XCancel service is suspended until further notice • Hacker News Board

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#451

Post by Anonyneko » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

xyst wrote: post #426

newscracker wrote: post #113

This may be a situation where revealing a solution may end up harming it. For those who use iOS and other Apple OSes, I learned of this recently released free Safari extension called Litterbox that allows looking at one post on x.com. [1]: https://andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox

With alternatives available: - bluesky - mastodon Why does anybody (that’s not some right wing, white Christian nationalist nut job) still use twitter?

Inertia, friend groups, and also a lot of countries other than the US that have no idea about US politics or don't care enough about it.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#452

Post by clcaev » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #420

vladgur wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to read what service XYZ offers, but you dont want to do it within the constraints of service XYZ. If you dont want to follow the constraints of service XYZ, you dont have to consume its content. The market would dictate that if X content consumers found it too inconvenient to consume from X and that would result in a significant drop in demand, the X content producers would stop producing their content on X…

They want to consume XYZ, written by A,B,C and posted on twitter. Do A,B,C agree with the changes to loginwall their content ex-post-facto?

Clearly they approve or they'd at least stop advertising their twitter handles on their websites and handouts. Most brands cannot ignore such a vast network effects and have made the decision to continue despite the changes.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#453

Post by pennomi » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #321

swed420 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem companies have is that "doesn't suck" generally means "it's free with no ads". There's no reason you can't abolish login walls while still serving ads. > The internet has this innate expectation that everything digital be totally free Capital interests have this innate expectation that everything must be profitable. This vision is ripe for the picking: https://www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-me…

>Capital interests have this innate expectation that everything must be profitable. What rubs me the wrong way about statements like this, is that it is almost always said by people who totally miss that they are advocating for things that are personally profitable for them. A website that allows you to skirt paywalls, is immensely profitable to the end user. That same end user, who detests the idea of having to spen…

Advocating for demonetization of a service is not the same as trying to maximize personal profits. Maybe not everything in the world is about money.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#454

Post by frumplestlatz » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

squeegmeister wrote: post #427

maipen wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it wrong? Is it wrong to require people to use certain tools? I don’t think so. It’s the same thing as requiring dress code to go to the tribunal or anything formal. People here overthink so much about this topic.

Because the owner of said tool is a white nationalist

I think you’ve confused HN for BlueSky.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#455

Post by MentalM » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

bluefirebrand wrote: post #234

nixpulvis wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think LLMs providers pretty directly compete with content they scrape like Wikipedia and SO...

No kidding. I dunno what kind of traffic loss Wikipedia has had but SO is really dead these days If they weren't competing with AI then why is AI killing it?

> weren't competing with AI then why is AI killing it?

But it is not the AI who is killing it, users are doing it.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#456

Post by heavensteeth » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

vladgur wrote: post #411

trey-jones wrote: post #221

Regardless of the legality of the service: I always use xcancel instead of X. I don't have a twitter account and I don't want to sign in. I just occasionally want to read what some people had to say about something. Even this is usually a mistake. It's probably better taken as entertainment. My point is: companies stop making your product suck, and people won't have a reason to try and fix it for you.

You want to read what service XYZ offers, but you dont want to do it within the constraints of service XYZ. If you dont want to follow the constraints of service XYZ, you dont have to consume its content. The market would dictate that if X content consumers found it too inconvenient to consume from X and that would result in a significant drop in demand, the X content producers would stop producing their content on X…

Last time I tried creating a Twitter account, I couldn't even complete the sign-up flow before getting automatically banned pending giving them my phone number. After that, I went to like and follow things. My account was then banned again for suspicious activity.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#457

Post by kennywinker » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #433

kennywinker wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But like I said, the internet is largely unwilling to do this Sorry, what? The internet is unwilling to create twitter clones? Bluesky, mastodon, pleroma, misskey, diaspora, threads, fucking truth social… there is no shortage of twitter alternatives.

None of which has more the 1-2% of twitters MAU. If any of those were highly profitable, they would be able to grow. But more profit for them, means less profit for users, means they are stuck fighting over crumbs from Twitter.

You've moved the goalpost.

The internet is happy to create alternatives. Network effects mean it's VERY hard to change the default social network once it's established.

I hate using facebook marketplace, but over the past 6-ish years everybody in my city has moved off craigslist to marketplace - so now I use marketplace because otherwise I can't sell my shit. Am I the problem?

- also, an aside, but threads has 400 mil monthly active users, or at least facebook says that. so ~70% of twitter's audience. But threads is even more locked down than twitter, so not really a win.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#458

Post by jdc0589 » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

phforms wrote: post #434

I know it’s hard for some people (for understandable reasons), but at some point we have to ignore the X site completely and make politicians and public services/institutions aware that some people do not have or want access to the site. That is the only way anything might change someday. Maybe I’m just being naive here, but what else can you do? xcancel was amazing and I hope they can continue in some way. But since…

about once a year I try signing up for X after friends tell me I really should be on there for news in certain niches.

multiple times now I've signed up with a fake name/handle/email/etc..., sometimes from a VPN, and within 10 minutes a friend usually tells me they see me as a recommendation to follow (they can tell, by the handle).

Insta delete, every time.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#459

Post by like_any_other » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #414

like_any_other wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You neglect to consider that these social media websites were giant bait & switches - they were open-access to trick people into going there and making them popular, and only when they got enough network-effect lock-in, did they turn hostile. Morally equivalent to fraud.

this entire thing is about people that aren't even users of the service.

Users were affected in exactly the same way. And every user - i.e. poster - was first just a visitor. Much fewer would have become posters if they'd been greeted by a login wall that wanted an e-mail and phone-number.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#460

Post by butlike » Mon, Sep 14, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

bigfishrunning wrote: post #376

thewebguyd wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that has to do with blocking the content behind a login wall. X can still serve ads just fine to non-logged in users. I'm against the site running ads, at all, I'm against mandatory account creation. The internet ran ad supported without mandatory accounts for years.

The login wall provides one more avenue for profit: selling the data of logged-in users. A profile with a history of likes, read-times, etc is more valuable then a pair of eyeballs that are glazed-over and not clicking on an ad...

Is it that much more valuable to click on an ad than see it? I mean, network television operated on ads you can't click on for decades and made billion-dollar empires.