Comment by koito17
1 year ago
On one hand, this is unfortunate since X always directs me to a login page, and Nitter was the only way I could view whatever gets posted nowadays. On the other hand, the cynical side of me is thankful that I have no more desirable means to see the contents of posts on X.
Edit: a similar thing happened with Reddit and Teddit(?). API restrictions effectively killed alternative frontends, so I simply don't look at Reddit posts anymore. I am aware of old.reddit.com, but in the case of Reddit I preferred the alternative frontends not only for no-JS compatibility, but also a (possibly false) sense of privacy
I'm inclined to have the same wishes.
There's a weird world of outrage about twitter ... on twitter by people who keep providing content for twitter. I don't get that.
The further downside being that all the alternatives I've dipped my toes in, the content is pretty much similar to twitter and all the alternatives are offering are various back end type differences, but the same content. So personally I'm not particularly happy with those either.
People are working through their grief, knowing that a utility that is essentially the modern postal service was sold to someone who is essentially the modern Hearst.
But Twitter is/was not a utility, not a “modern post office” not a “town square” (before someone tries to bring up that terrible analogy too) and really doesn’t deserve people’s grief. It’s yet another corporate-owned and controlled messaging app and we are seeing the inevitable result of that control.
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> the content is pretty much similar to twitter
I disagree. I find Mastodon to be much more like the Twitter of '08 that we all loved.
It's like watching over the shoulder of a stranger as they go about their day. But you're welcome there! You can say hi and the stranger is happy to have you.
It's real people sharing their weird hobbies. The often-boring minutiae of their daily life. Their feelings and hopes and dreams.
I've made friends. I feel like I know people. I love it.
> I don't get that.
It's the same enshittification we're always talking about now. Something you once enjoyed strategically turns to shit once it believes people are too locked in and docile to leave.
I disagree, it's a choice.
Yep, it will be easier to cut the X habit off. I'll miss Nitter, but I'll be happier in the long run.
I was a Reddit Apollo user, and it was easier to wean off of Reddit when I had to use their horrible app or their website. Even using old.reddit has been painful.
I lurk Reddit for local news without ever logging in. They recently started restricting anonymous users to a limited amount of comments on long threads. That finally motivated me to switch to Firefox plugins that re-layout old.reddit.com to be usable on mobile. Thanks Reddit for the much improved free web experience.
Interesting because the content I get on X is far, far more valuable than HN + Reddit + Facebook combined.
It’s the only place you can follow subject matter experts and get their real time thoughts.
I think people on HN just don’t know how to use Twitter?
If you want to use it effectively, you have to utilize lists. Curate your own lists or find someone you respect and follow their lists.
If someone is posting things you don’t enjoy then remove them.
Frankly, if X is causing you to be angry/depressed then a big part of that is on you.
Nearly every subject matter expert I followed has left. Scientists, mathematicians, journalists, authors, comic book people, and so on.
What I now see are people with demented political opinions about women and American politics. It sucks.
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> far more valuable than HN + Reddit + Facebook combined
What do you learn from 280 characters at a time?
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Getting more value from tech twitter these days.
I mostly follow L7+ SWEs, creators of popular tech like dynamoDB, and professors in AI/systems/DB/PL. The ones who tried to move to sites like mastodon eventually came back, or are now using twitter much more than these alternatives. There's been more top SWEs and professors especially in AI and systems sharing content there.
Noticed as well that twitter is also more optimistic about tech than HN, especially with subcultures like e/acc, learning/building in public, etc.
> Interesting because the content I get on X is far, far more valuable than HN + Reddit + Facebook combined.
That has been my experience as well. Easily. I learned a ton about LLMs, open source projects, growth hacks, marketing tips, a lot of great from the trenches lessons. Best site on the web.
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> It’s the only place you can follow subject matter experts and get their real time thoughts.
I have no use case for anyone else’s “real time thoughts”. Neither does almost anyone else.
Twitter’s one trick is FOMO for news junkies.
I follow subject matter experts on Mastodon/ActivityPub. Scientists, engineers, librarians, mathematicians, doctors, programmers, designers, artists, musicians, retro computing enthusiasts, amateur radio operators, etc. etc.... They've been migrating away from Twitter for a long time, because it has shown us how horribly "millions of people in the same room" works out, especially when a sociopathic algorithm rewards conflict and sensationalism at the expense of thought/consideration and kindness.
