Reddit might be worse, actually, given their app is mediocre at best and they killed 3rd-party apps.

In the last couple months if you go to their site in a mobile browser (e.g. from search results), after a short scroll down they have this popup demanding you install their app and it completely takes over the screen. I take it as a reminder never to install their app.

I thought I'd be clever and use iOS's "Hide Distracting Items" to get rid of elements like that. But reddit kills the scroll, too, so even after the dickover[0] is gone the page is still non-functional. Nothing says, "we don't want your business" like a non-functional web page, which seems like a bad move unless you're selling food or potable water. 'cuz I get along just fine w/o reddit.

[0] https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover

I've been trying to figure out for years how to keep specific bits of Javascript like that from triggering. But so many modern webpages are procedurally generated messes born from frameworks that I can't reliably track down a way to do it. On Reddit for example there's reddit.com, redd.it, redditstatic.com, and cdn-apple.com that are all subdomains that load on the page, and each pull Javascript from dozens of different sources. If you disable Javascript entirely the page won't load and instead nags you to enable it. I don't want to go digging through the page inspector in my dev console just to track down which .js file is causing that, and then figure out how to only stop it from killing the scrollbar. If you can even do that. Some pages are so labyrinthine that you can't.

I'm sure there must be something on https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/Resources-Library but I've still not really been able to make sense/use of these rules much. At this point blocking certain things in js universally seems kind of impossible now that everything is webpack-chunked with random names or hidden in react context that seems inaccessible.

But I think this css rule covers many simple cases

    html[style*="overflow:hidden"], html[style*="overflow: hidden"]
    {
        overflow: auto !important;
    }

Many websites might be broken, but I’d like a toggle to disable listening for scroll events. And no overflow overrides on major and screen-wide elements.

> 'cuz I get along just fine w/o reddit.

Killing xcancel and nitter was an awesome callout that I was again spending too much time on social media, even if logged out. Back to my cave.

Reddit does have great communities, and can be useful even when you’re logged out.

Making their website really crappy does mean I use it, like, 15 minutes a week, as opposed to 1h/day on Apollo. It’s indeed a positive.

I use various bookmarklets to address this issue. The javascript is easy enough that you can modify it even if you're not a programmer. For example see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43488943

“Oh, you were busy reading this content created by the community? Please stop doing that and download our app instead.

Surely it wasn’t important and you’ll harbour no ill-feelings about this whatsoever, John in Marketing needs a promotion and his KPIs are down.”

It's the worst on iPhone, because it won't even let me scroll back up to show the button to open the tabs view, I have to switch out of the browser and re-open it to be able to scroll to show.

Yikes, that shouldn't be possible.

Maybe you can two-finger pinch to shrink the web page to the grid view, then close the page from there?

I think you can just tap the tab bar to bring the controls back. Works for me on whatever iOS this is before “Lucas would be proud with this numbering” 26.

Ublock origin on Firefox has an option to disable this which is nice.

Also they disabled old.reddit without login pretty recently. Which sucks, so I guess no more reddit boards for my debugging.

Safari on iOS 27 lets you design custom personal browser extensions and customizations just by writing out what you want.

This sounds cool at first but I think I really want vetted, up-to-date, edge-case-covered community extensions. You know, like we already have without arTiFicIAl ‘inteligence’.

LinkedIn too. The first time they show a bottom sheet dialog thing on the website, and if you dismiss it, it scrolls you all the way to the top. The second time it appears, it messes with the page and sometimes automatically closes the tab.

I used to have some trouble with linkedin, but currently it works for me reasonably well in Firefox on Android with ublock origin.

It's a real face palm how LinkedIn squandered the opportunity to be a relatively benign social media product. School kids would have zero interest in it except for that guy who wears a bowtie to high school. And yet they have made it such a swamp full of dark patterns. What's the marginal gain on that? They're the only game in town for the kinds of people who advertise on LinkedIn.

Perhaps these dark patterns were necessary to ensure that they stay the only game in town?

I love it how a normal social network makes a "ding" sound when somebody likes your post but LinkedIn gives you a "ding" for just posting anything at all! Overall it is a place that sends the message that "standards are low here"; don't know how to write? Microsoft Copilot will do it for you, etc.

And on Hacker News, if you post something really controversial, you get a “dang”!

