For the decade+ there has been an unofficial town square known as twitter. As the town square has slowly become more gated and overgrown with weeds some people thought giving people a way to access the town square without paying the entrance fee would be helpful. Many found this useful.
Now I think the whole thing is trash, and agree, why use Twitter? But people like journalists and AI executives are still announcing things on Twitter because having a large following seems like a dopamine booster. In this world where people see the following as a source of legitimacy, having a single company own that town square seems...problematic.,
I'm reminded of the phrase 天下为公, which is hard to translate exactly because 公 is doing some linguistical juggling that English has a hard time matching.
I don't think twitter in its current capacity should exist, the storage should be decoupled from the filters and the filters that everyone uses should be a free market with traditional competition dynamics. It may end up looking something like twitter, but without editorializing algorithms and a single walled entry. We can quibble who owns the database I suppose.
It seems like a reasonable question to ask and I'm surprised to see you, in particular, take this point of view.
I could argue that due to the New York Times being the "newspaper of record" they should post my manifesto because, after all, it's very important. The obvious objection to this is that the NYT is privately owned, and despite having made itself very important, I don't have the right to tell them what to do.
This is the obvious objection to "Twitter is important, we should get to tell it what to do" as well, and you're old enough to know that Twitter kneecapping third-party apps is not at all new to the Musk chapter of the company, either.
Is it different, though? If so, how? Granted the jibe about the UN was sarcastic, but it's the same question, and, you know it.
Your NYT analogy seems to be specific to posting things, not reading them.
When it comes to reading, I think you could indeed make a reasonably compelling argument that the NYT must not refuse to provide a subscription to anyone who asks. That would be similar (but obviously not exactly the same) to the way common carriers are treated.
As to publishing, even then your analogy doesn't really fit because NYT has always been extremely selective about what they publish (ie they are curators) whereas twitter was fundamentally based on the polar opposite.
I legit did not know. I have seen it before, I've never really understood what it was, and didn't really have any reason to dig further into why people were linking against it instead of actual twitter/x until today. I've been here about a year less than you.
It was only a “town square” in the minds of Twitter users, no one else thinks that about a news media propped-up social network. If anything it was a comment section attached to nothing. And comment sections all get bad after a while.
Can I just add too, it's why 'popularity' is an incredibly terrible metric for successfulness on the web
Look at Twitter. If it was good under Dorsey (debatable, it did have pretty notable censorship) and Musk ruins it, why are people 'still on it'? Because Musk did a good job? Not necessarily. It takes time to build a new product, and get your friends to switch over. Switching costs. I'm on a platform because Avicebron is on it, because Alice is on it, because Bob is on it
Same goes for sites like (especially) Facebook. It's 'popular'! 3 billion active users! (They lie a lot and probably about that and they make it very easy to be 'active', by faking the notifications or giving you none at all, like increasingly with messages over the years) Well, it's hard to 'just move'. Facebook has become and has been for a while an utterly shit product that deserves the corporate death penalty. People being on it is not the slam dunk people think it is
I don’t use it, but some government organizations keep doing it. Why on earth they do that, I will never know, but I’m not making an account to read a tweet.
Because some people in positions of power ignore the consequences of using external services.
There has been a bit of a wake up call in this regard in Europe, with many governments making efforts to detach themselves from US corporations, but it's a much larger problem. When a government entity chooses to rely on Whatsapp, or Android, or some other piece of technology bound to a corporation, they are creating a bond between the rights and services they enable and interaction with that corporation.
This nuance is often ignored because "Well everybody uses (thing) anyway" and other shortsighted trains of thought. I'm by no means against opposing X in principle, but the issue at hand is not itself about X, and I suspect a lot of people wouldn't care if it was still Twitter.
This is just like the ad-blocker discussion and Nitter is just as fine as ad blockers. Sometimes official sources make announcements via services they should be prohibited by law from using, so you need to buy into the sour apple and read these announcements by other means, whether that means using an ad blocker or Nitter. There is no copyright infringement because X does not hold the copyright on the (vast majority) of that content.
