I really wish there was one for WeChat that worked and didn't get you banned.
These days they try to detect these alternative front ends and unfortunately if you get banned on WeChat that basically means you can't buy food, buy groceries, buy train tickets, reserve hotels, buy flight tickets, raise money, or a million other things. What's worse, if you get banned on WeChat people might even reject you socially because they think you're upto something illegal.
It's a horrid way to force everyone into using their official client.
I used to run WeChat in a virtual machine and remote access it, but now I just use a different phone for WeChat because the stakes are too high.
I know this one, however I took a different approach here and chose to include only web frontends strictly (which means that there is less variety, but they all function similarly).
rimgu is another one that popped up around the same time imgbin started commits. Supports a little bit more out of the box, galleries with comments and albums. But the both are VERY new projects
I tried a number of times already through Privacy Redirect and I really want to like it, but it just doesn't cut it mostly speed-wise. E.g. teddit takes about twice as much time to load subs as reddit does, and that's already not exactly fast, and especially with Invidious servers are down often. Just wondering if other also have issues, perhaps this is location-based?
These are great, but it's too bad they need to be so siloed. All of these applications are popular partly because they're on the _internet_ where we can link between things. I'm not likely to click a Medium link and then go find that item on my scribe instance (for example).
It would be interesting to find something similar to how you can choose which application will open files of a given type on your desktop. You can choose if web links should open with Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. What if we had a layer where you could choose which "application" opened medium.com/* links or youtube.com/* links? _That_ would be an awesome resource.
I use redirector which lets me set rules (as complex as you want) to redirect links. For example I have one that redirects a a all YouTube.com/* to piped.com/*
That's already possible on Android at least. I have third party apps for Twitter, HN, Reddit, and YouTube that open automatically if I tell try browser 'open in app'. I'm sure with a few settings tweaks or an extension it's possible to open links in the selected app directly, even on desktop. The hard part is probably finding a frontend app that works with an unofficial API.
Redirector and Privacy Redirect, among others, can be used to rewrite the original links to your instance of choice.
> What if we had a layer where you could choose which "application" opened medium.com/* links or youtube.com/* links? _That_ would be an awesome resource.
I've been thinking about a unified squid-config or something like that - if the user trusts the TLS cert for these specific domains, it could be quite neat.
I also find them to be significantly slower than using the mainstream website and you get lower quality video streams often compared to the main youtube website
Very similar. Startpage tries to learn as little as possible about its users (which I believe, after seeing their error page). It sends searches to Google on users' behalf and returns results without personalization.
In Whoogle's case, Google can still track the searches you send to it. With Startpage, only Startpage can track them in detail - and Google only in aggregate.
Assuming most sites do not use comprehensive browser fingerprinting, it's not any different from having a dynamic ip and wiping cookies periodically.
In both cases, assigning this data to a unique identifier that can be later tied to your name is pretty hard. If your ultimate goal is avoiding this I'd actually advise against self hosting one of these solutions if you are planning it using alone. Either get more people to use your instance, making your usage "fingerprint" harder to correlate or use a service hosted by someone else for the same reason. The latter of course hinges on trusting the webmaster of that service.
+1 for Libreddit. Reddit’s ui is terrible but libreddit provides a great alternative. Only trouble I’ve had with it is some videos missing sound on iOS.
I'd really like to see this become a thing. Abstract away all the configuration/monitoring/maintenance for me. Maybe someone like a DigitalOcean bundles them up into a Privacy VPS offering.
Not quite so. You have to account for javascript support or lack thereof, cookies, and other tracking techniques employed by popular services and generally absent on these frontends. VPN by themselves will only "hide" your IP address.
Apart from what others mentioned, other benefits include significantly reduced resource usage on the client due to only including the CSS and JS necessary to give a good user experience, without needing to configure adblockers etc on every client.
You can also do funky stuff like tunnel different sites through different tunnels and share instances with other people.
I don’t think it’s fair to use these. These sites cost money to run - I understand the desire to preserve privacy but in effect this site is just showing you how to mooch.
I don't think it's fair these sites editorialize content but avoid the repercussions of not editorializing away human trafficking rings (for example), or how they dodge billions in taxes around the world.
If a paid tier offered no ads, tracking or similar anti-features, you'd have a point. Since even paid offerings can't give up profiling and data sharing, it's perfectly fair to get that experience from the free data they choose to serve instead of a 402 payment required.
The dynamic of the web was never one of contractual exchange. The surveillance companies are longstanding parasites of the ecosystem - finding a ways of exploiting vulnerabilities in software and human wetware for economic gain, and then setting themselves up as centralized watering holes to reinforce that dynamic. Just like Adblock, this is the ecosystem working to mitigate them.
We have no moral obligation to support someone’s business model. If someone’s business model relies on people being too ignorant of either the consequences of ad-tech surveillance systems, or of the technical means to avoid that surveillance, and that turns out to be a bad bet, then they can pivot to a different monetization strategy that doesn’t involve people passively allowing themselves to be constantly subjected to sophisticated ML-model driven targeted and personalized psychological manipulation.
