are colorful, use language that's authentic to them, and include more people in the dialog.
>>Maybe you need to consider who you are excluding by suggesting that using a curse word is unacceptable?
I am. Thus the complaint. I would think the general audience here is of a higher caliber than low-class cultures whose values and education can't rise above profanity.
Ah, so racism and classism it is then. Can't be having those "poors" here on our spotless orange site. Want to say something homophobic and or sexist before we continue?
Bluesky is founded by the same founders of Twitter and is not open and has ridiculous policies, Mastodon is the same, even less popular and even more tyrannical
So the choice for most users, including myself, is tightly moderated spaces run by awful people, or a website run by a literal Nazi, but that at least doesn't ban me on sight
The Musk twitter acquisition (and the sieg heil at the inauguration) were pivotal moments where a good alternative could've surfaced but instead we got twitter 2.0 (and moving from Twitter to Twitter 2 seems entirely pointless even if it wasn't badly moderated on top of that)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_Elon_M...
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/17/opinion/elon-musk-republi...
https://ecfr.eu/article/musks-war-on-european-democracy-how-...
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-x-influence-uk-us-polit...
Hope that helps.
many working instances right now: https://codeberg.org/shitter/shitter/wiki/Instances
Example: https://shitter.thepixora.com/search?f=tweets&q=elon+musk
Wont show any pictures in Firefox for me. Works in Chrome. Can this be fixed? Thank you!
what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that self-hosting this is trivial then
so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible? why do people opt to host these for others over teaching how to run your own for example?
Yes. It comes encouraged.
> so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible?
Yes, unless the other end forbids it and really cares about controlling clients. If they do and manage to detect that you are using alternative client they could block based on that. In times where that happens and there are client devs who care, it becomes a cat-and-mouse.
Every individual running their own instance would be the equivalent of every individual having their own Twitter account, which defeats the purpose.
Maybe your cultural values aren't my cultural values. Maybe you need to consider who you are excluding by suggesting that using a curse word is unacceptable?
Cursing has a long tradition in lower economic class culture, in some minority cultures, in queer culture, heck in mainstream cultures worldwide we say "shit", etc. You want them all to conform to your one view of how professionals should be? The curse word isn't directed at you, it isn't directed at anyone you know, or even at a person.
No, I think maybe I'd rather live in a world where people are colorful, use language that's authentic to them, and include more people in the dialog.
By and large the hacker news moderators and commentariat have demonstrated that they do not welcome those cultures here.
I am. Thus the complaint. I would think the general audience here is of a higher caliber than low-class cultures whose values and education can't rise above profanity.
My person in deity "enshittification" is a technical term of art around here, and "Gimp" is both a popular graphics software and a sexual fetish term.
No one besides children and people with low emotional IQ care about such things.
You pretend to be for including women but repel 95% of normal women because you actually only want the weird ones.