XCancel service is suspended until further notice

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.

https://xxcancel.com is up and redirecting to working Nitter instances.

I don't see how any government or business (especially the former) can justify using X at this point when it doesn't serve the public interest or the interest of customers who deserve at least some choice. It's as unreasonable for them as using Instagram or a dating app for something intended for broad reach and accessibility.

I don't particularly like Bluesky, but it's publicly readable and has RSS. Any real solution would be protocol or standard instead of yet another closed service, though. For now, I see Nitter and XCancel as a temporary fix until people abandon it for whatever practical, economic, or political reason(s) they may have.

Of more concern, the Nitter github repository was permanently archived a couple of days ago.

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

I have been suspended from Ex-Twitter for months for "inauthentic behavior" despite only ever just using the site normally. I would very much like to have nothing to do with this site anymore, but unfortunately many people and organizations from before Elon took it over still post there and I can't make them all move to another site (and the same site for that matter), so here we are.

This may be a situation where revealing a solution may end up harming it. For those who use iOS and other Apple OSes, I learned of this recently released free Safari extension called Litterbox that allows looking at one post on x.com.

[1]: https://andadinosaur.com/launch-litterbox

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?

> You can find the content you were looking for on the original website

*if you log in to an account

A big reason many people use Nitter instances is that X has become very locked down for unauthenticated users.

I wrote about how to redirect to nitter instances on any platform a month ago [1], and a few days later we had the cease and desist. Fortunately, you can redirect to twiiit.com and that will find a working instance for you.

[1] https://armanckeser.com/writing/redirecting-x-com

Free speech absolutist, btw.

Web version of Twitter has become unusable now. So much so that I wonder why they still keep it.

The fact that so many large companies are still on X is so wrong.

XCancel service is suspended.

Unfortunately, due to a new development in the ongoing legal proceedings, we are required to suspend this service again until further notice. We can't share more details.

You can find the content you were looking for on the original website:

Continue to X

Thank you for your understanding. And the trust you have put into the XCancel project.

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 despots we might not like.

I would fund monthly any service that allows us to view and follow and document and track what happens on Twitter without having to have an account and thereby inflate Elon’s ego and numbers.

Neither this post nor the linked site explain what XCancel is/was. Since I wasn't familiar with XCancel, an announcement that it's suspended is not particularly informative.

Apparently XCancel is an instance of Nitter. According to Wikipedia, "Nitter is designed to allow access to X without tracking, advertisements, or the need for an account. It only supports browsing, and cannot be used to sign in or interact with the X community."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitter

Proposal:

Set up a mastodon account that mirrors your (or someone elses) X account.

This way people who want can continue using X, and other people can read & refer to their posts without needing to log into X.

it's going to be a cat and mouse game for as long as X can legally afford to keep it going (i.e. til the heat death of the universe)

regardless, no matter how hard elon turns the screws on their customers, people will continue to use twitter/X because "that's where everyone is" and places like HN will continue to allow these links because "that's where the news is" despite healthier alternatives like the Mastodon network and Bluesky existing.

whatever. i've redirected x to 0.0.0.0 when the first warning shot was fired and called it a day. rocks are looking like a great place to live under right about now anyway.

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 accounts (just several bucks per each) and proxies.

What I'm trying to say, that with modern tools it is incredibly easy to bypass the restrictions on reading twitter without an account, even if they manage to take down all the nitter instances, try to make finding nitter source code harder etc.

What was the Chinese alternative ? At this point I’m just going to use that instead, lawyers won’t be able to take that down.

What is the core value proposition of twitter? It seems simple, short form informations delivery (eg “follow me on twitter”) is central. The “likes”, retweets, and follower counts are secondary but perhaps important metrics that drive engagement. A simple link plus QR for paper is needed. Moderation seems a challenge. Are there simpler alternatives to mastodon? is federation possible? Why is RSS not used for this?

Makes sense, the legal system is pay to play.

Bluesky is here anyway.

Hell, you’re arguably on a Twitter alternative right now.

https://nitter.click still works right as rain, and so do many other Nitter instances.

I used to be a heavy Twitter user. I quit when it started to become a dump area for fascist rhetoric.

I guess we're seeing Musk-defending-freedom-of-speech in action.

Thanks Elon, now we know that scraping is illegal! Very good to clarify that for future proceedings against the AI thieves.

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 I have no actual need to go to the X site, I choose to completely ignore it, regardless of who posts what there. Most important things will be in the news anyway or you just pick it up from talking to other people.

Why would anyone use any xitter service voluntarily at this point

Good:

Insta requiring login Facebook requiring login

Bad:

X requiring login

Twitter is a weird one because I absolutely hate using it and as someone who's built many feeds I can see how they're trying to farm engagement at the cost of their user's health.

But it is simultaneously the best place to get real time information and after reddit the best place to find human/bot generated content so I do still need access to the data.

Trusting Zuck to fill the gap with Threads is a moron's endeavour and Mastadon is too fragmented we need a centralized good actor to fix this.

I wish X would allow browsing threads, which is the only reason I use xcancel.

I wouldn't even mind seeing advertisements.

I just don't want to have an X account.

When I read this, the Arweave project [1] comes to mind.

