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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

#981

Post by frumplestlatz »

defrost wrote: post #974
frumplestlatz wrote: post #967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700433 https://www.allsides.com/news-source/sky-news-media-bias You’re just being brazenly disingenuous at this point. The publication is left-leaning, regardless of the distant parent company. The experts they used to design and run the study were literally left-wing political advocacy groups, and a self-declared left-wing disinformation researcher. The award is an empty appeal…

Ever so slightly left leaning by your source. Centralist and unbiased by another: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/sky-news/ That's quite the achievement for a group that was once firmly a propaganda wing of the global Murdoch PoV. "brazenly disingenuous" in such context is a ridiculous and emotive over statement.

> Centralist and unbiased by another

It’s little odd that you replied to the least substantive fact. Disingenuous even.

> "brazenly disingenuous" in such context is a ridiculous and emotive over statement.

“… behavior that's not totally honest or sincere. It's disingenuous when people pretend to know less about something than they really do.”

Rather like ignoring the methodology errors, or the fact that the classification model was developed by an “unapologetically progressive” political consultancy, or that their own experts rated its accuracy poorly.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#982

Post by account42 »

WarmWash wrote: post #297
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.

The problem companies have is that "doesn't suck" generally means "it's free with no ads". The internet has this innate expectation that everything digital be totally free and have no form of tracking or ads, or if it does have ads/tracking, that you are trivially capable of blocking them while still totally enjoying the service/product. xcancel, archive, whatever are all tools almost solely meant to access monetized…

The "content" in twitter largely isn't monetized, only the platform profits via rent seeking on other people's writings.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#983

Post by simondotau »

mitxela wrote: post #968
simondotau wrote: post #965

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It's always publicly readable; 2. It is not reliant on any singular corporation, or trusting any singular corporation. 3. The established domain name system proves authenticity. And of course the information can still be posted to X, etc.

1 is untrue, 2 is untrue, 3 is the same as x.com

1 is true: if you control the web server, you control whether the content is published as readable by anonymous visitors.

2 is true: if you disagree, provide the name of that singular corporation. To be clear, you're always relying on corporations, but there's no single gatekeeper.

3 is not the same: if I see something published on "www.water.dcceew.nsw.gov.au" I can be reasonably confident that it is published by my local Government. If I see an X account of @NSWDCCEEW_Water then I need to start looking for context clues, most of which can be faked.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#984

Post by rob74 »

pwg wrote: post #285
rob74 wrote: post #99

Maybe instead of trying to get rid of services that provide a more convenient access to X to non-logged-in users, they should realize that there is a real market behind these services - users that will likely never sign up to X, but who want to read/watch some content without the incessant nagging and limitations that X subjects non-logged-in users to?

> without the incessant nagging and limitations that X subjects non-logged-in users to That is directly the result of the evil pull of advertising. "Logged in" users are more valuable than "non-logged in" users to advertisers (because logged in ones are identified) and so what you are seeing as "nagging" is Shitter (formerly X, formerly Twitter) desperately trying to increase its ad revenue at your expense. You are w…

Actually you can write "Xitter" ("x" is pronounced "sh" in the standard transliteration of Chinese and many other languages, although most of them are not really widespread, like Basque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_alphabet and Maltese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_alphabet).

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#985

Post by frumplestlatz »

vrganj wrote: post #979
frumplestlatz wrote: post #967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49700433 https://www.allsides.com/news-source/sky-news-media-bias You’re just being brazenly disingenuous at this point. The publication is left-leaning, regardless of the distant parent company. The experts they used to design and run the study were literally left-wing political advocacy groups, and a self-declared left-wing disinformation researcher. The award is an empty appeal…

You keep claiming all these statistical failures, yet you fail to produce evidence for any of them. I'm sorry, but I trust actual statistics experts more than some guy on HN that makes bold assertions with no proof. To say "nuh uh" and then not back it up with anything is below the standard of debate I expect. What are these "obvious" failures? Why have you failed to point them out concretely over several comments no…

> This series of comments paints a picture of somebody starting from ideological priors and then trying to bend reality to arrive at their premade conclusion.

The irony is palpable.

