Alternative privacy-respecting front ends for popular services

Not at this moment, but sometimes I am, and I would consider living there long term at some point, so I don't want to screw up the possibility of a future there.

I had the opposite idea: https://imgz.org

Wouldn’t that just be banned as well knowing the Indian govt. Forget govt jio and airtel do it in their own.

searx or qwant? there isn't an authoritative server for searx, so it can be hit or miss. qwant requires js, so i don't use it. i usually use duckduckgo, though my enthusiasm for it has been waning as it becomes more nakedly commercial.

The gallery thing drives me nuts. It's so buggy on old reddit.

Also links constantly come up with backslashes in them, probably some change in the new interface and they are just letting it be broken on the old interface.

They are without a doubt just letting old reddit slowly fall apart until it's totally broken.

you can read quora answers anonymously by adding `share=1` as query param

> Ironically, using these services without paying or submitting to trackings or ads and these companies not paying taxes both violate the principal of “not paying your share”

That is my point, yes; we are already past that point of paying one's fair share as a legitimate concern. I don't owe such a consideration for fairness to an entity that doesn't honour the same to me.

fair points, but the internet allows unseen concentration and economies of scale. The existence of some services prevents the upcoming/use of others and thus I am basically forced to use some of these services (e.g.: Twitter, Whatsapp), if I want to keep my standard of living that I had before a lot of stuff moved there (Events that are organized only on Facebook come to my mind).

It doesn't help that many of those services have used their power to basically become the only available option.

Take YouTube for example, there are basically zero alternatives out there. It is such a dominating force for watching videos. I have basically cut all of google out of my life as much as possible, but YouTube is the one that you can't drop for the random video that you may want to watch. I have zero qualms about using a third party service while "mooching" off of google.

Many others in this list are similar, reddit... discord... etc. I would not have an issue supporting those companies with a monthly subscription if they did not pull shady stuff.

These companies are way too comfortable abusing their users. I was trying to get support from Microsoft for a product I bought. With pihole on my network I was unable to load chat because someone had the bright idea to host the css and js for it on their ad domain.

If you don't want people making their own frontends, blame your government for allowing it.

> People are certainly entitled to not be tracked, but not to indulge in services for free without payment, tracking or ads.

They certainly are, and the onus is on the web sites to prevent/limit it.

The rule of the Internet is simple: If you put something on a Web site, everyone has the right to visit it. An obvious example: I cannot put up a static HTML page with images, and demand people who view the images pay me for it. Nor can I demand that they download and view the whole page. As someone visiting any page, I am in full control of what bits from that site I will receive and process via a browser. The site's owner has no say in it - his responsibility is to control what is sent to me - not what I do with what is sent to me.[1] He can do this using access control (e.g. accounts), and other methods.

It's your obligation to design the site in a way that you would like it to be used. It is not the visitor's obligation to understand your profit model and try to honor it.

[1] Except things like IP/copyright/trademark, which is a different topic than the one at hand.

> People are certainly entitled to not be tracked, but not to indulge in services for free without payment, tracking or ads.

These services are not just an indulgence for many people. I've had jobs that require me to access things on Discord or Facebook. Many businesses require using Facebook or WhatsApp for customer service. I've needed support for various issues that only existed on reddit or Twitter. These are just a few examples.

Sure, one could opt to not participate in society or to go without essentials. But you shouldn't have to live such an extreme aescetic monk lifestyle just to avoid being tracked and profiled and having your profile sold to people who wish to manipulate your behavior.

> You can also just not visit those sites if you don’t want to be tracked

Facebook's like button tracks you all over the web

Content creators often integrate ad content for sponsors, doing away with the need for 3rd party javascript. Users are entitled to control Javascript on the client side as they see fit. Companies can and do block service for detected ad-blocking or blocked javascript. For the aforementioned with front-ends, they choose not to. They know ultimately they'll make more money from those users in aggregate if they use the service than not. In other words if people "just don't use the service", the service is worse off. There are revenue generators that are effectively endemic to the services by design and cannot be "blocked".

Issues aren't just about tracking. Youtube for instance got where it is today by effectively stealing copyrighted content, and they still facilitate and profit from it, notwithstanding screwing over content creators with illegitimate takedowns. There isn't really a persuasive argument that Youtube is entitled to more of your data.

That's an excellent point, and I agree - not just here, but in practice as well - I go out of my way to respect the GPL and similar licenses for my own work and others'.

My respect of copyleft does not come from a want to adhere to legal terms, but instead an appreciation for what those terms hope to achieve more broadly, and the positive impact they have on society. As I described in another comment, I do not owe FAANG respect or legal cooperation it doesn't reciprocate.

