Shitter – A Nitter Fork

(codeberg.org)

135 points | by eustoria 4 hours ago ago

101 comments

  • grimgrin 4 hours ago ago

    see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49571634 "Nitter has more working instances than before the takedowns"

    many working instances right now: https://codeberg.org/shitter/shitter/wiki/Instances

  • moopie 3 hours ago ago

    There’s really no reason to bother with social networks owned by literal far right supporters

    • smith7018 3 hours ago ago

      I generally agree but I'm still frequently linked to X and I'm either unable to view the content because I don't have an account or I don't click because I don't want to visit the site. These services allow me to access the user content without having to go through X, itself. I wish hackers/the tech industry moved off of X like most users but here we are.

      • moomin 2 hours ago ago

        I've reached the point where I go "If it's on Twitter I don't need to know". We'll all reach that point eventually.

        • CamperBob2 an hour ago ago

          Problem is, sometimes I do need to see the content.

          If only someone would "just" fucking build a viable replacement for Twitter. It's a weekend's work with the tools now available. C'mon. (pokes stick)

          • deaf_coder 25 minutes ago ago

            You mean like Bluesky, Threads, or Mastodon?

            Those services are available, however, people would not stop using Twitter and will continue to do so until we stop consuming their content, then maybe they will finally get off Twitter...

      • sureMan6 2 hours ago ago

        It's not the fault of the users when there's no viable alternative

        Bluesky is founded by the same founders of Twitter and is not open and has ridiculous policies, Mastodon is the same, even less popular and even more tyrannical

        So the choice for most users, including myself, is tightly moderated spaces run by awful people, or a website run by a literal Nazi, but that at least doesn't ban me on sight

        The Musk twitter acquisition (and the sieg heil at the inauguration) were pivotal moments where a good alternative could've surfaced but instead we got twitter 2.0 (and moving from Twitter to Twitter 2 seems entirely pointless even if it wasn't badly moderated on top of that)

        • wolvoleo 2 hours ago ago

          Mastodon doesn't have policies. Every instance has their own policies. That's the strength of mastodon.

          • TFNA an hour ago ago

            Mastodon devs have said many times that the mainstream fediverse, the original community that federates among itself, has a distinct culture and values that they wish to maintain in perpetuity. That is "policies". Yes, the tech allows parallel ecosystems of servers that don't federate with that original community, but when people talk about "Mastodon" like the OP did, they aren't talking about offshoot ecosystems.

          • numpad0 2 hours ago ago

            Gargron, Apple, Google, all has/had policies for Mastodon, which were incompatible with more than 2/3 of its users(at peak).

            • Vaushite an hour ago ago

              I don't know how to understand this. Google owns Mastodon?

              • numpad0 an hour ago ago

                App distribution platforms threatened Mastodon client apps with a universal Mastodon ban unless the app publicly condemn and denounce Gab(proto Truth Social) with hardcoded connection refusal and every single servers would implement effective moderation.

                Gargron also decided that laws in his home country considers even linking to certain images illegal and various forms of labelings and voluntary policing from abroad tangential to legality and useless.

                They packaged those standards and decisions as something along necessary measures to curb terrorism or whatever, and took the measures to effectively cut off said 2/3 plus some off of the "main Mastodon network", so to speak. Those measures lasted for years, until I think less than a year ago(you'll know what I'm talking about from my immediate comment history).

                • Vaushite 28 minutes ago ago

                  I don't think you're supposed to have a Mastodon app, it's a web app. The gatekeepers don't allow apps that connect to arbitrary servers just like they don't allow new browsers, you could use them to bypass the 30% tax.

                  You could have a kolektiva app but they obviously don't want to.

                  What's the ""main Mastodon network""?

                  • numpad0 9 minutes ago ago

                    Sound logic doesn't matter to App Store review policies. The browser argument was made, and ignored. They were told to do what they were told or have the entire Mastodon compatible apps internally blacklisted.

                    Gab/Truth was easy and not that controversial, but content moderation was a lot more problematic, so they introduced a published instance blocklist system and had operators join the condemnation while also throwing wrenches at instance chooser interfaces online and/or hardcoded, because otherwise the "main" part will become a permanent minority.

                    I think any modern LLMs would see/know what I mean. Ask your agent if you need more information along this lore.

          • mschuster91 42 minutes ago ago

            > Every instance has their own policies. That's the strength of mastodon.

            And it's biggest weakness because instance admins keep bitchfighting with each other, holding their users hostage.

