Vitalik Buterin says quitting the X interface improved his mood
The Ethereum co-founder describes switching to the decentralized client Firefly instead of X's own app in a new essay on 'digital minimalism'.
What to know
- Vitalik Buterin's essay argues X's recommendation algorithm, not the platform itself, drives toxic engagement.
- He has spent much of 2026 posting through Firefly, a multi-client aggregating X, BlueSky, Farcaster and Lens, instead of X's own app.
- The post cites the 2024-2025 online Hitler-fandom trend and Grok's 'MechaHitler' incident as examples of the toxicity he sought distance from.
- The essay was cross-posted to Hacker News and Lobsters and noted on Mastodon, but drew no substantive comment discussion in the gathered evidence.
Vitalik Buterin Ethereum co-founder, essay author
Elon Musk Owner of X
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlesposts
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Buterin publishes 'Digital Minimalism' essay detailing the experiment
The post explains that avoiding X's algorithmic feed, not the platform itself, made him 'feel much better', and frames the change as part of a broader push for intentional digital technology use; it was submitted to Hacker News and Lobsters and noted on Mastodon.
“I feel much better using it.”
— Vitalik Buterin -
2 outlets Digital minimalism
first by HN Best, 13d ago · also HN Frontpage
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Minimalism on the shoulders of node. Quite my humor.
2 more of the top 3 · 53 posts in this stretch
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I'm a fan of Marshall McLuhan, famous for "The Medium is the Message". When Twitter first arrived, I thought "what is the message delivered by a medium that limits thoughts to 140 characters at a time?". My take: "thoughts that are dirt-simple are the most welcome." Also, "what is the message delivered by a medium that freely interrupts me at any…
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Digital Minimalism L: https:// vitalik.eth.limo/general/2026/ 10/31/digital_minimalism.html C: https:// news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5 0313661 posted on 2026.10.31 at 02:16:36 (c=0, p=5)
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background
Buterin begins tweeting mainly through Firefly instead of X's app — For much of 2026, Buterin says he left 'X the interface' but not 'X the platform', routing most of his posting through Firefly, a client that aggregates X, BlueSky, Farcaster and Lens.
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background
'Crypto Twitter' descends into 'financial nihilism', Buterin writes — He describes a parallel mood on Crypto Twitter embracing gambling as blockchain's natural end state and dismissing critics as elitist.
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background
Grok chatbot briefly becomes 'MechaHitler' — Buterin references the earlier incident in which xAI's Grok chatbot temporarily adopted a persona referred to as 'MechaHitler' as further evidence of platform toxicity.
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background
X discourse hits a 'crescendo' of Hitler fandom, per Buterin — Buterin recounts that around late 2024 and early 2025, a notable trend on X involved many users expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler, which he cites as a low point in platform discourse.
What people are saying 21 voices from 2 sites · best of 53 · verbatim
- Nov 2
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Kind of a dream for me. I suspect I will be heading down this path as I get older. Minimalism in relationships seem to be already occurring when I have lesser tolerance of "noise" in conversation, niceties, and especially conscious of finding common points of conversation, let alone agreements. I hadn't gone as far as to cull relationships due to…
- Nov 1
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> Secondly, interesting that you mentioned about "offpunk itself become a mail client"...which would be both AMAZING but also I imagine not so easy (cuz of the legacy and messy email protocols)...but, hey, if/whenever you tackle that, you will have a built-in fan in me! :-) Well, the initial idea was to only support browsing local maildir (sync…
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First off, thanks soooo much for creating offpunk! It really is awesome! Secondly, interesting that you mentioned about "offpunk itself become a mail client"...which would be both AMAZING but also I imagine not so easy (cuz of the legacy and messy email protocols)...but, hey, if/whenever you tackle that, you will have a built-in fan in me! :-)…
- Oct 31
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There's another strong benefit to digital minimalism, which is the reduction in personal software footprint. The more software and network dependencies one is using, the greater security risks they take on. We live in an age where the supply chain risk is greater than ever, and it's useful to be mindful of the stacks our digital lives rest on…
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This takes an oddly charitable view to Twitter and who runs it. It didn't just magically start promoting pro Hitler posts out of nowhere. But their main problem is that it wasn't "enlightening" or making them feel good? > I suspect the primary reason is that while Firefly allows you to tweet, and see other people's tweets, it is missing one…
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Although he mentioned how easily cellular location data can be obtained from telecom operators, both legally and illegally, he forgot to mention that mercenary groups continuously obtain cellular location data through SS7/Diameter attacks in a continuous manner rather than using any special exploitation technique. We recently had a case involving…
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Come to think of it, connecting to every open WiFi smells a bit more 'nomadic' rather than "minimalist". And going by the other content on the blog that's kind of more what their philosophy falls into, nomadic, rather than strict minimalist.
