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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

#871

Post by kalleboo »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #590
WarmWash wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I do not "immensely" benefit from free access to servers that will relay public microposts. I don't think my accesses even cost X a dollar per year. I would happily step in with my own server to replace 10x or even 100x the server resources I consume if it was possible. And if it was actually expensive they should be jumping at a way to make it possible.

I remember when you paid your ISP for internet access and in that cost they also provided you with an e-mail address, they ran a Usenet server for their customers, and gave you space for web hosting. Now all of that is expected to be paid for with ads instead.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#872

Post by ajkjk »

nomel wrote: post #767
ajkjk wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the answer is not that hard... someone just needs to make a copy of the basic functionality of twitter with better intentions and not owned by Musk et al. If they are sufficiently trustworthy and competent in how they do it, I really believe that lots of people would be willing and even eager to jump ship immediately. Mastodon and others tried to do this but they keep spending all this energy on decentral…

> someone just needs to You did the meme. ;) Literally billions of dollars are waiting for you, after you complete this simple task! Problem is, what's stopping you? What stopping everyone else? Why did everyone that tried so far fail? If the answer to a billion dollar, highly public, problem is trivial, but nobody has done that trivial thing, then that entire aspect of the problem is not actually that important, or…

I did it on purpose! In one sense it's really hard, of course, but in another it's simple, right? Simple enough that if a bunch of people who skim this a try plus their personal touches, I could easily imagine one of them succeeding.

As with many problems in the world... the first subproblem is that not many people many are very inspired to fight. Which is why it's important to emphasize its straightforwardness.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#874

Post by instantlyblocke »

wraptile wrote: post #307
vova_hn2 wrote: post #274

Just by googling "twitter api" I am able to find an "unofficial API" (scraped, obviously), that gives you access to tweets for around $0.15/1k tweets. Which is expensive if you want to, let's say, train a model, but super cheap for a casual user. A nice UI around such API probably can be one-shotted with modern LLM-coding models and tools. Or, you can go the hard way and vibecode something around buying twitter accou…

You can scrape twitter pretty easily yourself with an account (lots of free code on github) but that's the thing - you need an account which is legally complicated but for your own personal use you can just create a dummy account and you'll never be blocked.

> and you'll never be blocked.

Youll be instantyl blocked, because accounts without Biometric login and Phone numbers get flagged and asked for validation after 36 hours.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#875

Post by cuu508 »

stymaar wrote: post #868
nkozyra wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But then you don't get credentials and can't scrape.

You keep saying that but unless company start doing KYC there's absolutely no link between auth and ToS. The authentication mechanisms used by websites don't have a specific legal power, it's just a POST request among other GET requests sent during scraping. And we have jurisprudence saying scrapping is legal no matter what the ToS of the website says, because the scraping entity never signed up the contract. The onl…

*scraping

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#876

Post by Raed667 »

jrflo wrote: post #850
riknos314 wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public communications from government entities really should be legally required to be disseminated on public forums (ideally properly hosted on .gov domains for easy verification, with RSS feeds) Cross-posting on other platforms should be allowed (with backlink to the .gov), but the .gov should be authoritative.

Unfortunately that requires a level of technical competence that most government entities don't have in the US. Not to mention the ridiculous requirements/processes that are placed on official govt software.

It is 2026, it is not hard to publish a "blog" , if you want to share that same content over social networks that's fine but it should be a requirement that the data doesn't solely live in private walled "social" networks

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#877

Post by stymaar »

jaggederest wrote: post #754
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.…

The person who sets up that robot is the person responsible and effectively signing the contract by those actions. > Who are you gonna sue then? The person who set up the robot.

> The person who sets up that robot is the person responsible and effectively signing the contract by those actions.

If that was true, then all scraping of a website with a ToS would be illegal, yet it's established by jurisprudence that it's not. And “authentication” doesn't change the picture here in Amy way, because it's not actually authentication.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#878

Post by davkan »

simondotau wrote: post #10

If you don’t like X, I don’t understand why anyone would use a service like XCancel, which effectively helps maintain the cultural relevance of X. On a practical level, I’m also wondering what consistent legal standard people want when it comes to things like terms of service and individuals' copyright. It's unworkable to maintain one rule for the awesome people we might like and and another rule for the horrible des…

They have something I want. Usually that’s to check an account for a status update on a service or organization, or view a link that’s been sent to me.

I was fine with occasionally wading into the shit pile for something I want. It’s fine, the door is open and I don’t live there. Get in get out.

But now they want me have a shit address and shit suit and a shitmail. They want me to say hey its me mr shit can you let me in so can I have some of that delicious shit?

Instead I think I’ll just put on a hazmat suit and steal the few pieces I want from their shit pile and get out.

Boycotting them is pointless. Holding to your principals does nothing but hinder your own usage of the internet and does not help bring about the end of X or whoever else. The 0.5% of X users using xcancel disappearing overnight would have no impact.

These monoliths of Internet consolidation are not worth our consideration. Steal their content, block their ads, get on with your life.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#879

Post by 27183 »

rimunroe wrote: post #240
27183 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should visiting a page on your computer count as copying? Because there's no physical mechanism for the information to be transmitted over a computer network other than by copying the bytes . Note this is distinct from broadcast systems like analog television or radio. Packet switching networks only function by copying information and storing multiple copies around the internet, including in your computer's RAM…

> Because there's no physical mechanism for the information to be transmitted over a computer network other than by copying the bytes. Your response seems to ignore everything in my comment other than the second sentence. I was asking why that detail should matter as far as the law is concerned, and I gave some reasons I don't think that would be good or practical.

> Your response seems to ignore everything in my comment other than the second sentence.

I deliberately ignored it, because it was all irrelevant.

> I was asking why that detail should matter as far as the law is concerned, and I gave some reasons I don't think that would be good or practical.

I have no idea at all how anything should matter as far as the law is concerned. Not my problem, unless I somehow get caught. But not getting caught is a problem grounded in reality, unlike legal ones. I think I can manage that.

That said, if laws about computers don't comport with how computers actually work, I'll take extra amounts of glee in violating them.

And, even more gleefully, nobody will be able to detect my violations. My internet traffic will look identically the same as someone "innocently copying" or whatever.

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