          • jrm4 an hour ago ago

            That is emphatically the weakness as well. I too loved the idea of "they all have their own policies," until it came to be that those policies ended up being utterly childish "I'm taking my ball and going home the second anyone says any little thing I don't like."

        • numpad0 2 hours ago ago

          IMO the reason why BS just ended up being Twitter 2.0, or 1.2 even, or why Twitter went down its path in the first place, is that the US and EU are no longer producing enough content to justify ownership or continuous iterations of such a system.

          Otherwise it wouldn't have been forced upon who begrudgingly got funding secured. Any of then-GAFA could have bought it and none wanted to touch it.

          The bad moderation on those platforms, I think, is a desperate attempt to align platform cultures to the moderating entities' standards that are no longer comprehensible to users, if known at all, like a kid on a push car moving away from the park trying to steer it back.

          It seemed fine until 2015 or so, streaming hundreds of novel tweets per second per user, many with novel images. Then things went downhill. Musk can't be the sole villain in it.

        • Philpax 2 hours ago ago

          > Bluesky is founded by the same founders of Twitter and is not open and has ridiculous policies

          Huh? It is remarkably open and the policies are not really an issue.

          • numpad0 an hour ago ago

            Bluesky has the same moderation issues as Twitter. There are people complaining their recommendation feeds are full of macho men nudity and/or furry images, or flooded by far left infights(not like relative to self-proclaimed centrism but FAR left), or straight up getting banned after they've specifically chosen the most appropriate contents, things like that.

            Weird thing is that my feed is largely fine other than those gotten banned went back to Twitter. Only politics topics I get are neutral, concerns in global economy, some US and more often Ukraine. No dick pics or furries or antisemetism, just cats, more cats, food pics, infosec stuffs, all as I were back on Twitter in 2009 or so.

            But there are enough reports of negative experience, so moderatuon is likely still a bit problematic. Or that compounding with lack of passionate users.

          • Vaushite an hour ago ago

            I've gotten banned from Blue Sky for absolutely no discernible reason, and the main feeds are basically centrist slop

      • jjulius 2 hours ago ago

        >I generally agree but I'm still frequently linked to X...

        ... so? Being linked to it is not an obligation to bother with it, neither is FOMO.

    • jrm4 an hour ago ago

      There is a VERY GOOD reason to do this, and this is because they are still very powerful and prevalent.

      Closing your eyes and ears and going NAAH NAAH NAAH I'M GOING TO PRETEND IT DOESNT EXIST is a wildly stupid way to approach things like twitter when they are still so influential.

      I appreciate experimenting with "boycotting," but when the dust settles and the thing is still very much there, you have to engage with that fact.

      • nancyminusone 36 minutes ago ago

        Depends if you thought Twitter ever had any value at all ever. I once made an account, hung around for 2 weeks,then never opened it again. So since musk owns it, it has no more or less than relevance than before.

      • VCFundedGenYer an hour ago ago

        You're just objectively wrong. There is no reason to entertain a Nazi website. You sound hurt as if you work for X.

    • afpx 3 hours ago ago

      Not a very helpful comment for someone not in the know. I couldn't find anything political on their landing page.

    • numpad0 2 hours ago ago

      It's just a gorgeous free lunch tavern if you didn't even understand English through LLM and American right wing politics was just the cash pile for patrons to shovel into the fireplace.

      There's some likely made up charts online[1] for country stats of Twitter right now, and Twitter is allegedly 2.5x more popular than it is in the US in the top two countries, which are incidentally known for strong-ish purchasing power and near-nonexistent English literacy.

      Musk's ongoing massive self humiliation is largely contained to the US/English speaking space. Other parts of the world with no strong cultural understandings and pathways from the US and its politics, which is quite substantial still, are fine, ish. Things like LLM auto translation haven't made a change to that situation; it only strengthened the reverse of that pathway.

      1: https://soax.com/research/twitter-active-users

    • JeremyNT 11 minutes ago ago

      There's a huge cohort of people who are convinced they're somehow immune to right wing propaganda and continue posting information exclusively to sites owned by reactionary oligarchs. Sometimes that information is useful or important, which is why nitter and its ilk are sorely needed.

    • bluecalm an hour ago ago

      If you think Musk is far right you will have a really bad time in coming years. Musk holds very few far right views in comparison to parties very close to power in many EU countries for example.

      He is against mass immigration, especially from Islamic countries. That is a very mainstream view though. There is nothing 'far' about it.

      • Vaushite an hour ago ago

        Everyone is against "mass" immigration as in "let's go to country X and gather a million people and bring them to country Y", that's not controversial

        It is controversial when you start pointing to individual immigrants already in country Y and saying "hey you, get the fuck out".

