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.
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.
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.
it's done wonders for my mental.
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.
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?
Fortunately their URLs aren't obfuscated, so it works with Redirector
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.
Nitter is good software, I have no idea how Twitter users put up with this garbage fire.
The brainwashing against free, open, uncensored and community-corrected platforms is crazy.
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...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/journalists-who-wrote-ab...
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.
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.
It's certainly more diverse than Bluesky, if this is an echo chamber-measuring contest.
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).
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.
Not on Nitter! Which is the point, for me at least.
This site is a good alternative for tech news.
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.
Especially annoying when Twitter is a source for something.
> 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.
So no, Reddit is not worse than Xitter both on social and tech merit.
You may has well have replied that, in fact, its color scheme is more red than Twitter.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
> hungry for the raw, real truth
Haha sure. Why not go to the original where Tweets are actually literally called Truths?
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
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.
And they all require accounts that I don't want to have.
Also the Asian community (Korea, Japan etc) is incredibly strong on Twitter. They don't really care about the whole politics around the platform.
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)_/¯
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.
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.
Seems like a tangent either way: letting violent right-wing nazis do violent right-wing nazi things on twitter has definitely made it worse and more toxic than it was before.
And then I avoid them.
Hacker News and basically everyone from YC have an official profile on Twitter: https://x.com/hackernews
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...
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.
Although, I don't see how this will hold up in court as they're pretty much an archive-like site hosting UGC.