Why is this reply getting downvoted?
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I've recently learned that Twitter can actually be quite good for building genuine connections online, but it takes a very conscious effort and a lot of diligence
I'm sure that could be said for Erowid or any number of sites with a discussion forum function.
I was cynical about X like that too, but recently learned some good techniques that make a lot of difference to the overall experience. And then there's really nothing like it, in terms of reach.
Also, it's easy to see bad in everything, and then all we see is bad. But there're good things to find as well, it's just a matter of what we focus on..
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Ironically enough, to me what it bothers me the most on twitter is how bad and slow its front-end is. Sure, I'm not a fan of having to use an account, but if twitter at least had a nitter instance, like literally the same front-end, I would have way less problems with that.
While it is unmaintained now due to the API changes, Libreddit (reddit frontend) is still working for me. Granted, I self-host it, and I'm the only user so I never hit the rate limit, but no issues at all, save for some of the changes reddit has made (namely the new share links)
The repository says at the top in a HUGE FONT that "Libreddit is currently not operational" and the website just shows a oneliner saying Germans are not allowed to read that page. The issue tracker talks of forking and stuff. Doesn't feel too welcoming or functional.
But in actuality it works just fine? Is the message simply wrong when you plug in your own api key and stay in the free tier of reddit's API?
If they don't want you to use their API just respect their wishes and scrape Reddit. https://github.com/JosephLai241/URS it's the only moral thing we can do.
> Is the message simply wrong when you plug in your own api key and stay in the free tier of reddit's API?
Correct.
Also, I forked it with some OAuth spoofing and have been maintaining it there: https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib
I think that message was to let users know it's basically on it's last legs and could 100% stop at anytime. When the API changes started, most all of the instances ran into rate limits due to the number of requests. But it works just fine until that rate is hit.
Like I mentioned, I've been running my own private instance and I've never hit the rate limit so it's been working fine for me.
And I don't know about any API key. AFAIK, Libreddit uses the publicly available JSON, no need for a key (hence why it's read-only). Since it's still working for me, those JSON endpoints must still be available, just highly rate limited now
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> and the website just shows a oneliner saying Germans are not allowed to read that page.
Curious which website do you mean? The official instance is not online anymore. And I'm not aware of an official libreddit website.
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It's been forked by a maintainer as redlib: https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib
Thanks for posting, I'll check this out. I knew that maintainer was working on a fork, but I never saw it advertised.
Interesting, I thought they completely disabled the APIs
twitter and facebook have mostly been garbo for me, what i would like to know is where are the interesting mathematicians and software engineers posting now? or have they had enough too. i suspect that may be the case.
Reddit the non-profit frontends are still working (redreader for android is good).
Twitter, instagram etc. there's nothing even this reasonable.
Begs the question what will the future open web forum/discussion place be? Lemmy doesn't seem to have really hit the simplicity to attract users
I have not been to Reddit after they effectively shut down RiF.
I still use Reddit is Fun (RiF) with no problems. There's a ReVanced version, you provide with your API key and it works like it always had.
> API restrictions effectively killed alternative frontends, so I simply don't look at Reddit posts anymore.
They recently did a poll to users, asking which UI you use most. I put old reddit because it is. I cannot understand how in what? 6+ years they developed new reddit and still don't have true feature parity? This tells me they don't have their priorities in line, and they want to IPO to boot.
Personally I think some websites don't really have any need to become publicly traded companies, I rather they become profitable and not controllable by the whims of tech illiterate investors.
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Well the “experts” among us here, WaPo, and the NYT predicted Twitter would surely collapse after firing their SREs and admin that were crucial to keeping the servers running. Any day now Twitter will collapse and all of us will be saved. Surely
Here's a challenge: find an article from either wapo or nyt which actually predicted a sure collapse. And I mean a collapse as you said rather than issues with operations. (which they had many of since the takeover) I may have missed one if it exists, but I'd bet they didn't publish anything that certain.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/business/media/twitter-us...
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/technology/twitter-glitch...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/10/opinion/elon-musk-twitter...
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They just had a very high-profile event involving deepfake porn of one of the world's most popular musical artists. They appear to have belatedly responded to this by shutting down all searches of that famous artist's name. This does not suggest an organization that has the capacity to quickly or effectively manage the systems they are running.