I think the only answer is that all dating sites are full of dark-patterns, and promise to promote your profile if you pay more money.

Linkedin isn't a dating site? Sure it is. I've seen the messages friends receive, and the way people try to sell themselves in the fakest possible ways - it's the only way to judge it these days.

Idk Google Maps is pretty bad. Clicking on the search bar force opens the App Store, and trying to load photos does the same and straight up lies to you saying it’s only available in the app. But if you scroll down to the second carousel of images it loads fine in web.

Google Maps has a better excuse for wanting to be an app than most since a primary use case on mobile is turn-by-turn navigation. That's possible to do in a web page now, but several features that improve the experience are not available in browsers.

I'm annoyed by a different thing ... It used to be when you searched for something, maps would always be a tab for results. Now it doesn't seem to be anymore...

What you need to do, in the modern Web, is to flip that around.

Anytime I need to search an entity with physical presence, I use Google Maps first. Maps is very good about getting the first result as intended and not showing superfluous non-matches. Maps will not chirp up with AI-generated responses. Maps will take me right to the place I want, and I can see a lot of profile info at-a-glance, and if I wanted their website, then Maps will give me their main website, and nothing else.

Whether it's a corporate HQ, a clinic, a local restaurant, or a geographic area, Maps can come up with a lot of relevant info and I don't waste my time in an enshittified Search. So I'm thankful for the Maps app and its mobile integrations.

yeah, but in practice it used to be easier to type in the search bar and then click the maps tab...

I’m not sure how that’s a justification. If you want to app-wall the turn by turn directions, that would be one thing. The fact that turn-by-turn directions is better on mobile doesn’t rationalize lying about being unable to show photos, and auto opening the App Store three times every time you want to search for an address somewhere

Who on earth is still using Xitter, and what for?

On desktop web it's mostly fine, as long as you stick to the "Following" view rather than "For you".

Who are you following that's so important?

A small assortment of people that I found interesting/insightful/amusing at some point, plus a few local orgs occasionally announcing things. Why does anything need to be "so important"?

Without wishing to sound trite, what interesting/insightful/amusing people are still on that platform?

Ditto local organisations announcing things: are there any respectable originations (such as local government and sports groups) that still wish to be associated with the cesspool Xitter has become?

Aside from the stupid rename, I haven't noticed it become any more of a cesspool than it was before the takeover, and in some ways it's arguably healthier (less echo-chamber-ey, and community notes can be useful). Again, this is purely talking about desktop web and avoiding the algorithmic feed.

I think you're taking a very particular partisan US view and projecting it onto the rest of the world.

The problem now is everything you see if paid for ad. Even the people you follow if they have paid (blue checkmark) to have their posts raise higher in the feed (which is the same as an ad). It is all ads.

I feel like suing every blue checkmark person for deceptive advertising.

As I said, I don't use the algorithmic feed at all, so I don't see how "paid (blue checkmark) to have their posts raise higher" applies.

> I think you're taking a very particular partisan US view

Spare us the US defaultism.

I'm not American.

I know a guy (not quite close enough to call him a friend, but I know him from non-tech activities) who's member of the w3c, tech researcher, great and interesting speaker, and has tons of interesting insights to share. He talks a lot about open standards and what's wrong with all sorts of tech hypes, and yet the only way to follow him is on Facebook and LinkedIn. Why aren't you on the Fediverse!? Can't I just RSS your blog? Aren't you undermining your message by the way you share it?

> are there any respectable originations that still wish to be associated with the cesspool Xitter has become?

Yes, that was the biggest topic under discussion in the threads about the Nitter C&D. And most of sports is apparently still on there, to the point I hear people talking about how they only use it for sports news.

Honestly, the belief that Twitter has suddenly become a cesspool and everyone left is a (vocal) minority view, and it's only the liberal tech/terminally online left echo chamber chamber that thinks that.

People saying that "The MechaHitler App" is a cesspool are the out of touch ones?

The vast majority of users rely on the algorithm that suppressed posts that Musk doesn't like and promotes insane white supremacist propaganda.

You say that you can avoid that, and I agree. You can use other apps. There are other ways to get the information you're interested in, there are other ways to disseminate information. You don't need to participate in that insanity while pretending not to.

> People saying that "The MechaHitler App" is a cesspool are the out of touch ones?

