Hacker News Reader

Comment by JeremyNT | Hacker News Reader

I don't use Twitter/X directly but I still follow some people (who exclusively post on that site) indirectly via Nitter.

It's absolutely awful. I've seen spam replies that are actively pornography, presumably onlyfans spam. I quickly closed the tab. Maybe crypto spam is down as that bubble has burst but AI spam and OF spam seems to be up.

I can't understand people saying it's better now. Maybe it's some sort of stockholm syndrome. I keep hoping the holdouts I follow on Nitter will switch to any other platform, or at least crosspost before Nitter dies completely.

View on HN

> I can't understand people saying it's better now.

Those things are all bad, but they're fairly easy to ignore. I much prefer random sexbot spam to the hysterical culture that was ascendant on Twitter in, say, 2018. I think how much one misses that era probably just comes down to one's politics. For me, it was miserable.

I have a pretty thick skin and I enjoy the fray, so let's stipulate that there have always been assholes and jerks saying offensive and insulting things, but the word I'd use to characterize the progressive milieu of 2018 was menacing.

"Wow, interesting unconventional opinion on #metoo you've got there. Sure would be a shame if I found you on LinkedIn and sent it to your boss. Wonder what she'd think of it."

I couldn't be happier that those kinds of interactions have become less frequent.

You're in a country with no worker protection for that to be scary? And if you are, do you boss really care? Honestly I've read some scary stories about that in the US, but I often read it as FUD.

> You're in a country with no worker protection for that to be scary?

Almost all employment in the United States is "at-will" and you can be fired for practically any reason and with no notice.

> And if you are, do you boss really care?

The answer to this is, "who knows?" I don't want to spend an afternoon defending my tweets to HR, either way. There's a chilling effect. If even moderate opinions are risky, then I'm probably just going to disengage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com