Definitely, 80% of the content is generated by foreign agitators, mostly bots, the other 20% is shared between terminally online people and people who didn't realise they're interacting with bots

I never had an account past the point where Elon took over, but even twitter before (when I had an account there, once) had tons of issues. I remember twitter emailing me about "your tweets are too mean!" (in style). I don't think my criticism was mean at all - it was accurately to the point. This is where censorship kicks in, when some central authority attempts to regulate what people write and say.

The day the sale to Musk became final is the day I deleted my account and blocked the domains on the firewall here. I have yet to find a single reason to regret that decision and I do not understand local and national authorities as well as other public entities for not doing the same thing. They are giving Musk more power and the only thing that will eventually happen is that he will abuse that power.

Xcancel is not for writing; it is for reading without needing an account. Something that used to be trivial on Twitter until a year or two before Elon bought it. And this:

> you ll never have even an ounce of mind the moment you open anything on x

is not really the case if you know what you are looking for. I never lost my mind reading Ryan Florence, who writes on various challenging frontend topics. Or Ben Lesh, who, on occasion, would write something about observables. Or Uncle Bob, who might rant at something related to software development.

There are still people there who are fun to read.

and art. there are still a lot of artists on X. no, i don't mean the kind that autostarts HR cases.

I have to agree -- I generally avoided Twitter/X over the past decade. I started poking around in there once in a while the last few months and everything time I'm left exasperated. 'I can't believe people believe any of this!!"

And... Then I remember it's rage bait.

Better to just read a book.

Don't look at the "For you" curated feed. If you only look at the "Following" feed and you follow sane, smart people, then your experience on X will be much better.

Thank you.

I am not a heavy user and I genuinely did not know this was an option. My experience is so bad I feel embarrassed opening the application in public.

You may have saved my sanity

i have tried that multiple times. the algorithm is sneaky af. slowly and steadily it starts pushing ragebaiting posts to you even if you dont intend to. eventually one fine day you open your account and boom, we are back to fighting over inconsequential stuff

Why would sane, smart people still be on twitter?

Great idea! I've found that HackerNews is the perfect amount of world news for me. Anything more is detrimental to my productivity.

I don't use it but I did still have an account which is now deleted. Thanks for the reminder.

This is like going to a bar then getting mad because the bar owner really wants everyone to consume excessive amounts of overpriced alcohol.

Meanwhile there are people are going to the bar having a decent time and meeting interesting people.

Obviously I think you should do whatever is best for you, so this isn't a recommendation or criticism, but X is fine if you use it right. The issue you describe really only applies if you're mindless scrolling on the "for you" page – something X is very happy to let you do if that's how you want to use it. However this problem isn't unique to X, you'll find most businesses are happy to exploit people like this for profit.

On X if you curate lists of interesting users or look for content within specific communities you'll find it much, much more productive.

The reason sites like xcancel.com even exist is because people know there's some really interesting stuff on X which they want to view. You can improve the signal to noise if you decide to actively curate your own experience on X rather than handing that responsibility to X and your limbic system.

I think there are some people who genuinely can't control themselves though, so for them, yes, I agree – say out of the bars, stay out of McDonalds and stay away from X.

I guess it would be like that, if the bar owner was a seig-heiling nazi who always invites his nazi friends, and spends most of his time in the bar actively trying to start fights between other patrons, to the point that people who used to go just for fun have left for other bars.

Also the bar makes and distributes child pornography [0].

0: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/05/india-eu-investigate-musks-x...

> i have realized lately that x is full of ragebaiting and other algorithmic stuff to make you invested into it

Banality

All social media is flaming garbage. And before the “I’m very smart” types come, HN is not social media. It is a forum.

I quit all common social media a few months ago and its been so refreshing. Hackernews is now the only place I regularly frustrate myself with the stupidity of people.

I feel similarly. Hacker News is the nicotine patch of social media.

Given the attitude of both you and the GP, maybe this site isn't for you then?

This site is for unauthentic bullshitters trying to convert a forum to LinkedIn. I like this site for the occasional interesting read. Opening comments however is often times a mistake.

Seriously: find another place to pollute then.

No thanks