No, I chose my words carefully. Thinking it suddenly became a cesspool makes you out of touch. Twitter, like all big social media, was a cesspool before Musk bought it, and that hasn't meaningfully changed since. And also like all big social media, it's basically fine and not a cesspool if you put a little effort into curating it. Twitter is actually better than some of the others, even, in my experience (though maybe I've just been more diligent in my curation of it).

There was a minor inflection point where a lot of very politically vocal people left, but for the majority, especially institutions, not much changed.

(And yeah, I'm not denying that Elon puts his hand on the scales of the algorithm. Some of what it pushes is disgusting and obnoxious. But I see disgusting/obnoxious stuff on other platforms too -- and that includes bluesky/mastodon)

because, basically, why paint Elmo's fence?

The people they want to follow. What's your point?

So... Who?

There's plenty of funny people on Twitter, folks like Mr. Chau, Brooks Otterlake, Will Sennet to name a few. For news, Joe Weisenthal and David Weigel are two guys that are pretty hip to current goings-on in economics and politics respectively.

If they were mirrored to another platform, would you follow them there, or do you only follow them to populate specifically your X feed?

For whatever reason, I can't reply to your comment further down. I'd be perfectly happy to follow them on another platform if their tweets were piped elsewhere.

> For whatever reason, I can't reply to your comment further down.

In case you happen to read this, that is (presumably) due to an anti-flamewar feature on HN, which hides the reply button for the first few minutes of posts in deep comment threads. You can either wait to comment, or comment by clicking the "X minutes ago" text next to the commenter's username.

Lots of local LLM people with cool setups and ideas, conspiracy stuff, politics beyond Politico/Atlantic/etc. So mostly stuff that gets one banned on Bluesky and Mastodon that's not on nostr.

Local LLM people aren't getting banned on those platforms unless they're being hostile to other users. Even then, it's unlikely.

Sorry to go off-topic, but you started it... Disagreeing with Musk politically is OK, but it might be advisable to not let your hatred warp the reality...Easily searchable _facts_:

X remains a large, influential real-time news and conversation platform (~half a billion combined MAUs)

- About 550 million monthly active users across X + Grok combined as of March 2026

- Up from about 520 million in December 2025

- ~ 350 million daily posts; 1.3 billion accounts active in the prior 12 months

They claim to have that number of MAUs.

He was complaining a lot about bots when he tried to back out of the sale. He's now built a bot into it. I find myself unable to trust his statistics, not only because of his history, but also due to what I hear from people who run advertising campaigns.

Are there any 3rd party estimates of twitter's user base/MAUs?

> X remains a large, influential real-time news and conversation platform (~half a billion combined MAUs)

Not news from anyone I want to hear about, not people I want to have a conversation with.

Considering the number of users, even official government departments, it still has, you would have to be very myopic and have very few interests for this to be true. The fact you're posting on Hacker News at all invalidates it; a huge portion of the type of people who hit the front page here are on Twitter.

> a huge portion of the type of people who hit the front page here are on Twitter.

Yes, but I can ignore them.

I ignore Nazis because people get really upset these days if you punch them.

The overwhelming majority of folks on twitter (>99.9999999%) are non-nazis. Oh, I don't use Twitter myself but that's because its also overwhelmingly social media spam on steroids.

If someone sits down for dinner with ten Nazis there are 11 nazis at the table.

I'm pretty sure there are some here on this forum as well. Fell free to log out and never come back.

Yes, I don't follow anyone on Twitter directly but often the primary/authorative source for something that gets posted elsewhere is still an post on X.com.

It's worse than that. 90% of the time I click on a tweet I just get the fucking login page. It seems to happen unless the tweet is from a very popular twitter account, ie one with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers.

The web browser experience in the browser is dramatically superior to that in the app, which doesn't even let you copy and paste media, for instance to text to others. X wants to force you to do that through a link back to them. Nope.

Most Apps are just emasculated and spyware-infested WebApps version of the website, anyway. Why not just use the Browser and get the real experience?

I do not want you app of crap.

>The web browser experience in the browser is dramatically superior to that in the app, which doesn't even let you copy and paste media, for instance to text to others. X wants to force you to do that through a link back to them. Nope.

An eye-opener like this is the reddit /s/ share links, which I assume come from copying in the app. They're everywhere, and they never open correctly for me unless maybe ironically I open them up in tor to get the actual thread