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  • Hacker News
  • This is an awesome blast-from-the-past UI - I checked out Obama's profile and it made me almost confuse it with the real twitter from ~10 years ago.

    But it may only takes another X-ed lawyer letter to make it go all away again.

    I wonder whether there could be a decentralized (torrent-based?) way that would be robust ?

    In the end, the only real solution that would take away the power of the SM Propaganda networks is regulatory Interoperability

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability

    by mentalgear
  • The general rule: any social media owned by a corporation will eventually lock posts behind a login.
    by chr15m
  • And stuff their UX full of dark patterns, and get very angry whenever someone tries building a third-party client without the bullshit.
    by grishka
  • Any social media product will be acquired and co-opted.
    by itomato
  • This alternative has been shut down today:

    https://twitterwebviewer.com/

    "As of August 28, 2026, this website has been permanently discontinued, following a request from X Corp. All cached content has been deleted."

    Please don't post remaining alternatives. Do not give the "free speech absolutists" ideas.

    by ad12aBg
  • I recently tried the X API to fetch the latest tweets about a given topic, and I spent ~1$ in one go just to retrieve them and some additional info about the users. This is ridiculously expensive.

    So I can only be happy that such service exists (though if there was a better support for an API would be 10x better)

    by frabia
  • Show HN some months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46513823
    by HelloUsername
  • Politics aside, Twitter/X has become a bad place to share information on and to link to. It's a bad option from a technical point of view.

    We can't read a multi-part tweet (or follow-ups from the author) or check the latest updates from an official account without an account, which requires a mobile phone number and sometimes extra verifications. A digital "town square" can't require an account and a phone number to read what's said there.

    Same with Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Linkdin, etc.

    by celsoazevedo
  • I wish I understood why the majority of the AI discussions happen on Twitter/X.
    by seahorseemoji
  • it's brave to look at other companies receiving cease and desist notices and treat it as a market opening
    by john_strinlai
  • C&D has zero legal weight. They're just relying on developers being conflict-averse. At my local hacker space, at least five members are in some kinds of protracted legal battles (five different ones)
    by inigyou
  • I guess my brain has been cooked by internet libertarianism but what's the basis of a C&D for proxying a website?

    Is the legal basis just copyright of the contents?

    by doublepg23
  • the maker - https://peterslab.co/products/twitter-web-viewer
    by zerop
  • twitterwebviewer.com was registered in Hong Kong

    according to https://www.whois.com/whois/twitterwebviewer.com

    Looks fine, they don't care about the notices i guess

    by thehamkercat
  • It would be nice if URL schema was compatibile with X. In case of Nitter, I could’ve just replaced x.com with xcancel.com with a web extension and URL still works.
    by SoKamil
  • Was doing something similar. But couldn't this still be done with just a slightly more advanced replacement ?
    by Melatonic
  • This service has since been discontinued:

    As of August 28, 2026, this website has been permanently discontinued, following a request from X Corp. Profile browsing, search, tweet viewing and video download have all been permanently disabled, and all cached content has been deleted.

    <https://twitterwebviewer.com/>

    by dredmorbius
  • API works great, for now

    https://api.twitterwebviewer.com/api/user/[username]

    https://api.twitterwebviewer.com/api/user/[username]&uid=[id...

    Beware the website is jam-packed with ads and tracking

    by 1vuio0pswjnm7
  • The latter URL looks wrong.
    by jwilk
  • Gonna be interesting for how long it stays available like this. It's a scraper's dream.
    by Narretz
  • Correction:

    https://api.twitterwebviewer.com/api/tweets/[username]?uid=[...

    by 1vuio0pswjnm7
  • Anyone know the specifics of how this works under the hood? I assumed the people over at Twitter/X would aggressively block systems like this from working. Are they doing something creative to get around that?
    by andrewmutz
  • No, and nitter the software still works too. Apparently the only barrier he could create was a cease and desist letter.
    by inigyou
  • sad that i come here for technical information and yours is the first lonely comment asking about how this works
    by swyx
  • Burner accounts are dirt, dirt cheap. I have several hundred I rotate out. I’m afraid to mention the library I’m using in case it’s not in their cross hairs, but it makes scraping trivial. At least at the scale I’m scraping I don’t even need a proxy. My residential up is enough to keep the blocks away.

    Only had a handful of accounts banned.

    by dawnerd
  • I used Twitter for over 10 years without an account then suddenly in 2022 that was completely disrupted and no longer an option. Reddit is now this way too.

    But I find it ridiculous that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. get used by government agencies and local businesses to post announcements and these sites are increasingly if not completely unusable without being logged in (and in some cases requiring an app instead of the site). Even Bluesky has this problem!

    Sometimes this information is really important! And I even if I did have an account I may not have access to log in on every device (or even want to).

    It’s absurd that social media can become this like critical communications platform for severe weather alerts or business hours or anything but the sites hosting it are completely hostile to allowing you to see it.

    Sites like this are a bandaid on a gangrenous foot. Thanks for allowing me to see links from twitter but it isn’t a sustainable solution clearly.

    by kemotep
  • It's frustrating, but we need to accept that we are not the kind of user that these platforms want. I stopped using Reddit for the same reason, and I accepted that I'm not the best user for them. For my luck, Reddit is not used as the main communication channel for government agencies
    by tuesdaynight
  • The governments go where the people are. If they post on their own sites it’s the equivalent of “on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’”.

    But government information should definitely be first source on their site with federation elsewhere.

    by arjie
  • totally agree, businesses that only have Facebook or Instagram are basically hidden from me. I can not see their opening hours, nor the menue, if it is a restaurant. I understand why the businesses use facebook, its easy, but its also a bit sad.
    by anotherpaul
  • Similarly, society decided at some point that linkedin, a completely private and constantly hacked social network, is a must-have when looking for work (not any work, but for a lot of jobs it applies). Just give them all your private data and we'll have a look.
    by rplnt