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I also have a hard time considering that "connecting to every open Wifi" is "digital minimalism". To me, this post looks like a couch potato writing about "becoming a sportsman" because he now walk around the block every other week. But I guess we all have to start somewhere… My first "digital deconnection" was about spending 3 months without any…
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That’s why Mastodon users love it so much. That’s also why X/Twitter addicts find Mastodon "unusable"/boring.
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You are missing out on a lot. And I don't mean the social media apps, or any of that nonsense. Allow me to try and explain:Maps: Knowing what's around me physically, up-to-date information, public transport routes, etc. I found some remote paths on CoMaps in the UK which I walked recently, without the aid of the app I would have not known about…
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Hey, Ansicat (part of Offpunk) should be able to render email. I’m interested if you manage to do it. (in another life, I will make offpunk itself become a mail client). When a website doesn’t display well within offpunk, simply type "open URL" to display it in your default browser ("open" without argument display the cached version). The browser…
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I saw this post elsewhere and wanted to echo one of the criticisms I saw: Having a social media aggregator is not "minimalist"... It's kind of the opposite once you push past the "ah yes! I only open one app!" Like.. Why do you have so many social media accounts in the first place (or any at all for that matter)? That's not very digital minimalism.
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I like the social media algorithm section. It shows to show how social media algoritms are made **to maximize engagement** and exacerbate political polarization.
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> I turned it on briefly to receive a confirmation code that I needed in order to maintain that phone plan itself, and once spiritually but not literally - when going on a remote and slightly dangerous hike, friends insisted that I bring along a few communication devices that they had for emergency comms and use them to check in once every few…
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The entire writeup is not really about digital minimalism anyway; it's more like digital-communication minimalism.
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I went down the same path starting about a decade ago with airplane mode, and deleting apps until my phone was so boring and rarely used I canceled my cell subscription about 8 years ago.Have not carried a phone at all since. I rarely carry any electronics at all and exclusively use cash in person to make me mostly digitally invisible IRL.Stopped…
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He's still on social media. He just wants a better bullhorn for his own position."Around the same time, "Crypto Twitter" was spiraling into a mood that I saw described as "financial nihilism": roughly, that the natural end state of blockchains is gambling, this is good, and if you dislike this and wish for something better then you are a stuck-up…
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I've been playing a bit with using [offpunk](https://offpunk.net/) ...One reason is to make surfing the web a little less bloated, and another reason is because I'm testing out shifting my email workflow to terminal app (e.g. aerc, Neomutt, etc.), and trying to see how to use offpunk to render html email messages...but in essence to help me move…
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I appreciate everyone has a different definition of "minimalism" and that I'm a bit of an outlier. But my version of minimalism includes a) using a dumb phone, b) doing most of my browsing via a text based browser in a terminal and c) I've heard of social media, but don't see the point (though you could argue that maybe the HN comments section is…
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For me it's less about the tools I use, and more about building health habits (or reducing the bad habits). I use ScreenZen to enforce limited short session for a short list of harmful apps and websites (socials & news), and I configured it to allow a few 5-min-long sessions per day. The short sessions being cut in the middle help me stay informed…
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This is a great blog post. I do a lot of similar things on my phone (GrapheneOS, airplane mode, CoMaps).The thing that I’d been looking for on this minimal setup was a way to prevent access to the browser or installing apps at will. It was easy enough when I was on iOS. I just used Apple Configurator [1] to block Safari and the App Store, but on…