X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN • Hacker News Board

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#81

Post by orwin » Sun, Nov 23, 2025, 11:57 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #69

ChocolateGod wrote: post #8

X has a pandemic of people pretending to be Americans (or Westerners in general) saying edgy or controversial things in order to encourage engagement and subsequently earn money from X's program. This is why this feature was added. IMHO the program itself just encourages misinformation and should be scrapped.

X's program? They're not doing this to earn money. They're trying to sow division in the US, and they've been very successful.

I know someone from Greece (then Malta) who produce ragebait/troll article farms since at least 2015, targeting the US in general, republicans in particular (I think he started "both side", but Republican ragebait used to draw more engagement). I don't know what he's doing now, but from 2015 to 2020, he made millions. It was mostly facebook at the time, but i wouldn't surprise his content is trending on X.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#82

Post by isodev » Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 7:04 AM UTC

AaronAPU wrote: post #66

isodev wrote: post #7

I don't like the idea of linking VPN usage with something shady or illegal. Privacy is a human right, and knowing that I'm using a VPN or not doesn't change how "authentic" or truthful the post is.

I think it is reasonable to expect privacy when reading social media. Not so much when posting routinely to millions of people while claiming to be some non-anonymous person you aren’t. Does the distinction not make sense from your perspective?

No, it doesn't. How would my country of origin change the meaning of my post? Also, putting people in a bracket of a single country is so very American... country of origin is seldom the country of residence or the country you want to hang out with online.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#83

Post by isodev » Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 7:06 AM UTC

sigwinch wrote: post #59

isodev wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, the World Wide Web is anonymous by the default. The only reason we constantly need to login into places is because big corps want to have walls around their data... and full visibility on what we do online so they can sell it for a lot of money.

Well, I want logins everywhere. I’d like comments made with mTLS to sort to the top. Maybe just comments with mTLS signed by FSF.

Well good, there is a place for you. But going down that road, it means at some point someone will say mTLS is bad because whatever (just like VPNs... and anonymous logins) ... and there won't be signed comments for you anymore, because Elon isn't in the mood for it.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#84

Post by incomingpain » Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 1:06 PM UTC

The majority of my follows and the algo forced accounts really doesnt matter where they are.

The cases where their location does matter, there wasnt a question as to where they were from.

There were virtually no surprises from my point of view.

Re: X.com is gonna snitch you out to the public if you use a VPN

#85

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 24, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

isodev wrote: post #82

AaronAPU wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is reasonable to expect privacy when reading social media. Not so much when posting routinely to millions of people while claiming to be some non-anonymous person you aren’t. Does the distinction not make sense from your perspective?

No, it doesn't. How would my country of origin change the meaning of my post? Also, putting people in a bracket of a single country is so very American... country of origin is seldom the country of residence or the country you want to hang out with online.

[deleted]