> I trust actual statistics experts

I listed the issues, but if you need an expert to explain them to you in detail, then perhaps you have neither the statistical nor media literacy necessary here.

1) Selection. Only 9 accounts, no interaction, short period of time. This is not a sufficiently large or realistic sample. That is also not how users interact with the product — for example, things like dwell time directly and materially impact the algorithmic weighting. They specifically avoided any measurable interactions.

2) Base rate. They did not know if the results reflected the base rate across the platform, or algorithmic bias. In other words, did X itself skew right, or did the algorithm.

3) Unreliable classification. Their own experts rated its accuracy poorly, and those are the people most ideologically aligned with the progressive political consultancy that trained the classification model in the first place.

Never mind the “propaganda” claim, which would require showing that not only was the algorithmic bias real (not demonstrated), but that the intent was propaganda instead of — for example — simply the result of maximizing for user engagement. None of which was shown.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#986

Post by account42 »

WarmWash wrote: post #631
Dylan16807 wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when the creator decided to make that free to access, it's improper for a company to throw up a wall in front of it.

I think you might be confused, because any creator can make their content free to access. If they are playing in someone else's house, yeah there might be rules they don't like, but it's also not their house. Nothing stops creators from self-hosting and absorbing the full cost themselves.Yt doesn't even care if you link to your own hosted version of the video on their platform.

It used to be that when your house is the size of a city or even country that it isn't just your house anymore and you don't get to set the rules on your own. When a platform becomes big enough it should be treated more like a utility and a startup.

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#988

Post by vrganj »

frumplestlatz wrote: post #985
vrganj wrote: post #979

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep claiming all these statistical failures, yet you fail to produce evidence for any of them. I'm sorry, but I trust actual statistics experts more than some guy on HN that makes bold assertions with no proof. To say "nuh uh" and then not back it up with anything is below the standard of debate I expect. What are these "obvious" failures? Why have you failed to point them out concretely over several comments no…

> This series of comments paints a picture of somebody starting from ideological priors and then trying to bend reality to arrive at their premade conclusion. The irony is palpable. > I trust actual statistics experts I listed the issues, but if you need an expert to explain them to you in detail, then perhaps you have neither the statistical nor media literacy necessary here. 1) Selection. Only 9 accounts, no intera…

> The irony is palpable.

> I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan is ideology. The material force of ideology - makes me not see what I'm effectively eating. It's not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament - when we are within ideology, is that - when we think that we escape it into our dreams - at that point we are within ideology.

Some food for thought from ideology expert Slavoj Zizek.

> I listed the issues, but if you need an expert to explain them to you in detail, then perhaps you have neither the statistical nor media literacy necessary here.

You didn't list any of those before, no need to get personal. You could just argue on the facts instead.

Regarding 1 - You still haven't established why 9 accounts are insufficient. No interaction seems to be exactly the right move if the point is to establish the baseline behavior.

Your argument 2 is kind of self-defeating, don't you think? Either it's a right-wing propaganda machine because its algorithm emphasizes right wing propaganda or it's a right-wing propaganda machine because it's full of right-wing propaganda. I don't see how this argument helps your case that it isn't in either case.

Re 3 - now you're getting back to attacking the messenger. Attack the actual model. Which classification do you disagree with?

> Never mind the “propaganda” claim, which would require showing that not only was the algorithmic bias real (not demonstrated), but that the intent was propaganda instead of — for example — simply the result of maximizing for user engagement.

You haven't established why it would require any of that. As a counterexample, MoMA funded abstract art in the 50s as what they thought was supporting artistic freedom. Turns out it was CIA-funded propaganda. [0] It didn't require any intent from MoMA. It still was a propaganda campaign.

[0] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artcurious-cia-art-excerpt...

Re: XCancel service is suspended until further notice

#989

Post by redeeman »

Plont wrote: post #772
redeeman wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then your understanding seems to be quite limited :)

what even was the point of typing that? it just reads as kindergarten bully on an ipad.

dont see how its bullying? someone is demonstrating a very childish point of view , almost to the point of preaching. which I would say a little bit of critical thinking says is otherwise. why else would so many want xcancel in the first place?
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