        Which is of course why people like Musk always try to frame things as the first one. They always say things like "the president is importing one million illegals" and never say things like "one million different people decided to come here, all for different reasons"

      • bjoli 42 minutes ago ago

        He aligns with people like the AfD.

        Or as we say: It it sieg heils like a duck...

      • ashkankiani an hour ago ago

        His nazi salute looked pretty far up and to the right. Twice, btw.

    • stronglikedan 3 hours ago ago

      Of course there is, don't be silly. There's also no alternative at the moment, or for the foreseeable future. Sure, there's some knockoffs that try hard, but they're still jokes.

      • cwnyth 2 hours ago ago

        You forget that Twitter is just a joke.

      • Vaushite 2 hours ago ago

        What's the reason?

    • sergiotapia 3 hours ago ago

      You are the reason Bioware is now dead and scattered to the winds.

      • moopie 2 hours ago ago

        Yes, me pointing out that Elon Musk supports far right parties is the reason why EA execs decided to shut down BioWare to pay themselves more

    • calvinmorrison 3 hours ago ago

      What if i am part of the far right?

      • moomin 2 hours ago ago

        Then reasons no longer matter to you.

    • Markoff 2 hours ago ago

      Except when tons of gov owned services (police, firemen, emergency services) are using it to communicate with citizens...

    • add-sub-mul-div 3 hours ago ago

      For someone who's been on Twitter for a long time, these alternatives function as a good off-ramp that's easier than quitting entirely and abruptly. I deleted my account a few years ago knowing I'd still be able to see some of the content without viewing their ads or contributing my own content.

    • hagbard_c 2 hours ago ago

      In the same vein there is no reason to bother with social networks owned by literal far left supporters, i.e. nearly all the others. Combined these two statements lead to the conclusion that hardly any social networks are worth bothering which is something I can get behind.

      • overfeed 35 minutes ago ago

        > In the same vein there is no reason to bother with social networks owned by literal far left supporters

        Name one

    • strideashort 2 hours ago ago

      When you go far left, everything looks far right.

      Seriously, we have a problem labeling anything not left “far right”. It is of course by design and has always been (who is not with us is against us). Not that right is any better, but at list they don’t label everyone across “antifa” or whatever.

      That said, i do not endorse Musk, especially his infamous gesture.

      • Steltek 2 hours ago ago

        You don't need to go anywhere to see that Musk is far right. If you're going to claim otherwise, you're gonna need to bring some solid evidence.

        The "left" spans such a huge range right now that to be "not left" is basically far right. A Republican opposing Trump is _extremely_ rare (and usually excommunicates them from the party) while on the left, you have AOC, Omar, etc actively sharing a party with Fetterman and Manchin. Right/far-right was a thing in the 2010's but not any more.

        • portmanteur an hour ago ago

          Is there a list of things or beliefs that make someone "Far right"? Is there a list or reason why being labeled "far right" (by others, not oneself) should be disqualifying, or worthy of having your services abused? Nitter and its forks are in violation of the X.com terms of service, which is why they are facing legal challenges. Those challenges may be easily routed around with other technology, but Nitter and its forks are still violating the services brazenly. Are "far right" people beneath the law? Is it okay to steal from someone on the "far right"? Is it okay to commit violence against someone on the "far right"?

        • strideashort an hour ago ago

          Ah yes, you only need to set the label, those who disagree need to prove the negative. Pretty typical.

          What is “far right”, btw? What are objective measurable criteria?

          > The "left" spans such a huge range right now that to be "not left" is basically far right

          Jesus Christ, you can’t be serious. But then again, I am not surprised that you are.

        • hagbard_c an hour ago ago

          The right spans such a huge range right now that not to be right is to be "far-left". A "democrat" opposing the OmniCause ("climate, migration and 'palestine'") is _extremely_ rare and usually gets excommunicated from the Party, e.g. Fetterman and Manchin (whom you for some reason listed as 'democrats' even though the Party does its best to label and shun them) while on the right you have people ranging from Massey to Trump, Vance to Rubio, Wiles to Collins.

          So maybe it is in the eye of the beholder? I certainly see far more labelling coming from the "left" side of the spectrum than from the "right" side although they're certainly catching up lately now that the communist zombie has risen from its grave again. On the "right" the general idea of the "left" seems to be that they're 'stupid', 'naive' and 'uninformed' while on the "left" the general idea of the "right" seems to be that they're 'evil', 'narrow-minded', 'racist' and '*-phobe'. Neither of these general ideas are true but that doesn't seem to bother anyone.

