So whatever else they do, they take money to knowingly promote malware.
This doesn't make it malware, as likely as it is that malware would hide itself like that. base64 encoding avoids issues with quoting and escaping in the terminal, and is an easy way to include a bit of binary data that might be needed by a command (or even just written directly to disk somewhere). "Obfuscated base64" is only saying something if you decoded the base64 and still got an obfuscated result. Install-time code execution is more dangerous in the sense that you can't review between installation and program execution; but custom installers come from the same source as the program, so it's the same number of parties to trust.
For that matter, PyPA still maintains bootstrap.pypa.io so that Python users can get current versions of pip by downloading and running a Python script that loads a base85 string, decodes it and writes a wheel file based on that. (It even duplicates some of the standard library `ensurepip` logic.)
If you want a malware report to be taken seriously, in general, you should expect to roll up your sleeves and be able to provide an analysis of concrete malicious behaviour.
I use it to follow people who either have ideas I find interesting or do stuff I find interesting, and typically I'm looking for accounts that are small enough that I know they will at least see my replies, and often interact with them. (Something like 3K-15K followers for most of them, I think.)
I also think it's indispensable for real-time commentary and niche commentary on current events: always requires grains of salt but there's just no better place on the Internet for that sort of thing, in part because...
It's the one major social network I'm on where it is easy to view only posts from the people I follow, in reverse chronological order. A feed I TRULY control (and, if you follow the right people, insulates you from much of the nonsense on the site).
And every once in awhile, some insane viral nonsense pokes in that makes you say "how could I ever quit this site". There's a certain genre of satirical accounts that is very entertaining as well. Definitely a guilty pleasure component to it all!
>Is it still as popular as it used to be?
A quick search roughly aligns with my perception: it bottomed out a couple of years ago and has gradually recovered, though not to where it was pre-X.
Oh weird, I'd rate X as medium-hard for that amongst the microposting sites I look at. Mastodon and Bluesky both default to almost-that, varying mostly in whether you need to jump through hoops to not see reposts.
X was always the one that (a) doesn't default to it, and (b) would keep "forgetting" and pushing you back to the algorithmic feed.
"major" was doing a bit of work for me. Facebook, Instagram, Reddit were more in mind when I said that.
>would keep "forgetting" and pushing you back
This hasn't happened to me in awhile. Dunno if it was a transient thing, an app thing, or something that has been reversed.
This might be me showing I have strange views, but I don't even think of those as being in the same category of service, so I didn't think of them as a point of comparison.
I compare to those because these are social networks - the network is the biggest thing that matters. I LOVE what Bluesky is doing with atproto and was there pretty early as a result, but I didn't stick around because the kinds of people and topics I am most interested in are not represented on the site. The network just isn't there!
FB has a network I want as well, they just make it way too hard for me to see content from my actual friends.
You are using a relic of what-used-to-be-Twitter. That's what people signed up for. I happen to think what Musk has done - although I'm highly skeptical of him - is not totally insane - Twitter did used to have some pretty notable censorship. But you follow people because that's where the people are. Competition does not spring up overnight, companies know this, and so they're left to gradually (or quickly!) enshittify
"easy to view only posts from the people I follow, in reverse chronological order"
Yes, well. That should be the standard. Companies that don't follow that standard should be turned into pariahs
On the other hand, I might start posting on Bluesky more because as of a week ago, I'm shadowbanned on X. I know people throw that term around, but nobody on the site can see any of my reply tweets, even me (unless I scroll my account's 'replies' tab); people who've followed me for years are asking why their tweet has a ghost reply.
I don't think X has that much of an incentive to filter out bots while keeping around accounts like me (200 followers, will never pay for Premium). The slightly higher effort bots that glaze tech CEOs will be basically indistinguishable from the real people glazing tech CEOs because they're wannabe founders trying to network/cloutfarm. And that style of dead internet is fine with Elon.
