[HN Gopher] Show HN: XDeck - An ad-blocking client app for macOS...
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       Show HN: XDeck - An ad-blocking client app for macOS, like
       TweetDeck
        
       Hi everyone,  XDeck is an client app for macOS as a TweetDeck
       alternative, with Ad-Blocking!  I developed this for myself after
       feeling disappointed that TweetDeck has become a paid service.  I
       hope you find it useful too.
        
       Author : morishin
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2024-06-13 15:51 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | genericacct wrote:
       | I miss tweetdeck... maybe not $8/mo miss, but maybe 9.99/yr miss
       | it
        
       | greggh wrote:
       | If the ads on Twitter were even close to relevant I wouldn't mind
       | just scrolling past them. But every ad I see lately is just
       | right-wing idiocy like PragerU.
        
         | askl wrote:
         | Who else would still want to advertise on twitter?
        
           | LukaD wrote:
           | I don't understand why people even use twitter at all at this
           | point.
        
             | 2malaq wrote:
             | Bubbles, my friend.
        
             | walthamstow wrote:
             | Addiction to scrolling
        
               | acheong08 wrote:
               | That's probably not it. I still have Twitter because the
               | people I follow are on there (mostly music artists). I've
               | never opened the algorithmic feed. There is also a huge
               | chance that much of the activity you see are bots. I have
               | 0 posts and 2000 followers somehow. No way they're human
        
               | walthamstow wrote:
               | It's not it for you, but it sounds like you are more of
               | an edge case. I think it is true for a lot of people.
               | 
               | I don't see any activity myself, I don't use Twitter any
               | more. I had an addiction which peaked with the UK 2019
               | election and I had to quit after that. It's an awful drug
               | which gives no high and terrible side effects.
        
               | jeffhuys wrote:
               | Please be aware that the both of you don't know, unless
               | you're not mentioning any studies on purpose. You're both
               | projecting your own subjective experience onto an entire
               | community.
        
               | acheong08 wrote:
               | You're right. Did some googling and it seems I'm wrong.
               | 
               | https://pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/doomscrolling-
               | impact...
               | 
               | > 53% of Gen Z "doomscroll" and 31% of adults in general
               | do so.
               | 
               | Now I understand how Facebook/Twitter are worth so much.
               | This is crazy
        
             | itsoktocry wrote:
             | > _I don't understand why people even use twitter at all at
             | this point._
             | 
             | Because it hasn't really changed for me. Some things are
             | better (less censorship), some things are worse (bots and
             | spam). But the overall signal is the same.
        
             | zogrodea wrote:
             | All my friends are on there and haven't switched to another
             | site. Some nice features are definitely getting removed
             | from it though (like being able to hide a tweet so only a
             | subset of your followers can see it).
        
             | henriquecm8 wrote:
             | I use mostly to follow indie game devs, to follow their
             | progress and not miss announcements of release dates, and
             | also a few artists.
        
           | huimang wrote:
           | Japan's crazy mascot, Chiitan, the god of advertising
        
         | itsoktocry wrote:
         | > _But every ad I see lately is just right-wing idiocy like
         | PragerU._
         | 
         | Any ideas why the algorithm is feeding you those ads?
         | 
         | I agree the ads suck, but I'm mostly getting drop-shipping junk
         | and crypto.
        
           | bluish29 wrote:
           | I really think the question is why wouldn't you block those
           | ads using something like ublock origin or adguard (admittly
           | you will lose using the app which is better for some people)
           | but you solve your greatest point of pain.
        
             | jeffhuys wrote:
             | I think the original question is valid here - I also don't
             | get any right-wing ads. I guess that is because I never
             | interact with those kind of post, also not negatively,
             | exactly BECAUSE I want to see less of them.
        
               | dwighttk wrote:
               | Twitter still allows you to mute/block any advertiser...
               | I've seen fewer big companies that make a million
               | throwaway accounts for advertising to make it hard to
               | mute. Any ad account I notice more than a couple times
               | gets muted, Twitter asks me if I want to upgrade to paid
               | and I ignore that.
        
       | thedumbname wrote:
       | It show me white screen, is it expected?
        