Also worth noting: I click on Nitter links but I would never in my life click on an "X" link. When I use Nitter, X loses zero ad revenue.
This comes across to me as a surprising question - why do you assume there's such a bio at all, rather than it being developed by someone anonymous, as is the case for many questionably legal privacy tools?
That's exactly what VCs are good for. Cities could've shut down Uber any time they wanted, but they didn't, so it grew big.
There has to be a plausible path to making money though. If the purpose of nitter is to not make money, VCs won't fund it. If it substituted X's ads for Nitter's own ads, that could work, but the online ad market isn't as lucrative as it once was so it wouldn't be enough money.
You could find a VC whose other project has similar legal concerns and get them to fund your legal case to set precedent, but I don't know what that project would be.
> Elevator pitch if you will?
For the decade+ there has been an unofficial town square known as twitter. As the town square has slowly become more gated and overgrown with weeds some people thought giving people a way to access the town square without paying the entrance fee would be helpful. Many found this useful.
Now I think the whole thing is trash, and agree, why use Twitter? But people like journalists and AI executives are still announcing things on Twitter because having a large following seems like a dopamine booster. In this world where people see the following as a source of legitimacy, having a single company own that town square seems...problematic.,
Let’s assume the analogy to town square holds, who do you think should control it? The UN?
I'm reminded of the phrase 天下为公, which is hard to translate exactly because 公 is doing some linguistical juggling that English has a hard time matching.
I don't think twitter in its current capacity should exist, the storage should be decoupled from the filters and the filters that everyone uses should be a free market with traditional competition dynamics. It may end up looking something like twitter, but without editorializing algorithms and a single walled entry. We can quibble who owns the database I suppose.
Would 'regulated utility' be a good fit for what you are describing?
[dead]
the EU of course, the actually functioning UN
Can you stop with the 'just asking questions' routine?
> Can you stop with the 'just asking questions' routine?
This combative response caught me by surprise.
I have nominal awareness of what Nitter stood for in the past.
Asking people for money given the legal precariousness AND not having a more strategic business model seems sketchy to me. Even bordering on scam.
Hence my genuine curiosity about whether there's something more substantial in the works.
It seems like a reasonable question to ask and I'm surprised to see you, in particular, take this point of view.
I could argue that due to the New York Times being the "newspaper of record" they should post my manifesto because, after all, it's very important. The obvious objection to this is that the NYT is privately owned, and despite having made itself very important, I don't have the right to tell them what to do.
This is the obvious objection to "Twitter is important, we should get to tell it what to do" as well, and you're old enough to know that Twitter kneecapping third-party apps is not at all new to the Musk chapter of the company, either.
Is it different, though? If so, how? Granted the jibe about the UN was sarcastic, but it's the same question, and, you know it.
Your NYT analogy seems to be specific to posting things, not reading them.
When it comes to reading, I think you could indeed make a reasonably compelling argument that the NYT must not refuse to provide a subscription to anyone who asks. That would be similar (but obviously not exactly the same) to the way common carriers are treated.
As to publishing, even then your analogy doesn't really fit because NYT has always been extremely selective about what they publish (ie they are curators) whereas twitter was fundamentally based on the polar opposite.
There is no way someone who is on HN for any amount of time is not aware of what Nitter is.
I legit did not know. I have seen it before, I've never really understood what it was, and didn't really have any reason to dig further into why people were linking against it instead of actual twitter/x until today. I've been here about a year less than you.
That's impressive :)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
It was only a “town square” in the minds of Twitter users, no one else thinks that about a news media propped-up social network. If anything it was a comment section attached to nothing. And comment sections all get bad after a while.
There are a lot of public institutions using twitter for their communications.
There are a lot of public institutions not using Twitter for their communications too. Are those institutions not in the “town square”?
And they should be utterly ashamed of it. They give it a legitimacy that it has not deserved for years now.