Of course, if you feel like it's your duty to run the web without adblockers, I understand that, and more power to you.

> I don't think it follows generally that, if something is offered without monetary cost but with terms of use, and you don't like those terms, you are free to use it in violation of those terms.

I honestly wonder how well this has been tested in courts for web sites. As an example, if I visit a web site that has a "Terms of Use" link, but I don't click on the link, will the courts still rule that I'm bound by them?

An extreme case: If there is a static web site with images, and somewhere on the page there is a Terms of Use along the lines of "If you view these images you must pay me 10 cents", then is that legally binding?

(Note: Copyright is very different from "terms of use").

I vaguely recall there was a ruling that if you buy a physical item and its terms of use are in the box (i.e. you cannot view it without buying), then you are not bound by them. Of course, this is not analogous.

What do you mean "like anywhere else" ? Family, friends, schools, libraries, breathing oxygen, interacting with nature, volunteering, writing this comment. Taking into account non-interaction such as hobbies and DIY, I'd say that contractual exchange comprises a minority of our existence. Contractual relationships are just easy to focus on because they fit into a simple mold, and we're overly focused on them due to needing to run on the economic treadmill encouraged by the government. But just because people are bringing the economic treadmill to the Internet does not mean we have to respect that.

Whether something is a "loophole" relies on what happens if the standard is applied universally. I for one advocate that everyone install Adblock, not just "sophisticated players". When I set up computers for family, they get it by default (people's answer to "do you want to block ads" is invariably "yes"). When I get around to installing eg PiHole, it will be on by default for the entire network. I hope that ad blocking becomes popular enough that ad companies become unprofitable. The web was much better twenty years ago, and while we can't just go back, advertising dollars are the major source of energy powering negative sum interactions.

Collecting and sharing massive sets of data on people has a societal cost when that data leaks and is used to target individuals with identity theft. Stalkers abuse these datasets to find and attack their targets. Data breaches are especially common in the ad-tech, marketing, and sales industries because they are largely unregulated and exist to collect data on millions of people at scale.

Not all users of anonymity services are people who have a choice in the matter. And if you're not currently a victim of stalking or identity theft, why invite attacks by openly sharing personal information? It's a personal risk calculus, and everyone's needs are different.

- 622 million leaked email addresses, employers, geographic locations, job titles, names, phone numbers, & social media profiles from PDL [0]. According to the PDL website, the purpose of this data was for PDL clients to "supercharge [their] software with over 3 billion profiles. Tap into the resume, contact, social, and demographic information for over 3 billion unique individuals, delivered to you at the scale you need it."

- 125 million leaked email addresses and 9 billion data points on users from Apollo [1]. Dataset includes email addresses, employers, geographic locations, job titles, names, phone numbers, salutations, & social media profiles.

[0]: https://www.troyhunt.com/data-enrichment-people-data-labs-an...

[2] https://www.wired.com/story/apollo-breach-linkedin-salesforc...

> What are the consequences of ad-tech surveillance in practice?

My views on this are a bit deeper than I can easily cover in a single comment that I’m writing on my phone, but the question reminds me that I need to publish a talk I gave last year on the subject. The short version is that the development of recommendation systems, both for targeting ads and for generating engagement loops for users so that you can show more ads, have some chilling second and third order social effects. The algorithmic bubbles that come from social media are a well known problem, as are the privacy implications of data breaches associated with these systems. Even outside of actual systems being compromised, these systems are open to side channel attacks that can both allow data collection and influence on the sorts of content people see. In short, the system isn’t complex and open to abuse, and the incentives built in are not aligned with building a healthy society.

As for not using the services- there’s no simple satisfying answer here. You can cut out a lot of things, but ultimately it’s nearly impossible for an individual to completely opt out of a bad decision the rest of society has collectively made, and so we need to find ways to mitigate the damage where we can.

>What are the consequences of ad-tech surveillance in practice?

The consequences are that I am forced to share information I'd prefer not to share.

If there's a requirement that I do so, I will choose not to use resources that require it. But it's not my responsibility, nor is it feasible, to for me to choose, before I am aware of such a requirement, not to connect to a resource.

Don't want folks like me who block ads/trackers on your site? I have no issue or complaint about that. It is, after all, your site.

There are tools you can use to keep me from viewing your content. That's your choice and your responsibility. Not mine.

Don't frame ad/tracker blocking as "theft." That's not even close to the truth.

The last three commands are the whole installation (`git clone` and `cd` would be required anyway). Adding a completely unnecessary dependency to a second build tool just to invoke tasks in the build tool they already use would be pretty silly though. They could just define a nimble task to do all three at once.