         | thedumbname wrote:
         | Totally forgot that X is blocked in my country, but app does
         | not aware and does not display any connection errors
        
           | sdfhbdf wrote:
           | Pakistan?
        
       | rcarmo wrote:
       | Well, I certaintly find it useful since I've removed X from my
       | phone but still want to peer inside on occasion (a few people
       | whose posts I value refuse to move to Mastodon and I don't want
       | to use Threads or Bluesy), so this is pretty useful. The ads have
       | become so obnoxious that being able to just have "Following" open
       | without hassles feels refreshing.
        
         | dwighttk wrote:
         | Refuse? Or tried and it was so complicated it didn't work?
        
           | kstrauser wrote:
           | If you can use Twitter and email, you're capable of using
           | Mastodon.
        
             | rcarmo wrote:
             | Tell that to the folk who are still on Twitter...
        
               | kstrauser wrote:
               | I can't. I deleted my account when it went sideways.
        
               | swores wrote:
               | "Capable of" isnt the same as "is willing to".
        
             | dwighttk wrote:
             | It's been ~three years since the last try, but I've made
             | multiple mastodon accounts and none of them took
        
               | adleyjulian wrote:
               | Are you saying this is due to not having an interest in
               | the people posting on Mastodon or due to a difficulty in
               | using Mastodon itself?
        
               | 1oooqooq wrote:
               | mastodon is beyond broken. also, network effect.
               | 
               | it's fine for cyber security content and furry con.
               | besides that, everyone's on meta or xitter.
        
             | TheCleric wrote:
             | My feet are capable of walking 100 miles. I'm still not
             | going to do that.
        
       | brianjking wrote:
       | Are we violating TOS by using this?
        
         | mtnGoat wrote:
         | If you are hiding ads, chances are high you are violating TOS.
        
         | phoronixrly wrote:
         | I wouldn't have it any other way
        
         | 1oooqooq wrote:
         | barely. you're more helping them by keeping the network effect
         | going despite how hostile to users they make it.
         | 
         | for one high quality person they retain thanks to this, they
         | can abuse other one thousand who will also stay because of that
         | person.
         | 
         | basically, they will moan it will be shut down but there won't
         | be any true effort
        
       | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
       | As Twitter and Reddit were going user-hostile past the point of
       | no return last year I fought it for a while with actions like
       | these. But eventually giving up and ditching them completely was
       | unavoidable and, in hindsight, freeing.
        
         | dotcoma wrote:
         | The same is true of Facebook, Google etc.
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | For some reason, the fight of most social media against any
         | third party way to access them comfortably helped people like
         | me finding the motivation to get rid of them altogether.
        
           | kstrauser wrote:
           | Same. I left Reddit when they killed Apollo. In retrospect it
           | was a blessing.
        
           | Groxx wrote:
           | Yep. Instagram has been so hostile up logged-out people that
           | it drove me away, and I actively recommend businesses avoid.
           | Prior to this, quite a few small businesses I ran across used
           | Instagram as their website, but it's completely useless if
           | people can't see anything.
        
             | soylentcola wrote:
             | Pretty much. I ditched my Facebook account in 2017 and
             | never really messed with IG. At some point I just wasn't
             | seeing much of what I liked about the site initially (a
             | feed of what friends and acquaintances were up to) and
             | didn't find it worth the tradeoff - lots of companies are
             | skeevy, but I might continue using their products if I get
             | something out of them. Didn't find FB to be worth it.
             | 
             | But still, I'm in a few long running group chats with
             | friends and maybe 60-70% of the links people post are to
             | Meta sites. Can't access even though it's almost always
             | just something reposted from a (openly accessible) website.
             | 
             | The bots and the spam ruining platforms is bad enough.
             | Putting such a large chunk of actual online human
             | conversation behind login-walls has seriously put a dent in
             | things. I feel like this is the other half of the whole
             | "search engines suck now because of ML-generated/SEO-
             | optimized junk" argument. There's nothing to balance that
             | stuff out because you need a sketchy persistent,
             | personally-identifiable account to access the rest.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-14 23:03 UTC)