In another view days I'll try filing a support ticket, maybe claiming something like "I was mass-reported by DSA leftists for my right-wing views"; things along those lines have gotten some peoples' permanent suspensions lifted.
This is honestly the real value of nitter far beyond anti-Musk shriekers being obsessed with and addicted to X but not wanting to log into X. Nitter seems to simply give you everything - and you can plainly see which tweets are getting huge distribution and which ones nobody is seeing.
As if X was an official government publishing channel . WTH, they should publish it on they official government pages.
Its usually either limited features, regional accessibility issues, or platforms like metas' just basically trading one big bad organization for another.
Ironic, given how many people criticise X.com for its sign-in requirements.
There's a decent number of old school companies and creatives who either don't know/care about alternatives, or who tried them and went back to Twitter/X.
NA tuned account has more of what you said.
Yet. Japanese twitter users are a reflection of who they are, etc etc
Doesn’t mean there isn’t toxic stuff though.
Like last week my feed was all about Chiba flooding. Very relevant.
If you like AI and tech, there are some pretty thriving sub-communities. AI stuff, and a lot of tech stuff happens on X first. Claudebot/OpenClaw/Hermes all began on X months before I commonly saw them appear on other platforms.
More of a political echo chamber than anything else. I mothballed my original account when things were getting spicy which was primarily focused on dev, UI/UX, and InfoSec news. I finally went back and have had some great interactions with people about technical stuff that interests me. Right now, the data center and AI discussions are getting intense along with Omarchy, lol. If you steer clear of the political stuff, you can find some good stuff still.
>> Is it still as popular as it used to be?
Probably not but it still ranks ahead of sites like Reddit. Its like the 13th, 14th most popular platform right now. I log on mainly just to see if I'm missing anything. Other than that, most of the engagement I have is curiosity and just fun stuff like seeing people posting retro games, stuff like that.
>> Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.
X is now kind of the social media cul-de-sac . It used to be one of the go to places for breaking tech, popular cultural and political stuff. Now its usually two or three days late to the party on anything worthwhile. So the posts from the CEO probably made the rounds before you finally saw it on X. lol
1. Japanese community 2. Porn (good god, so much porn)
No idea comparatively, but an artist friend of mine tried out Bluesky and then complained about how there's way more of a limited reach and engagement there compared to Twitter.
Others do value that, no judgment, but for me it's be a net negative.
Since then I've had a look on XCancel when there have been major events once or twice and yeah, most of the flurry of real time updates turn out to be misinformed or just plain wrong later anyway... I don't miss it.
Whenever I check X, it's always just misinformation, and it's impossible to see what people actually say because bluechecks are always the first to show up in the algorithmic ranking. On political commentary: they were dying hard for Graham Platner saying he was the only option, but then Troy Jackson who replaced him did better in the polls.
The comment section was pretty awful; 90% people yelling about Canada's government being a tyranny and/or in bed with Communist China.
G+ comes to mind.
(Several billion profiles, tens of millions active. Shut down 1 Apr 2019. Yes, April Fools' Day.)
Now that more and more are going "walled garden" I don't get it at all
The same as it ever was. Short-form gossip. News, discussion, jokes.
There are lots of interesting people/orgs on X from AI/ML circles, as well as Ukraine war OSINT accounts and UA army helpers. I stay on X pretty much for these two topics.
>>Whenever I do see it linked on here it seems to be because one of the big tech CEOs has said something on it.
Yeah just a big tech CEOs posting (or an author of a big project, or an engineer working for a top lab), nothing to see here. On to another dancing teenager on TikTok. Let's watch some pranks or a "beauty influencer" on Insta where we are at it instead.
twitter/x remains the domain of intelligence agencies worldwide. It is a semi-open (the world first virtual leader, the ayatollah affirms he exists from there ..) psychological operations platform that permits the avatars of "world leaders" to speak to masses and also hosts a parasitical community of grifters ("opinion makers" and "influencers") that feed off of the festering fetid matter served up by the Spook International.
a secondary purpose of the twitter/x is a reverse doomsday clock, based on above. As long as the ghost of this unprofitable "business entity" is kept alive by funny money and funny deals, we can sleep soundly at night knowing there won't be ww3 or any other such extreme negotiating tactics by global elite, since they are all 'playing their role' on twitter currently known as x.
