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Posted by zImPatrick 17 hours ago

Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice(github.com)
https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

https://xcancel.com/cdclegal

https://nitter.net/

https://xcancel.com/

757 points | 332 commentspage 3
petcat 17 hours ago|
The software project itself is probably fine, but the legal risk is always going to be with the person that hosts it with the intention of facilitating the unauthorized access of Twitter's website. Seems like that could run afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Those people should seek their own legal advice.

miningtcup 17 hours ago||
The project maintainer, Zedeus, runs the most or second-most popular instance, and I assume his lawyers decided that was okay.
toomuchtodo 17 hours ago|||
Host the infra in countries unfriendly to the US and its legal framework apparatus. Continually package the archive as torrents for distribution globally.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567595

miningtcup 17 hours ago||
X already knows who the maintainer is and could easily go after him.
toomuchtodo 17 hours ago||
They will have to prove he’s operating it, and someone else can orchestrate. Anna’s Archive, Z Lib, Archive.today, Tor exit node patterns.

Put a tip jar out, let’s get archiving. “You can just do things.”

bhhaskin 17 hours ago||
Except this is settled case law. LinkedIn tried and lost against scrapers.
petcat 17 hours ago|||
That was a case of scraping explicitly public data that was already available to the general public without any extra effort.
mitxela 11 hours ago||
Which is exactly what Twitter is?
petcat 47 minutes ago||
no twitter requires a login
miningtcup 17 hours ago|||
I think that this is different because Nitter uses real X accounts for scraping, rather than publicly available data.
mitxela 11 hours ago|||
That is still a form of publicly available.
Tostino 16 hours ago|||
Explain to me why that matters at all in an ethical sense. Especially given the scraping / pirating that's gone on by all of these companies in the last number of years.
andOlga 14 hours ago|||
When have ethics ever mattered in law?
pessimizer 13 hours ago|||
Who cares this is a subthread about legal advice.
Decabytes 15 hours ago||
I feel like setting up the social media is a solved problem. And while getting users is hard, if you hook up to the fediverse, you can piggy back off other Platforms. I think the harder problem is making it profitable
MikhailTal 14 hours ago|
> if you hook up to the fediverse

No this is the hard problem. HN people live in a bubble. Anything else than signup with oauth and then having access to everyone and its too hard and 99% of people will click away.

SoftTalker 8 hours ago||
I think the friction is higher than that. With few exceptions I basically won't use any new service that requires me to create an account. I do all my online shopping on sites that offer guest checkout. Zero chance I'm creating any new social accounts at this point.
leumon 16 hours ago||
currently working instances: https://codeberg.org/mv12star/shitter/wiki/Instances
throw03172019 7 hours ago||
Thank goodness! I only use XCancel for tweets
m00dy 2 hours ago||
ok, what's the legal advice ?
sparkling 17 hours ago||
So X(.ai) can scrape the entire web, but nobody can scrape X. Makes sense.
cdrnsf 16 hours ago||
Of course. xAI can also run gas generators to power its data centers and pump toxins into the air around local communities. Grok can generate non-consensual nude images of women (and CSAM). Their owner can make nazi salutes and demolish agencies millions depend on. Rules, laws and ethics are for poor people.
mitxela 11 hours ago|||
Everyone does what's best for their own interests. We should not sit down and obey Elon's interests - we should support our own by running more Nitters.
KennyBlanken 15 hours ago||
And DOGE can get everyone's personal data but nobody can see crash data from his cars or full reports from government agencies about crashes, or where he's flying in his jet, or where he buys and owns properties...

It's getting to the point where his private security are harassing people for walking down the street in their own neighborhood that runs alongside one of his "compounds."

1matin 17 hours ago||
Let's hope X doesn't pressure GitHub to take the repo down.

It's actually sad to see how deeply do we depend on monopolies.

ranger_danger 15 hours ago|
Thankfully github is but one in an unlimited sea of choice between both hosted and self-hosted git forges all across the world.

Other solutions might not have the exact same functionality, but in this context of mere availability... it really doesn't matter.

Markoff 4 hours ago||
Yeah, I think I will stick with redirectors to working instance anyway, seems like safer option than stick with one specific instance.

https://twit.0r.cx

https://xxcancel.com

DavCreator 4 hours ago|
Glad you like xxcancel.com (I am the dev!). I just added xcancel.com back to the instances list. Can't wait to also add nitter.net back to it soon.

Do you have any suggestions for xxcancel.com?

Melatonic 4 hours ago||
Now if only we can get a working one for Instagram
latchkey 14 hours ago|
Looking at their crypto addresses, they are sitting on many thousands of dollars that haven't moved in a very long time. What's the point of donating if they aren't going to use the funds?
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