I've always aimed at making my shadow adtech surveillance profile as worthless as possible. Turning it into a net loss for these companies is even better.
I'm all for self-hosting your own instance, but sometimes the installation can seem daunting. Take Nitter for example, from here: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
Here's how to create a nitter user, clone the repo, and build the project along with the scss.
# useradd -m nitter
# su nitter
$ git clone https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
$ cd nitter
$ nimble build -d:release
$ nimble scss
$ mkdir ./tmp
Aren't nimble and scss explained literally 2 paragraphs above, at the same link?
> To compile Nitter you need a Nim installation, see nim-lang.org for details. It is possible to install it system-wide or in the user directory you create below.
> To compile the scss files, you need to install libsass. On Ubuntu and Debian, you can use libsass-dev.
`nimble` is the package manager for the programming language `nim` [1].
From [2], we can see that `nimble scss` simply generates the CSS files for the frontend.
The benefit of OSS is you can answer these questions yourself with a bit of poking around! IMO this is a fairly standard installation process, maybe the fact that it's using Nim instead of a more mainstream language makes it look more daunting than it is. The only out-of-the-ordinary thing here, IMO, is `nimble build` instead of `make build`.
[+] [-] 3np|4 years ago|reply
https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620275
[+] [-] dheera|4 years ago|reply
These days they try to detect these alternative front ends and unfortunately if you get banned on WeChat that basically means you can't buy food, buy groceries, buy train tickets, reserve hotels, buy flight tickets, raise money, or a million other things. What's worse, if you get banned on WeChat people might even reject you socially because they think you're upto something illegal.
It's a horrid way to force everyone into using their official client.
I used to run WeChat in a virtual machine and remote access it, but now I just use a different phone for WeChat because the stakes are too high.
[+] [-] schleck8|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] als0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] i67vw3|4 years ago|reply
I would like if the redirection is done directly from browser without an extension (opt-in).
[+] [-] technonerd|4 years ago|reply
https://codeberg.org/3np/rimgu
[+] [-] stinos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mawise|4 years ago|reply
It would be interesting to find something similar to how you can choose which application will open files of a given type on your desktop. You can choose if web links should open with Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. What if we had a layer where you could choose which "application" opened medium.com/* links or youtube.com/* links? _That_ would be an awesome resource.
[+] [-] 42jd|4 years ago|reply
See (also on chrome under same name): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
[+] [-] jsmith99|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3np|4 years ago|reply
> What if we had a layer where you could choose which "application" opened medium.com/* links or youtube.com/* links? _That_ would be an awesome resource.
I've been thinking about a unified squid-config or something like that - if the user trusts the TLS cert for these specific domains, it could be quite neat.
[+] [-] novok|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flotzam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anaganisk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dartharva|4 years ago|reply
>Google search result frontend without Javascript, ads, cookies and tracking. Tor and HTTP/SOCKS proxy support
Isn't Startpage the same?
[+] [-] vngzs|4 years ago|reply
In Whoogle's case, Google can still track the searches you send to it. With Startpage, only Startpage can track them in detail - and Google only in aggregate.
[+] [-] clairity|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodpoint|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] no_time|4 years ago|reply
In both cases, assigning this data to a unique identifier that can be later tied to your name is pretty hard. If your ultimate goal is avoiding this I'd actually advise against self hosting one of these solutions if you are planning it using alone. Either get more people to use your instance, making your usage "fingerprint" harder to correlate or use a service hosted by someone else for the same reason. The latter of course hinges on trusting the webmaster of that service.
[+] [-] redman25|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pydry|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gausswho|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NmAmDa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tantalor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adg001|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3np|4 years ago|reply
You can also do funky stuff like tunnel different sites through different tunnels and share instances with other people.
[+] [-] roywiggins|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StockHuman|4 years ago|reply
If a paid tier offered no ads, tracking or similar anti-features, you'd have a point. Since even paid offerings can't give up profiling and data sharing, it's perfectly fair to get that experience from the free data they choose to serve instead of a 402 payment required.
[+] [-] mindslight|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rebeccaskinner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] no_time|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beauHD|4 years ago|reply
What's 'Nimble' and 'scss'?
[+] [-] 1986|4 years ago|reply
> To compile Nitter you need a Nim installation, see nim-lang.org for details. It is possible to install it system-wide or in the user directory you create below.
> To compile the scss files, you need to install libsass. On Ubuntu and Debian, you can use libsass-dev.
[+] [-] gen220|4 years ago|reply
From [2], we can see that `nimble scss` simply generates the CSS files for the frontend.
The benefit of OSS is you can answer these questions yourself with a bit of poking around! IMO this is a fairly standard installation process, maybe the fact that it's using Nim instead of a more mainstream language makes it look more daunting than it is. The only out-of-the-ordinary thing here, IMO, is `nimble build` instead of `make build`.
[1]: https://github.com/nim-lang/nimble
[2]: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/blob/master/nitter.nimble
[+] [-] atestu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3np|4 years ago|reply
To build and run Nitter in Docker:
A prebuilt Docker image is provided as well: So one or two lines depending on if you're OK with pulling a provided image or not.