Anyone saying there isn't an insane amount of porn and worse on twitter is either lying or hasn't been on the site since it turned into the cesspool we have today.
I honestly have no idea if there are real people who actually use it daily. Who can read that stuff?
You can see the last few posts of an account [1], and the contents of a single posts, but minimal or no comments [2]. Videos play after dismissing the login popup.
Yes, because influential, non-evil people who should know better just will not fucking leave. The vast majority of public-minded ML developers and researchers, including people who compete with xAI, being an obvious example.
And because skilled, knowledgeable people who could create a replacement service just will not do so. At least not without finding new and innovative forehead-slapping ways to fail at it.
Incredibly frustrating that Xitter is still as popular as it is.
It is an elite club, and Musk wants you to pay for it.
I don't know why it is legal for EU politicians to use this walled garden for important messages.
Someone outside of the US jurisdiction (China?) has to keep xcancel.com running.
Polemic aside, there’s a better anti-imperialist/global South cadre on X than on any other platform, including the Fediverse. (If you actually care about following the struggles of people on the ground, rather than virtue signaling.)
That will be a bit harder to read now though... I am sure an international nitter mirror will pop up eventually.
Do you expect a new app per municipality to be a solution? Or one app to become a new platform just to interact with gov't agencies that the other platforms already provide? You have the question, but have you spent any time coming up with answers/suggestions?
It may be skewed one way or another more than other social networks, but even so, you should be careful saying a social media is a racist bigoted right wing echo chamber because it can sound not like a recital of popular media but more personal experience
I only check literally one account occasionally, and via xcancel. The last post I looked at on the platform was vaguely supportive of the LGBT community- all top replies were all blatantly homophobic and had slurs in them. It was via xcancel so I wasn’t logged in. That’s not a personalized algorithm showing me bigotry that’s just what the platform is now.
https://x.com/vonderleyen https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa https://x.com/liandersson https://x.com/AmnestyEU
They are literally getting money (not making) without producing anything and that aligns with Elon's world view of a jobless civilization driven by AI and robots.
Contrast to me trying to open BlueSky, and seeing death threats and other insane things. I've also heard (though never personally seen, nor do I want to) that BlueSky has a CSAM problem. Those two factors alone kept me from even trying it out.
What's really weird is there were a ton of claims that disappeared, about how X was full of bots, but X is the opposite of full of bots. Maybe there's one or another, but they're highly under the radar, X has improved their bot problem drastically.
Edit (tweaked some words, and wanted to add):
Then there was Threads, I am not in any way interested in "New Twitter" by Mark Zuckerberg, no thanks.
Funny thing though. I've heard the claims of "CSAM on Twitter" and now "CSAM on BlueSky". I've never had any of that ransomly show up. I do still have 2 or so random follows from clip-art female avatars with no tweets - per week. I've never quite figured out how that scam is supposed to work. I used to block 'em, now I ignore 'em.
Worse yet, people get so blinded that they lose the plot entirely... I asked someone about the accounting of a Palestinian fund raiser they were promoting.
They got very defensive so I looked into it, and it was a scam. I pointed this out to the poster to let them know, and they wrote a snide response which got their followers to brigade me.
You obviously get more of the people with more 'popular' political opinions in the Trending feed but that's not the default and you don't have to follow that if you can find enough good people or hashtags to follow.
Fedi is a lot better if you want nerd stuff specifically, running instances attracts a lot of hackers who're geared toward it. The big instances are pretty much the same shlock you get on Twitter/Bluesky but there's a lot of cool people in the margins (tip: look for instances that aren't running Mastodon).
