Libredirect – Redirect social media and websites to privacy friendly front ends | Hacker News Reader

Libredirect – Redirect social media and websites to privacy friendly front ends

libredirect.github.io

64 pointsecliptik25 comments

This is a great idea, and I like that there are more projects inspired by the great Nitter.

If you're not down with installing a custom extension just for this, you can always create a really simple userscript if you already have GreaseMonkey/Violentmonkey/Tampermonkey. Mine looks kinda like this:

https://gist.github.com/keb/6e2c9a9b17c1d5b7119cd6e2e6072247

You just need to add a `@match` to the userscript frontmatter, and then add the redirect to the redirects map.

Haven’t used Libredirect, but there’s also https://farside.link (on GitHub: https://github.com/benbusby/farside). Not an extension, but it redirects to an active instance for most privacy friendly front ends just by adding farside.link to the beginning (i.e. https://farside.link/https://twitter.com/elonmusk would redirect to a random active nitter instance). Also works for medium.com, YouTube, etc.

I’ve tried using sites like Nitter and Teddit but always give up due to the sporadically crippling performance issues. I’ve tried using different instances but any improvements seemed to be temporary. My guess is that most of the performance issues are from Twitter/Reddit. Is this true or am I just having back luck with the instances I choose?

If you are using random instances run by hobbyist it will happen. Such instances come and go every week.

Try to use proper instances from projects like kavin.rocks, pussthecat, esmailelbob.xyz, bus-hit.me, vern.cc, tokhomi.xyz etc.

For eg., try https://nitter.kavin.rocks. It is one of the fastest instance and also hosts its CDN on Cloudflare.

In addition to this suggestion, another viable route is to self-host those applications you rely on and don't expose them to the world (so as to reduce load/attack surface). Using a VPN can allow you to access the applications privately/remotely.

e.g. I self-host the applications I rely on such as Teddit, Nitter, Bibliogram and Cloudtube and then use Wireguard to always remain connected to the network they are accessible on. I have also implemented identity-aware SSO[1] so I can expose those applications remotely to specific individuals.

[1] https://github.com/buzzfeed/sso

This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

in libredirect, they added a feature where you can test the latency of each instances

The problem with public instances is that they're constantly overloaded. Your best bet is to run your own.

I started running my own this week because the public instances are inconsistent.

Performance is better overall, but some things are still sluggish (teddit) because you're usually the only fetching data and nothing is cached.

Paired with Tailscale makes for a good combination too.

Teddit specifically has this unfortunate behavior where every referenced subresource is loaded before a response is returned: https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit/issues/248

Until that is resolved, libreddit (similarly self-hostable) performs much better.

Which is what I figured is the point, since it's libre. On the other hand doesn't that defeat the purpose of the privacy thing? If every request for ~one user's worth of traffic is coming from one proxy you can sort of identify one person that way.

> On the other hand doesn't that defeat the purpose of the privacy thing?

It depends - a lot of the privacy invasions go beyond just the IP address and also include browser fingerprints and on-page activity collected by malicious Javascript - these third-party frontends defeat that.

All (most?) of them also trivially supports using a proxy so you can selectively route them through Tor or some other proxy or VPN.

Heh, then who hosts that proxy? And might you want to self-host that if it gets overloaded? TOR of course makes sense here though.

My experience is that Nitter is faster than the official Twitter frontend

The same for Android: UntrackMe https://framagit.org/tom79/nitterizeme

I'd be suspicious having to install any extension using developer mode. Does this limit itself to reading data on those specific sites, or does it want access to everything?

Note it is not available in either the Microsoft store or Chrome extension store.

> it is not available in either the Microsoft store or Chrome extension store.

Not a Chromium-based browser user anymore, but it seems to me like a deliberate choice so as to protect user privacy. I'm sure you are aware of this, but I feel like the context is helpful for my next point/question.

> I'd be suspicious having to install any extension using developer mode.

Don't you have to enable developer mode to install extensions via .crx files? If my assumption is correct about them trying to preserve user privacy by avoiding Chrome/Microsoft stores, what alternative is there to install the extension without enabling developer mode?

Installing extensions via the store is no different than downloading a file from GitHub. It isn't sharing your account information when you install an extension that I know of. I don't see how this is any different than installing from the Mozilla Extensions Add-Ons Store.

> I don't see how this is any different than installing from the Mozilla Extensions Add-Ons Store.

That I agree with. There seemingly is a Mozilla bias there.

Looking at Mozilla's privacy policy doesn't bolster much confidence either[1]. Except one nice thing they provide is a guide on how to evade their analytics, which is a nice, consumer-friendly piece to their docs (imo Google would probably never document something like this):

> Mozilla first-party tools: Opt-out on www.mozilla.org. Google: Install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, which prohibits data transmission to Google Analytics. Some Mozilla.org pages use clear GIFs which communicate with DoubleClick to understand the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns; you can control personalized ads from DoubleClick in Google's ad settings (you will be prompted to sign into your Google Account).

> Convert.com: Opt-out on www.mozilla.org.

> Yahoo: Visit the Ad Interest Manager to opt-out.

> ShareProgress and Fathom.com: You can turn on Do Not Track in your browser.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/websites/

redirecting to alt-frontends as much as adblocking gives me pause to what the Web has come to: a niche of users browse a usable web, others not in the know and especially on mobile are driven to use the platforms Apps, distributed via a device duopoly

There's a browser extension for Firefox and chromium that can allow you to create redirects using wildcards or regex, it's called Redirector and it is awesome.

https://github.com/einaregilsson/Redirector - I prefer it over Libredirect too as it can replace other Addons. Alternative frontends is not a surprising development, as the "web today" has gotten quite user hostile.

Last I checked it hasn't got a list of rules to be imported to get you started, here are mine - https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/sFBptpgGRX/

It is such an important part of my browser I wrote a similar userscript for qutebrowser when I started using it. I recently finished the script, I have yet to publish it but having this functionality in a browser is a requirement IMO.

Been using nittr for twitter links on an irc bot, works well.

Thanks for the list.

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