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Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

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Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#681

Post by dwedge »

zahlman wrote: post #277
dwedge wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only tenuously related but every single Mac app I see advertised on X by verified accounts is malware. I reported one last week to them, they said it's not malware. I appealed it and said the install link is copy and paste obfuscated base64 into your terminal, and they said after review it doesn't break their terms. So whatever else they do, they take money to knowingly promote malware.

> the install link is copy and paste obfuscated base64 This doesn't make it malware, as likely as it is that malware would hide itself like that. base64 encoding avoids issues with quoting and escaping in the terminal, and is an easy way to include a bit of binary data that might be needed by a command (or even just written directly to disk somewhere). "Obfuscated base64" is only saying something if you decoded the b…

> If you want a malware report to be taken seriously, in general, you should expect to roll up your sleeves and be able to provide an analysis of concrete malicious behaviour.

I reported them all the Cloudflare and Cloudflare took them down. One moved away from Cloudflare, and Twitter kept them up.

I reported another to NiceNIC and they asked for: 1. Verifiable malicious download file or sample hash 2. Screenshot or screen recording with the full URL visible 3. Evidence of malicious scripts, obfuscated code, or download chain 4. HTTP response, redirect chain, headers, or packet capture data 5. Third-party security verdict tied to the specific URL or file

I just ignored them. I don't work for them and if they want to host illegal content then it's not my business decision.

This one in particular had the download in base64, piping into Javascript and running a binary as a fake Apple Updater script.

But I am sick of this attitude that it's my responsibility for a malware report to be taken seriously. If they introduce malware bounties then ok, but otherwise I'm doing them a favour by reporting it and if they want to continue to host it after reasonable being made aware of its existence, they should be legally responsible.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#682

Post by mrngld »

rootsu wrote: post #589
negura wrote: post #322

Middle powers should heed Cory Doctorow's advice [0] and start offering legal protection in their jurisdictions for precisely this type of projects. America is a hostile nation, who has sought to align everyone with its interests, under a false pretense of mutual benefit, while instead its tech sector has caused much harm at a global scale. America is now doubling down on value extraction, at an obvious expense to ev…

>America is a hostile nation, who has sought to align everyone with its interests, under a false pretense of mutual benefit, while instead its tech sector has caused much harm at a global scale. America is now doubling down on value extraction, at an obvious expense to everyone else. In India, recently, a bill was passed that can permit banks and the government to add charges on UPI transactions. UPI is one of the bi…

Sounds bogus, there's free payment services in the US as well, that's nothing special. What makes more sense in the India context is low value of volume per customer where even the minimal operating costs are difficult to cover. I say that from some amount of experience in the micro-finance world, where even money provided at zero actual interest in terms of the loaned money itself still ended up having to have somewhat painful interest rates just to cover true costs in low income countries.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#683

Post by phoghed »

Razengan wrote: post #675
expedited123 wrote: post #665

Twitter has gone from relatively open to instagram / facebook level of closedness where I can't even share a video with my friends because it asks them to log in. I had to rely on nitter and xcancel for that... Now that no longer works either I have one niche that I use twitter for. If it wasn't for that - would have deleted my account long time ago. Things like this push me towards that direction, though.

Someone should be putting AI to the test and make it walk the talk by making a viable alternative to Facebook/Twitter etc :)

It’s a trivial project, it’s babbys first crud app. Getting everyone to use it is the hard part. There are already great alternatives that show this.

Then scaling and paying for it is the hard part.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#684

Post by lynndotpy »

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.

For one of the big use cases, you can look at the NCMEC's reports-by-ESP numbers.

For example, X has 816K and X AI has 135K reports. Reddit, despite having 200M (36%) more MAU, only has 65K reports. OpenAI, despite having about 8x MAU than X.ai, has 182K reports.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#686

Post by lynndotpy »

lemaomao wrote: post #653
CamperBob2 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the main use case for X these days? Is it still as popular as it used to be? Yes, because influential, non-evil people who should know better just will not fucking leave. The vast majority of public-minded ML developers and researchers, including people who compete with xAI, being an obvious example. And because skilled, knowledgeable people who could create a replacement service just will not do so. At least…

> non-evil people > ML developers and researchers Brother in Christ, pick one.

I'm an ML developer and researcher and I left X. A lot of us did and do believe neural networks can provide utility for humanity.

There's just a lot of money in drinking the AGI LLM VC WN koolaid. Not everyone has drank that koolaid.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#687

Post by swozey »

asimovDev wrote: post #619
ehnto wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Imgur and Reddit have put a lot of roadblocks up lately as well. I think some of it is driven by trying to reduce bot traffic. It's quite inconsistent though which is really frustrating. I can look at the imgur homepage feed, but if I go into a specific post and accidentally click anywhere it throws a modal up that can't be dismissed. If I go on a specific subreddit or post I can freely look, but reddit homepage…

I remember using old.reddit to bypass login requirements and quite often it would let me read with VPN on (otherwise it kicks you out if you are not logged in with VPN on). Only recently did they introduce the same authentication blocks to the old.reddit, so I am assuming everyone was taking advantage of it

You have to log in to use old and new reddit now. The only way I can view reddit is through the mobile app without logging in.

They already AI shadowbanned me and nuke all of my accounts for participating in historical discussions that mentioned violent upheaval of power, thats why I can't login. I appreciate them helping me ween off using the site completely.

Thank you reddit, never thought I'd quit you. And I'm missing nothing but the exact same conversations over and over again.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#688

Post by mrngld »

negura wrote: post #444
jambalaya8 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All due respect, but how would anyone survive, no less find a way to make anything like the average income of any of us on HN, in a world that made not just some 'patents' free but removed property and invention such as the extremities Doctorow's fiction often espouses? America is sorta known for pretense of mutual benefit. We sorta fumbled things after we, to put it bluntly, nuked the Japanese twice. Don't get me wr…

> find a way to make anything like the average income of any of us on HN a) This is not about trying to protect the incomes of people working in Big Tech b) In his talk Doctorow gives examples of business opportunities that are actually being repressed by the laws against reverse engineering

It's not just about big tech. It's about what enables highly productive societies in general. Without IP, I suppose everyone could share to some limited extent what is already known, but why would anyone ever sink big dollars or time into coming up with something new that'd immediately get stolen by people who did nothing to contribute to it? Indeed, it's part of the problem with manufacturing in the West, there's no robust enforcement of IP with China due to political sensitivities so manufacturers have to have strategies to protect themselves from the fact that if they release a new product they've got maybe 90 days before a copycat hits the market.

I can't help but wonder how much stronger the core of the EU economy would be with actual robust management of their trade relationship with China. The US too but I think the EU is suffering a bit more in real time.

No doubt it makes Doctorow the star of certain types of intellectual circles but the theories have never made a people or country actually well off and never will. But, things don't have to work in the real world to be popular, or even to become policy.

Re: Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices

#690

Post by jamesnorden »

llm_nerd wrote: post #680
Razengan wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should be putting AI to the test and make it walk the talk by making a viable alternative to Facebook/Twitter etc :)

There are many already. The code is not why people use those sites. In the case of Meta specifically, it's basically in spite of the user-hostile, garbage code. The network effect / entrenchment means that any replacement has to be massively better in every dimension to have a chance. Otherwise people just stick to what they know, and then other people stick to it because the other people do. And so on. I personally…

I think people try alternatives, turns out to be a ghost town, then they just go back.
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