Isn't this the exact use case it was built for, preservation of news data in a way that it cannot be tampered with and so that it is kept accessible for everyone forever?

[1] https://arweave.org/

I don't want to sound like a geezer but backdays twitter was a web page, like hacker news. Now it's an app, that wouldn't work as a page in phone's browser. And installing an app is basically installing a spy nowadays

Are there other instances available? X can't ban them all.

I wish legal issues wouldn’t exist for this project and X would stop attacking projects that provide information for free.

Privacy is important more than ever as many of us don't want to login into X.

I live a happy, fulfilling live without having an account in X or reading tweets from third party sites. Just saying...

This to me is a big issue. You have politicians, government entities and other public institutions posting to twitter, but to access we need to log in.

There needs to be a free, non-ad, non-login environment people can use to access this information posted by public entities.

This comment also applies to facebook too, which I think is even worse than twitter.

The MOMENT xcancel gets shut down, someone should sue the president for putting official communication on a closed platform.

I wonder if part of the lawsuit required them to link to twitter - it doesn't seem like a very on-brand thing to do.

Man the RSS feeds are busted too now :/

I think XCancel should use their momentum and set up their own social media network, instead of scrapping the domain.

> You can find the content you were looking for on the original website:

> Continue to X

This was hard to swallow for me! Why you are redirecting to X, which is the exact opposite of what you are offering?! Don't get me wrong, I use XCancel and Nitter regularly an I like them, it just hits hard!

i just want to unmute the video and full screen it without logging in. i click twitter link and it is muted.

Why even keep using zombie Twitter? I used to scroll Twitter a lot but deleted my account back when. Literally any other social network seems more appealing these days, and not by a small margin.

Their browser verification never made it into the same room as my browser anyway...

What reason could there be that they can't share details?

So are you, dear reader, for intellectual property laws or not. I see a lot of "anti-this" sentiment confused with "anti-AI [data collection]."

The consistent view is one regarding IP in general - not reverse engineering your morals based on the case.

It just feels like every social media site is login-walling public posts. I can't think of a major social media site (reddit, Instagram, FB, Twitter, etc) that doesn't do this to varying degrees. I can only think of minor sites (bluesky, truth social, etc) that allow access.

It feels like an end of an era.

Any details about what's going on? Is Nitter/their Github still up?

Has anyone ever succeeded going up against Elon legally?

wtf the guy payed what 40billion for this website?

yes, he can enforce whatever ToS he wants .

goyimx.com is still working fine thankfully

What did they expect.

Just use the site, people

X is a cesspool, hence the existence of XCancel.

So X is down again. Oh well.

This is Mr. comedy is legal and free speech, and public town square, right?

I understand that he is a vile POS, but I don't understand people supporting him and using his products.

Surprised there are still people who think the issue with "X" is that it is a bad product.

It is a bad product, and it is pathological in the way all degraded social media platforms are bad.

But it's also worse than those others, in well documented ways; and it's long past time anyone with integrity found alternatives.

The failure of the "AI" industry to do so is an indictment and serious red flag.

There are now about 10 different people running them, and you can also run your own. https://status.d420.de/

The browser extension "Libredirect" will transparently redirect you to a working one or one of your choice.

Remember when twitter was “the public sphere”

Lulz

As a reminder - get off Twitter and get onto Mastodon (Bluesky is dead to rights). Those of you addicted to what was formerly Twitter need to move on.

I don't really get the hate for X btw. What kind of kool-aid is everyone on?

I seem to be able to post/access pro-Palestinian content there easily, no other platform lets me do that.

It has also been great for my project and find the right community from scratch.

every official government entity needs to get off X

every local, state and federal entity

nothing published there can be read logged out or archived

has to be violating law if not best practices

Why are people still using X? I mean seriously people, move on and stop using this closed ecosystem that is propaganda around elections.

Xitter can't make a web UI that's actually usable to save their lives - so they're going after the one platform that does with lawfare.

Despicable behavior.

Another "victory" for the freedom of information.

Not a popular question here, but what's the difference between xcancel or archive.org, and torrents and other pirate services alike? (except twitter is user content, yet per their tos xcancel is still piracy)

Fuck X, and this place while we're at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49403658

Cost me $500 (to a good charity, oh well) and guess what, I was fucking right. I have subby-tendancies but some of you put me to shame. Me personally? I don't like the taste of rubber.

lol, go try to just even sign up for a new X account and let me know how that goes. god damn sycophancy.

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There is no reason for xcancel to exist.

Either you cancel X. Meaning: NOT consuming X content.

Or you just visit X.com.

Right? Right?

Good.

X is the public square. The algorithm is superior to any other social media site out there right now. They are right to charge for the API and right to shut down impostor sites.

What did they say around 2020? If you don't like it - BUILD YOUR OWN.

IMO, if you hate Elon so much, you shouldn't be visiting his website.

You look very odd and silly if you still want to engage with it and just use a different UI layer (i.e., "XCancel", "Nitter".)

If they want you to have an account to read the post and you want to read the post, create an account, log in, and move on. If you don't want to do that, nobody is forcing you to view a public website. There's alternatives like "Bluesky" out there that might be good for you.