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XCancel service is suspended until further notice

xcancel.com

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Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#521

Post by immibis2 »

WarmWash wrote: post #412
lovich wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m personally upset that the modern day companies have decided only extracting profit matters and not building a better product that makes people willing to pay. At least in the digital world almost every piece of software and website I use has been getting objectively worse the past few years. And I don’t mean like, I hate this UI layout so it’s objectively worse. I mean like new Reddit freezing my tab completely ~…

Read the story of vid.me, YouTube's only ever credible competitor. There is also nebula and curiosity stream, which also illustrate my point. Both solid good services with There is no better service than YouTube while using an ad-blocker, and no amount of "awesome new platform" can break that. Most people's response to "YouTube sucks" is to ad-block on YouTube, not go to a competitor(and pay/view ads). It totally bre…

It's interesting to think about what is actually so good about YouTube. Is it being able to go to the homepage and see a bunch of stuff to click on? Nebula has that.

I signed up to Nebula to support alternative platforms, yet I still click on YouTube all the time and not Nebula. Why is that? I'm not sure.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#522

Post by immibis2 »

WarmWash wrote: post #325
thewebguyd wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem companies have is that "doesn't suck" generally means "it's free with no ads". Or in the case of X, how about just let me browse without creating an account? Likewise with meta/FB, IG, etc. The reality is businesses and other services post here, share status updates, etc. often before their main pages. I'd like to read those, and yet I have no desire to actually post or interact with any of the content,…

Then the correct action is to either create a competitor, or point money/ad views at a competitor. But like I said, the internet is largely unwilling to do this. You won't make a competitor that is a charity, and the internet at large won't point dollars and ad-views at a nascent start-up in the space.

Did you know that Facebook got started by scraping MySpace using people's real accounts they provided the passwords for, and Reddit got started by anonymously copying popular posts from Slashdot and Digg? Were these correct actions?

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#523

Post by scottyah »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #287
brainwad wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the way UK courts are heading, see Getty vs Stability AI. The court ruled that there's no infringment because the model doesn't store exact copies, just derived weights, and therefore when it generates new images those aren't copies of protected works.

That's stupid, these courts are stupid It should have nothing to do with storing copies it should have to do with what the models can produce. And it's clear they can produce copyrighted works, they've just been tuned so they don't. That shouldn't satisfy anyone.

You can produce copyrighted works and have just been tuned not to lol. I fail to see how limiting an ability to comply with the law is any different from just complying with the law?

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#524

Post by mahboi »

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…

It's gotten ridiculous. I get it if they have a login wall. I've had a Twitter account for years for occasional reasons. But suddenly it thinks I'm a bot and wants me to scan some QR code, download an app on my phone separately, and take photos of my hand. For whatever reason, that didn't work on my phone, maybe cause it's a Samsung A16 (not to be confused with a16z) they decided is too poor to generate ad money.

Maybe they have legit reasons for all that, but it's not my problem. It's not worthwhile to me to view stuff on there anymore.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#525

Post by ruszki »

whalesalad wrote: post #482
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…

> at some point we have to ignore the X site completely I've been doing that for years. Since just prior to Elon's purchase of it. Nothing of value in my life has been lost.

Not since then, but before it, I could read smart people's opinion there about random topics. Of course, when the takeover happened, almost all of them left already years prior.

There is no such place since. Most of them went back to anonymous internet presence, if at all.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#526

Post by natch »

kijashdkujdfhas wrote: post #241
immibis2 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One possible decision is to use a deshittifying front-end, like Nitter.

It is a half-measure, though. It reduces Twitter's traffic a little. It screws with some of their metrics a little, with the shared accounts having access patterns of several humans all mixed together. It might affect revenue a little. It doesn't do much to address the underlying issue of there being people who you might want to hear from who primarily post their content on a platform owned by a white nationalist. If…

White nationalist is a wild, wild misreading though. Though not an uncommon one.

The Overton window doesn’t allow talking about all real issues, so people like yourself mistake race as the crux of the matter, when other issues are the real topic.

If you want understanding, work on helping open, not close, the Overton window.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#527

Post by [deleted] »

ndiddy wrote: post #461
swed420 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point is: companies stop making your product suck, and people won't have a reason to try and fix it for you. That assumes the company's behavior is rooted in ineptitude rather than malice, which is too generous at this point. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49695912

I'm not sure what Twitter's specific reasons are, but AFAIK the general trend of login-walling services over the past few years has happened due to a court decision saying that it's legal to scrape publicly available data ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn ). If they gate content behind a login wall and put a clause in the EULA forbidding scraping, this lets them use the CFAA to go after anybody who…

[deleted]

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#528

Post by declan_roberts »

captainbadass33 wrote: post #405
ralfd wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, be honest, what did you do?

dared to use twitter with only an anonymous email is my guess. musk demands you phone and biometrics

Phone number requirement was thankfully removed some time after Musk took over.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#529

Post by nullocator »

jdc0589 wrote: post #458
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.

This isn't a criticism, but I do think this comment actually raises part of the problem. There are people on twitter telling people they should be on twitter, and it's apparently effective enough that at least some people are still signing up or trying to at least. The world needs more of the inverse, people telling those they care about who are on twitter to get off it.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#530

Post by stymaar »

immibis2 wrote: post #519
stymaar wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's auth-gated, it needs to be, well, authenticated. AFAIK, there isn't an single auth scheme on earth that guarantee human intervention[1]. Anyone can set-up a robot creating new users on a whim using single-use email addresses and even phone numbers. In fact, we know that OpenAI's agent have been doing exactly that when attacking Rubygem. And all AI labs are likely doing it for scrapping social media as well.…

By setting that up, you take on the liability for it. The defendant is whoever set it up. No different from "if I roll a car down a hill and it hits something at the bottom, how can you hold the car liable?"

That's not how ToS work though. ToS are contracts. If you don't sign the contract nobody can sue you for violating it.

> No different from "if I roll a car down a hill and it hits something at the bottom, how can you hold the car liable?"

That's the difference between criminal and civil justice. You don't need to sign a law for it to bind you, but for contracts you do.

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