      • surgical_fire an hour ago ago

        Er, Musk did a Nazi salute and publicly supported the AfD in Germany.

        What else do you need to agree that he is far right? Wear an SS outfit? Put some people in ovens?

        • strideashort an hour ago ago

          Ah, AfD, the party with female lesbians leader, right? typical far right, point taken.

          Otherwise, yes, I think labeling any party which works within the legal bounds as “far” is dangerous. Because there are legit far groups which should not be permitted on both sides of the spectrum. And we better know what is legitimate and what not.

          • bjoli 34 minutes ago ago

            The leader can be a lesbian and still far right. They are against gay marriage, against talking about homosexuality in schools. There were gay Nazis, even high up. Röhm for example.

            Iirc Weidel herself has made statements regarding how the society should always promote heteronormativity.

            • strideashort 23 minutes ago ago

              > The leader can be a lesbian and still far right.

              Pure comedy at this point, seriously, this is hilarious.

          • surgical_fire 10 minutes ago ago

            Do you think homosexuals can't be far right?

            AfD wants to do mass deportations (because nothing bad ever happened when a party in Germany had the idea to mass deport people based on ethnicity). Their leader can be a lesbian and still have a platform that is pretty extremely to the right

            https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/07/europe/afd-first-place-sa...

            > Otherwise, yes, I think labeling any party which works within the legal bounds as “far” is dangerous

            Keep in mind that the NSDAP also operated within the legal boundaries.

            Based on your asinine rationality, labeling the fucking nazis in early 1930s as far right would be "dangerous".

  • DavCreator 3 hours ago ago

    Would love to redirect more often to shitter instances with https://xxcancel.com. But there seems to be a bug loading images (e.g. profile pictures or attached pictures to tweets) in Firefox.

    Example: https://shitter.thepixora.com/search?f=tweets&q=elon+musk

    Wont show any pictures in Firefox for me. Works in Chrome. Can this be fixed? Thank you!

    • ibejoeb 3 hours ago ago

      It doesn't proxy the images, so they won't load with enhanced tracking protection enabled.

      • wolvoleo 2 hours ago ago

        I wonder if a bridge could be built that would bridge the few accounts that still matter on X to something like mastodon or blue sky

  • BLKNSLVR 4 hours ago ago

    I thought it should be called Xitter, but pronounced Shitter.

    • lioeters 3 hours ago ago

      Xittier, a better Xwitter alternative

    • weatherlite 4 hours ago ago

      What the hell is this Xit

      • dewey 4 hours ago ago

        Exit Twitter

        • leoc 3 hours ago ago

          Out, damnéd xit! out, I say!

  • SomeonesAccount 4 hours ago ago

    I made a thing that uses Nitter to have a revchron timeline of people in the tech space. No algorithm, every post shows up (unless you filter out an account). Feedback is appreciated: https://techtwitter-lime.vercel.app

  • jimmydoe 4 hours ago ago

    somehow i feel this reflects if not also enhances the cultural position of x.com.

  • dcre 38 minutes ago ago

    The fact that there is not even a sentence explaining why it's a fork, i.e., how it differs from the original, suggests this was only on the front page because of the name. Kinda dumb!

  • hmokiguess 4 hours ago ago

    can someone explain to me how these things keep popping up and disappearing and how are they able to just spin them up at will somehow?

    • yoavm 4 hours ago ago

      What do you mean by "how"? The code is freely available, you can spin it up at will too in just a few minutes. When they disappear, sometimes it's because the maintainer doesn't want the headache, and sometimes it's because a they're threatened to remove it.

      • hmokiguess 4 hours ago ago

        I guess I never bothered reading the code so for whatever reason I assumed it required some extraordinary circumvention to host it that isn't very accessible

        what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that self-hosting this is trivial then

        so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible? why do people opt to host these for others over teaching how to run your own for example?

        • pamcake 3 hours ago ago

          > what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that self-hosting this is trivial then

          Yes. It comes encouraged.

          > so does that mean I could run my own local instance and never get it taken down since traffic would be negligible?

          Yes, unless the other end forbids it and really cares about controlling clients. If they do and manage to detect that you are using alternative client they could block based on that. In times where that happens and there are client devs who care, it becomes a cat-and-mouse.

        • fcarraldo 4 hours ago ago

          Because it isn’t magic, there’s still Twitter auth required https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/blob/master/src/auth.nim

          Every individual running their own instance would be the equivalent of every individual having their own Twitter account, which defeats the purpose.

