Ahoy mateys!
We are closing the voting on this topic a couple of days early as the result is already conclusive., Our threshold for passing the motion was for 2/3 of voting members in favor. We have far exceeded that threshold (see below) and have a good number of overall responses, so the proposed policy change has now been approved and takes effect immediately.
Our new policy on Xitter links
- No Xitter links are to be posted on this instance from the date of this announcement.
- Workarounds such as link shorteners and alternative front-ends that resolve to Xitter posts are also banned.
- Screenshots will still be permitted as per the overwhelming number of comments in support of this option.
- Exception: In rare cases there may be a need to verify the veracity of a Xitter post. If this need arises, then you may post a https://xcancel.com/ version of the link. Please note this option should only be used sparingly and exclusively for fact-checking purposes.
We will begin communicating this instance policy change to all our users today.
Please try to be helpful to anyone who accidentally posts a Xitter link who may not yet be aware of the policy change, and/or feel free to report in the usual way.
N.B.: For the loopholers - by “Xitter links” we mean any links to content hosted on X (formerly Twitter). Alternative Xitter front-ends are also banned under this policy, unless exception #4 applies. Edit: The ban also applies to other Xitter-owned domains such as their photo blobstore (pbs) domain at pbd.twimg.com
Thanks to everyone involved for participating in the vote!
**The final tally is as follows: **
- For:
(2), 
(7), 
(5), 
(3), 
(2), 
(1) - Against:
- Local Community: +2.6
- Outsider sentiment: Very Positive
- Total: +22.6
- Percentage: 100.00%
To break this down a little differently:
- Home instance users voted 93% in favor of the proposal (284/307)
- External instance users voted 97% in favor of the proposal (70/72 note: these are not counted, but good to know)
- Donating and vouched for users voted 100% in favor of the proposal (20/20 votes).
I think our preference would be to stick to xcancel.com links if you need to link for factchecking. I hadn’t given much consideration to archive links though, to be honest. I’d be interested to know your thoughts on those, and I’ll review the comments again on that topic. We can always tweak the policy if need be.
For clarification, is there a reason you would prefer xcancel links in particular over other frontends? I’m entirely uninformed on the matter, outside of seeing this service used relatively often and recently, compared to other Nitter instances.
I’m not the person you asked, but in my opinion, archiving services are more reliable than simple frontends, since they will continue to work even if the tweet in question is from an account that deletes or protects the tweets later, or if the account is suspended by Twitter. Considering the tumultuous relationship Twitter has with both reality and its users, this might be worth consideration too.
Can you help recommend a reliable archiving service? We may be able to include an archive site as well for the same purpose. Xcancel was recommended by a lot of folks, so that’s the main reason we picked that front end.
The best service I’m aware of is archive.is, which has been around for at least a decade, and does a good job taking snapshots of pages the way they’ve rendered. Beggars can’t be choosers, though, and the alternatives are sparse. (Their site does recommend a couple others, though.)
Typically I would prefer The Web Archive, but currently their site is experiencing issues with Twitter URLs.
I think picking one domain for fact checking purposes is the best option just for clarity purposes. I could see using archival links as a general ‘banned domains’ approach worth considering in the future.
+1 to this
I think that if we allow xcancel links for fact checking, archive links (and other nitter instances) should be allowed in that context as well, both for posterity (if tweet gets deleted) and since - from my experience - alternative front ends often come and go like the tide