Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I've always used Twitter in read-only mode; but shortly before the Muskover, Twitter, probably in a desperate attempt to increase the number of its active users, became quite hostile to non-logged-in readers like me; and this has only become worse since Musk. A pity.

Nitter helps; a bit. In fact, Nitter is like an ideal Twitter; without all the javascript bloat; but because of that, it does not support Twitter's rich media such as spaces; and it also sometimes cannot connect to the api. And it isn't clear how long its api key will last.



The fact so many government organizations use Twitter as a primary means of communication on alerts/events is frustrating to no end in the post Musk days.

The profile/tweet history is downright unusable.


Sometimes I think about evangelizing the Fedi to local government officials since I am sure a lot of them are disgusted with Musk. (I live in one of the most liberal counties)


The European Union runs their own Mastodon instance.

https://social.network.europa.eu/explore


See the US Govt wouldn't do this because then they couldn't ban anyone for speech


If it is for official communications (weather alerts, subway running late) there is not much of a problem. I mean, “free speech” doesn’t include publishing a bogus weather report on weather.gov. People can go post fake weather reports at treehouse.social or some other mastodon server.

Blocking might be a problem to second order. Say there is some climate denier who is just always saying that reports of 115F at the airport in Phoenix are false. Can the weather service block that person, even if means they can’t get weather alerts anymore?


Why even accept replies in the first place for weather reports?


When has the US government banning someone for free speech ever a concern in the recent past ?


I think you should.

It only make sense that large enough entities run their own instance, they don't even have to self host it.

I always found it strange that no serious professional would use an @gmail.com email but somehow publishing behind twitter.com was normal. At least now there is a viable alternative...


I think government officials will go where the people go, and right now that’s kinda up in the air?


What concerns/thoughts do you have that prevent you from doing so?


Mostly other things competing for attention, not being all that personally excited about receiving messages from almost anybody, and not having a clear proposal. (Do I try to get them to run their own server, do I tell them to use somebody else’s, etc.)


Nitter does not use the official API, so there is no API key to expire.

The "sometimes cannot connect to the API", is because the APIs they use (which IIRC are the APIs the official twitter website uses), changes from time to time and is not a stable API and probably because Twitter wants to make it harder to "abuse" the API like nitter does.


I'm surprised the API endpoints aren't CORS protected


CORS only works on browsers. From nitter FAQ "All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Twitter"

So they are proxying the calls to Twitter servers.


ive noticed that too, personally not wanting to log into twitter to boost their stats, ill use nitter if i really really really want to read a persons post


[flagged]


I agree. It's more pro free speech now and community notes is good. But trying to view a tweet or a profile without an account is a pain now.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: