Comment by hrideshmg
10 hours ago
I am quite surprised by the number of comments critical of Nitter.
I personally don't use it but frontends like these are very important in today's day and age.
As sad as it is, the majority of online discourse nowadays happens on platforms whose algorithms and interfaces are controlled by corporations.
A project like Nitter probably can't run legally, and that's okay. Custom mobile clients for Reddit still work after they banned it, life finds a way. I'm all for funding these projects though because at the end of the day, someone has to build it.
I think it's more complicated than it would seem.
You've got legal and moral layers, then you've got to engage with the root problem that some services choose to use X as a channel to communicate with the general problem, but on top of that there's also the political intent to use Nitter explicitly to boycott Musk.
Musk is well-known for spending lots of money on viral marketing and online reputation services with bot accounts and astro-turfing. He has an extremely fragile ego and a pathological desire to be liked and, oddly, he desires to be considered a funny person, too (which he isn't). To cut a long story short, you cannot and should not trust comment sections about Musk anywhere. It's been like that for more than 10 years already.
Musk spends more money in a week trying to get people to like him than most of us will ever have or spend in our lives
Source? Some random Reddit post I guess?
His interviews. You have to watch many of them, which is kind of hard since he's such a bad public speaker, but I still find personalities like him entertaining and he used to have moderately interesting laymen science fiction ideas before he turned to self-destructive radical Twitter psycho politics as a hobby.
1 reply →
I’m not surprised.
Despite the VC firm trying to assimilate the word “hacker” to humanize itself, this place is Tech-bro News and the userbase will always tend to take the side of capital.
It wasn’t always like this, it changed in the last 10 ish years as the industry became more lucrative. Or maybe it’s been happening more slowly over a longer period of time, but I do think the earlier founders were more idealistic
> I do think the earlier founders were more idealistic
The original founders created YCombinator, the most prestigious startup incubator, and Hacker News used to be named Startup News.
100%
Move fast and break other people.
> and the userbase will always tend to take the side of capital
I've been here for well over a decade. Let me tell you, it used to be so, so much worse.
+1. There is endless bullshit nitpicking that goes on here. Sometimes useful because we don't want a hive mind, but it becomes... really unnecessary with a lot of apologism (sometimes)