There was I think this piece of writing in 2024 (just googled it, don't quote me on that) https://www.thefp.com/p/jesse-singal-bluesky-has-a-death-thr...
iirc there were newer instances too, but why bother reading on that, when you can just look at how the system is built.
Twitter and Twitter-ish systems are just fundamentally anti-human. The same can be said about most of social media, actually, but Twitter is high up on the worst offender list, and Bluesky just cloned it. Again.
"Bluesky Isn't a Bubble. It's a Containment Dome.
Pray that Bluesky doesn't die entirely — we need it so the worst liberal posts are kept in a place where the broader public won't ever see them."
[0] https://www.joshbarro.com/p/bluesky-isnt-a-bubble-its-a-cont...
And same is true for the fediverse.
It should've been like that with Twitter too, but Twitter unfortunately became the clubhouse of the journalist class, and they kinda did control the media. So they made everyone believe that whatever social ingroup infighting skirmish bs is happening would be relevant to the people at large.
Elon saw that, thought "hey I want that" and bought it - not changing anything about it other than giving the microphone to even worse people.
While everyone thinks they can call themself "journalist" (no matter the merit, ethics or similar), at the very least, all of their infighting led to a certain baseline of quality back then. So there was that.
Oh well. Many such cases. Someone not interested in changing the system but changing who is on top I mean.
__
Welp, that Josh Barro guy you linked seems equally unpleasant looking at his website's front page.
Even Mastodon which has no algorithm trends towards the obnoxious when you start going into various corners.
As much as I hate Facebook now, the OG Facebook which was strictly a feed of "this is what my friends and family are posting" and nothing else... was ideal. Not public. Just private in an inner group.
the much maligned Google+ honestly had a good model too.
I've got no idea if they're somehow making money off it or what's up
There really isn't, unless you mean anime content(of both SFW and NSFW alike) by "CSAM". In case you mean by that, then there is, otherwise no. It also appears to be highly locale dependent - some say they see timeline filled to the brim with fetish furry images and male gay nudity dressed with right wing politics, but my timeline is like just Twitter 2014 stuck at 3AM without any of those. I don't use any filters or blocklists, the place seem naturally nice-ish.
> about how X was full of bots
They appear to have largely given up and scaled back efforts to replace existing social graphs by funding African/Middle Eastern/Indian/South Asian content farms under the guise of revenue sharing programs, burning out talents west to east, likely with the conclusion that they're all equally incapable of understanding contents posted on Twitter even without the language barrier, let alone gaining popularity and even with literal algorithmic manipulations. Or they just burned through quite a deep talent pool globally.
That effort started after Twitter was bought, beginning around South Africa or Nigeria. So it's not an improvement, unless you count someone ceasing hostility as an improvement.
I don't get any CSAM, alt-right, nazism, weed, ragebaits, unwanted gay contents. Simply none of those. But I don't normally set the language to English, and I suspect that might have to do with not getting those stuffs.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/11/blueskys-active-user-base-...
- June 2025: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/x-accounts-peddle-chi...
- Jan 2026: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/02/musk-grok-ai-bot-safeguard-s...
- Mar 2026: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/17/x-csam-ch...
I left X permanently because the unfathomable amount of CSAM being generated by Grok, without seeing it myself, sickened me to the point of no return.
I don’t use Bluesky but it seems to me that if this is a real concern to you, then you should have left X as well.
I mean you'd wish that that was the case, but the reality is even bleaker. The "specific kind" is not all that specific.
Like yeah, of course, the crypto, AI and business grifters are a lot louder on Twitter now, but.. wouldn't say that they're not on HN as well, so.
I mean I understand that you would want to shame people into leaving that platform, but to feel shame you first need to be present in the room and conversation. Apathic people on autopilot are not even taking part in the conversation you'd like to have. They just scroll.