Completely agree, feel the same about facebook et al too.
Can I just add too, it's why 'popularity' is an incredibly terrible metric for successfulness on the web
Look at Twitter. If it was good under Dorsey (debatable, it did have pretty notable censorship) and Musk ruins it, why are people 'still on it'? Because Musk did a good job? Not necessarily. It takes time to build a new product, and get your friends to switch over. Switching costs. I'm on a platform because Avicebron is on it, because Alice is on it, because Bob is on it
Same goes for sites like (especially) Facebook. It's 'popular'! 3 billion active users! (They lie a lot and probably about that and they make it very easy to be 'active', by faking the notifications or giving you none at all, like increasingly with messages over the years) Well, it's hard to 'just move'. Facebook has become and has been for a while an utterly shit product that deserves the corporate death penalty. People being on it is not the slam dunk people think it is
>What’s the purpose of Nitter?
To allow people to check X without feeling they are contributing to the success of the platform, by bypassing the account requirement.
Jut dont use it, either it's useful or not. X needs revenue to continue to bypassing it illegal and should not be done. Either use X or don't.
I don’t use it, but some government organizations keep doing it. Why on earth they do that, I will never know, but I’m not making an account to read a tweet.
>Why on earth they do that, I will never know
Because some people in positions of power ignore the consequences of using external services.
There has been a bit of a wake up call in this regard in Europe, with many governments making efforts to detach themselves from US corporations, but it's a much larger problem. When a government entity chooses to rely on Whatsapp, or Android, or some other piece of technology bound to a corporation, they are creating a bond between the rights and services they enable and interaction with that corporation.
This nuance is often ignored because "Well everybody uses (thing) anyway" and other shortsighted trains of thought. I'm by no means against opposing X in principle, but the issue at hand is not itself about X, and I suspect a lot of people wouldn't care if it was still Twitter.
> X needs revenue to continue
I think that's the point
All services need money to function.
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If it's dead the people posting there that we're trying to get access to will post somewhere else, probably somewhere easier to access.
> me hate him coz media told me so
What an amazingly dumbass thing to say. Yes, there's no reasons why a person would rationally dislike Elon, sure.
I hope you realize how people perceive you when you utter such inanity.
You don't have a choice when cities, counties, or other government officials decide to make announcements on there.
what else is illegal? adblock?
This is just like the ad-blocker discussion and Nitter is just as fine as ad blockers. Sometimes official sources make announcements via services they should be prohibited by law from using, so you need to buy into the sour apple and read these announcements by other means, whether that means using an ad blocker or Nitter. There is no copyright infringement because X does not hold the copyright on the (vast majority) of that content.
Also worth noting: I click on Nitter links but I would never in my life click on an "X" link. When I use Nitter, X loses zero ad revenue.
[dead]
The purpose is being able to read X in the browser without an account.
> And where can one read a bio of the creator(s)?
This comes across to me as a surprising question - why do you assume there's such a bio at all, rather than it being developed by someone anonymous, as is the case for many questionably legal privacy tools?
Freeing the bird from the shackles of X.
Would you contribute funds?
I just did.
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Let’s be honest, They won’t. The users won’t fund it, as they want to use it for free.
This is what happens when people say they will “donate” but will actually wait for others to do it and little to no one donates.
What you are seeing is the bystander effect. It is why projects like Nitter will end up raising capital from VCs as they actually have money.
Seems an unlikely investment for a VC. Xitter can shut down Nitter any time they want, and the end users don't want to pay for it.
That's exactly what VCs are good for. Cities could've shut down Uber any time they wanted, but they didn't, so it grew big.
There has to be a plausible path to making money though. If the purpose of nitter is to not make money, VCs won't fund it. If it substituted X's ads for Nitter's own ads, that could work, but the online ad market isn't as lucrative as it once was so it wouldn't be enough money.
You could find a VC whose other project has similar legal concerns and get them to fund your legal case to set precedent, but I don't know what that project would be.
Can we skip to the moat?