Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices • Hacker News Board

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#161

Post by orange999 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:22 PM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #154

X makes a platform available. People choose to post on it knowing full well how it works. X makes money by running ads, charging for subscriptions and tracking users. To me it sounds reasonable that you can't just take that content and repost it without their or the author of the post explicit permission. It sounds like a fair use case and copying the whole content is not that. Now there are technical details: "are t…

You really are the owner of all the posts who make online. When you post on X, you grant X a license to display your posts, but you still have the copyright to your posts. Same thing if you post on Reddit or Facebook or YCombinator or whatever.

This really is an absurd case, but nitter apparently really wants to err on the side of caution until a judge rules in their favor.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#162

Post by redsocksfan45 » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:25 PM UTC

TitaRusell wrote: post #52

NoboruWataya wrote: post #6

What is the main use case for X these days? Is it still as popular as it used to be? Clearly the exodus that happened when Musk took it over didn't kill it but I do seem to see fewer links to it than I used to. Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.

Breaking news. If a bomb goes off or a plane goes down people post it to X.

[dead]

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#163

Post by Markoff » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:25 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #130

I’ve been writing an HN clone that’s literally a clone. It copies all front page posts and comments. I just wanted to say publicly that dang is awesome. Instead of shutting down the idea, he’s been actively helping the project by answering periodic emails and… well, not shutting it down. Not sure what to do with it yet. Maybe I could let users have custom filtering rules. But the point is, companies should support co…

On related note I really like serializer.io to read HN (I disable other sites it supports) in chronological order and have it synced across multiple devices under unique URL

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#164

Post by luciana1u » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:25 PM UTC

was still using nitter for the handful of accounts I follow without logging in. can't say I'm surprised — a polite read-only mirror of someone else's product was always going to meet a lawyer before a thank-you note.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#165

Post by Markoff » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:27 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #144

Leynos wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly a porn site these days

This is one of those situations where describing your algorithmic feed tells us more about you than about Twitter.

that's my experience with using anonymous search on Nitter instance as well, so hardly anything about me using it without any account

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#166

Post by yubblegum » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:27 PM UTC

NoboruWataya wrote: post #6

What is the main use case for X these days? Is it still as popular as it used to be? Clearly the exodus that happened when Musk took it over didn't kill it but I do seem to see fewer links to it than I used to. Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.

> What is the main use case for X these days?

twitter/x remains the domain of intelligence agencies worldwide. It is a semi-open (the world first virtual leader, the ayatollah affirms he exists from there ..) psychological operations platform that permits the avatars of "world leaders" to speak to masses and also hosts a parasitical community of grifters ("opinion makers" and "influencers") that feed off of the festering fetid matter served up by the Spook International.

a secondary purpose of the twitter/x is a reverse doomsday clock, based on above. As long as the ghost of this unprofitable "business entity" is kept alive by funny money and funny deals, we can sleep soundly at night knowing there won't be ww3 or any other such extreme negotiating tactics by global elite, since they are all 'playing their role' on twitter currently known as x.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#167

Post by xhevahir » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

nobleach wrote: post #32

giancarlostoro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's people from all walks of life and all corners of the internet on there still, good and bad. Twitter was always a darned mess, the only difference now is you can't just report people and bully them off the site. Contrast to me trying to open BlueSky, and seeing death threats and other insane things. I've also heard (though never personally seen, nor do I want to) that BlueSky has a CSAM problem. Those two fact…

I really can't deal with BlueSky. I wanted to because I had a lot of good "starter packs" for NeoVim and OCaml development. Nerd stuff is the reason I visit these sites. The problem is, I start following people and it almost always turns into politics. I may even AGREE with the person's politics but I hate reading and talking about it. God forbid I ever disagree. Funny thing though. I've heard the claims of "CSAM on…

I don't know whether it's a founder effect of the users that fled there from X, or the mass-blocking features, but no site is as good at enforcing political orthodoxy as Bluesky. A near perfect echo chamber.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#168

Post by shaky-carrousel » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

fg137 wrote: post #79

NoboruWataya wrote: post #6

What is the main use case for X these days? Is it still as popular as it used to be? Clearly the exodus that happened when Musk took it over didn't kill it but I do seem to see fewer links to it than I used to. Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.

From what I can tell, most Twitter users outside English speaking countries don't care about who is the CEO at all. Business as usual.

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Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#169

Post by itintheory » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

jackb4040 wrote: post #93

suddenlybananas wrote: post #7

It's hardly unique to Twitter but it's so frustrating how much "content" online requires an account. Whenever my friends send me something on Instagram or TikTok or a restaurant puts their menu on Instagram, I'm barraged with a thousand dark patterns forcing me to log in. Even Reddit is doing it now. I do wonder how much of this is to boost engagement versus another "wonderful" side effect from LLMs since they need t…

The other day someone on here gave me a useful framing. Non-publicly accessible sites are the dark web. If a project told you they were moving all their docs and support to the dark web they would sound crazy, but if they say they're moving it to discord (the same thing) then it's fine.

>the dark web

I prefer the older term "deep web" [1]. It's mentioned in Wikipedia that the terms are used as synonyms now, but I think it's important to differentiate between sites behind login/authentication/etc, and sites that are still openly accessible, albeit over Tor, i2p, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_web

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#170

Post by kemayo » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

Brendinooo wrote: post #104

NoboruWataya wrote: post #6

What is the main use case for X these days? Is it still as popular as it used to be? Clearly the exodus that happened when Musk took it over didn't kill it but I do seem to see fewer links to it than I used to. Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.

>What is the main use case for X these days? I use it to follow people who either have ideas I find interesting or do stuff I find interesting, and typically I'm looking for accounts that are small enough that I know they will at least see my replies, and often interact with them. (Something like 3K-15K followers for most of them, I think.) I also think it's indispensable for real-time commentary and niche commentary…

> It's the one major social network I'm on where it is easy to view only posts from the people I follow, in reverse chronological order.

Oh weird, I'd rate X as medium-hard for that amongst the microposting sites I look at. Mastodon and Bluesky both default to almost-that, varying mostly in whether you need to jump through hoops to not see reposts.

X was always the one that (a) doesn't default to it, and (b) would keep "forgetting" and pushing you back to the algorithmic feed.