I get it from the Dev’s side of things. If you have a (supposed) Trillionaire-backed tech platform threatening you with legal action for a project that likely wasn’t some huge money-maker (if it made any money at all) I would likely do the same.
It’s easy to sit here and say “fight back”, but unless some entity like the EFF is gonna back you it’s hard to justify the time, expenses, and hassle of even just dealing with a legal threat from one of these platforms if you aren’t a journalist and are just some random dev who found a workaround to accessing Twitter/X content outside their app.
I do worry what this portends for other projects though. No doubt Google is keeping a close eye on this when it comes to YouTube alternative front-ends and apps. At least there you have more options so it becomes a game of “whack-a-mole”.
GrapheneOS actually does have Mastodon. But yeah, generally if I see some content creator or the like on Mastodon and not shitter these days, I immediately treat it as a signal that their content must be worth something cuz they’re sacrificing audience reach by doing this—so they can’t be total sellouts chasing trends and writing nonsense for the clout. At the very least they have integrity.
IMO Mastodon should be the default “town hall” of the internet, because it’s the least likely to be enshitified and closed down. It may not be perfect, but for keeping up with a company or person it’s in no way worse than twitter.
The people aren’t ready to hear it, but twitter should be nationalized. So many public organizations refuse to use another communication channel, so twitter should not be under private ownership by a guy that is too busy building mecha hitler to care about doing a public good.
And it can’t get much worse than the president of the united states owning a for-profit social media site called “truth”.
For me it’s videogame news. It’s the only platform the gaming companies are posting (except Meta services, which I refuse to use), why would I spend an unnecessary amount of time reading all gaming news subreddits when I can have a chronological Twitter feed of only the news I care about?
@anon65490391@hydrogenperoxide If you have multiple posts that are just off-topic, that should be a sign to move that conversation to a DM or a new thread.
Twitter wants to grow so it makes sense for them to make it worse and harder to use their platform
I know there’s some popular saying about just getting people on your platform like windows or YouTube even if they aren’t spending money. Pirating windows and using adblock on youtube has not stopped then from being massive business successes.
You look at the government and everything it’s doing today and your thought is to give it more power?
The government shouldn’t be allowed to own shares of companies, much less outright take them over. The current administration is an perfect ongoing case study in why the only way to preserve privacy and individual security is to dismantle large portions of the state and strip the executive of power.
Government and State are two distinct concepts and realities, though they may occasionally coincide in countries where a genuine rule of law is absent.
In these countries lacking a genuine rule of law, the cause lies, in many cases, in the fact that government is directed by the private sector and there is no ironclad separation of powers . Corporations stand above the laws (the State).
The government shouldn’t be allowed to own shares of companies, much less outright take them over.
It should.
The current administration is an perfect ongoing case study in why the only way to preserve privacy and individual security is to dismantle large portions of the state and strip the executive of power.
I imagine taking away power from the government decreases privacy for the people because companies will start doing what the f they want.
The government should hold power, be regulated itself and regulate companies. Neoliberalism is a disease.
You could legally force Twitter to open up to open frameworks like ActivityPub, Nostr or ATproto. That allows competitors to have a chance in the market.
The current government is a front for techno-feudalism, what you are proposing is more of that under the current trajectory. Basically nothing gets enforced because the president himself is a criminal profiting from lack of enforcement in anti-cartel/monopoly laws or general corruption.
I want real enforcement, corporations that are held to real standards. Standards that do not allow you to lock down a previously open system while threatening to sue people keeping the flow of legal information open. The best way in my eyes is to remove the private ownership of twitter.
I don’t think this will be the end of Nitter unless X takes technical steps to block it. That hasn’t happened yet. If it was so easy to stop reproducing content using laws, piracy would not exist, but it’s thriving.