          • causesothere 3 hours ago ago

            Well, not totally. It's read only, which changes how people engage. It also lets you control ordering and presentation. It also lets you hide ads.

          • cassianoleal 4 hours ago ago

            We need a multiplexer in front of all these instances. One that works like a load balancer, health checking the individual instances and adding/removing them from the pool automatically. That would allow people to create new accounts, serve their own instance and attach them to the muxer.

        • Vaushite 2 hours ago ago

          Yes all of that. I think it's unwise to share details here, because X's anticircumvention team are reading HN.

    • AdmiralAsshat 4 hours ago ago

      I assume the source code repo is still up somewhere, so I assume it's the domains that are being taken offline, not the code, and anyone can then trivially spin up their own instance.

  • ly0n an hour ago ago

    Stop using platforms that are clearly operated by fascists. Then we won't need such tools anymore.

  • nine_k 3 hours ago ago

    Is the code crap? Is it optimized for shitposting? Is it called so to show disdain towards the service formerly known as Twitter?

  • draw_down 3 hours ago ago

    I am begging these things to use a normal fucking name for once

    • Vaushite 2 hours ago ago

      What would you consider a normal name, though? Alternative Twitter Front-End? It'd be taken down for trademark infringement.

    • extraextra 2 hours ago ago

      LOL

  • assimpleaspossi 4 hours ago ago

    No professional would stoop so low as to name any project such a thing. And HN should never post such low class gutter language.

    • valicord 4 hours ago ago

      Sarcasm?

      • assimpleaspossi 3 hours ago ago

        Absolutely not! Such low life gutter talk is not acceptable in polite society and shouldn't be allowed in any professional atmosphere. Or am I again trying to elevate HN?

        • causesothere 3 hours ago ago

          Peepee poopoo.

          Maybe your cultural values aren't my cultural values. Maybe you need to consider who you are excluding by suggesting that using a curse word is unacceptable?

          Cursing has a long tradition in lower economic class culture, in some minority cultures, in queer culture, heck in mainstream cultures worldwide we say "shit", etc. You want them all to conform to your one view of how professionals should be? The curse word isn't directed at you, it isn't directed at anyone you know, or even at a person.

          No, I think maybe I'd rather live in a world where people are colorful, use language that's authentic to them, and include more people in the dialog.

          • assimpleaspossi 3 hours ago ago

            >>Maybe you need to consider who you are excluding by suggesting that using a curse word is unacceptable?

            I am. Thus the complaint. I would think the general audience here is of a higher caliber than low-class cultures whose values and education can't rise above profanity.

            • rpdillon 2 hours ago ago

              Profanity is fine, even among the well-educated and elite classes. I think you're being a bit puritanical here. I've encountered this attitude before (my octogenarian dad loses his mind when I say "fuck", which I do many times daily), but there's really nothing behind all the pearl clutching - sometimes people curse, and that's Just Fine.

            • krapp 3 hours ago ago

              >I would think the general audience here is of a higher caliber than low-class cultures whose values and education can't rise above profanity.

              My person in deity "enshittification" is a technical term of art around here, and "Gimp" is both a popular graphics software and a sexual fetish term.

              No one besides children and people with low emotional IQ care about such things.

              • causesothere 3 hours ago ago

                Hopefully this person doesn't see your username! A homophone of "crap"! They'd be scandalized!

            • causesothere 3 hours ago ago

              Ah, so racism and classism it is then. Can't be having those "poors" here on our spotless orange site. Want to say something homophobic and or sexist before we continue?

              • 1ajhg 3 hours ago ago

                If you fight like that against Musk, he'll win again at some point. Maybe not in 2028 but in 2032.

          • BigTTYGothGF 2 hours ago ago

            > Cursing has a long tradition in

            By and large the hacker news moderators and commentariat have demonstrated that they do not welcome those cultures here.

            • causesothere 2 hours ago ago

              For sure. This site is definitely not welcoming to everyone. Lord help you here if you are trans.

              • vapel an hour ago ago

                I sure wish he did.

                At least I'm living now and not in the past. I do believe in gradual progress.

                Uh, shitfuck.

          • es1kl 3 hours ago ago

            Cursing in a comment is fine. Expecting people to use a tool, perhaps daily, named after a curse word is different.

            • causesothere 3 hours ago ago

              No one is expecting anyone to use a tool. Someone is offering a tool. Fork it and rename it. What a load of nonsense "expect".

              • cwnyth 2 hours ago ago

                Dude created his account 30 minutes ago. He's just a cowardly troll, probably paid by Twitter.

        • satvikpendem 3 hours ago ago

          I laughed.