The death of privacy front ends?

[klardotsh]

Unfortunately this shouldn't be surprising: especially in this time of purse strings tightening and every Enshittification-powered company trying to grind out the last bits of "value" out of their hostage base, companies are bound to take measures to enforce their moats.

Migrating to services where the data is free and not captive was always the only long-term solution.

Next up: rather than inventing technical solutions to work around walled gardens, we need serious legislative efforts to mandate data freedom. It should be possible to export 100% of one's data stored in a service like Twitter or Reddit in a reasonably-parseable format (a tarball of JSON as one possible example, or maybe a SQLite database, or whatever is appropriate) and import it to a new service. Data moats must end, or we'll be doing this same stupid dance every few years when the next MySpaceBookTokDit enshittifies and takes everyone's social data with it.

[madeofpalk]

> It should be possible to export 100% of one's data stored in a service like Twitter or Reddit in a reasonably-parseable format (a tarball of JSON as one possible example, or maybe a SQLite database, or whatever is appropriate)

You can do that. You've been able to download, directly from twitter, an archive of pretty much your entire account. It's not quite JSON - it's actually a .js file that declares a single variable, but it's close enough.

[gochi]

Regulations on data exports doesn't solve this problem at all, it just means an endless goose chase of exporting and importing. Additionally, we open people up to even larger data leaks if the entire export and import path isn't regulated. We already have a problem with this in regards to switching password managers.

Regulations on what data can even be collected will solve this problem, and negate the entire reason for using these front ends.

[pavel_lishin]

Exports only help if new services support imports.

And some of those wouldn't be particularly helpful; @tags would lose a lot of meaning as you migrate, especially if others on the destination platform already have that handle.

[mschuster91]

> Data moats must end, or we'll be doing this same stupid dance every few years when the next MySpaceBookTokDit enshittifies and takes everyone's social data with it.

Data moats haven't been a thing since GDPR passed and everyone implemented "data dump" features as a result.

The real problem is the lack of federation requirement. Say I'm a competitor to Facebook - what use has a potential customer of mine from an import feature when there is no way for my service to interface with the customer's Facebook friends?

[rolph]

data should be stored locally in the first place.

[userbinator]

The recent WEI (aka user-agent discrimination) proposal might be the end-game of all this.

We shouldn't give up, but keep fighting to be able to use services with the software and hardware we choose. The whole "API" concept has always seemed like a power-grab since it was introduced.

[bobmaxup]

> The whole "API" concept has always seemed like a power-grab since it was introduced

What do you mean? Do you mean a public, free API offered by these services?

[Santosh83]

Data is the life blood of AI algorithms. Hence the effort by Big Tech to silo their mega-platforms & impose WEI upon browsers so only their crawlers are able to scrap whatever data remains outside the silos. Its a race to the bottom and individual & smaller players are going to get crushed even before they can start.

[aquova]

While I wouldn't be surprised if it died soon, my personal Libreddit instance remains running perfectly fine, although it has a user count of one.

[branon]

Teddit, my preferred Reddit frontend, still manages to have an updated frontpage, but clicking on anything gives HTTP 429 for several weeks now (I think, only use it intermittently).

If the frontends quit working though, I just won't go to those websites anymore.

[m463]

you can go to one of the many other instances running the teddit code

go to this link (at bottom of main teddit.net page)

https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit

and look under "instances"

just replace "reddit.com" with the instance name in your reddit url

I actually have a bookmark that does it automatically when I click on it.

javascript: (location.hostname="teddit.net")

or whatever instance you want

[askiiart]

I believe it's the same for Libreddit.

[waithuh]

I think HN took the site down? While i understand the pain, i think a little bit of a surge shouldnt be able to take down a public instance host. Another reason, perhaps?

[38]

site dead:

    > curl -v https://tux.pizza
    * Could not resolve host: tux.pizza
    * Closing connection 0
    curl: (6) Could not resolve host: tux.pizza

[hkt]

The web is slowly being killed. The culprit? Capitalism.

Sorry, not sorry. Use Gemini, search with Marginalia, socialise with real people and reach your communities with email.

[OfSanguineFire]

> socialise with real people

I have some real-life, non-internet-based hobbies for which I come together with other people. All the rest of those people frequently talk about social media, online influencers, DRM-controlled streaming, and WhatsApp groups, and I’m the weirdo because I don’t follow any of that. In fact, it is socializing with real people that convinces me that the world will just go along with tech companies’ nefarious plans, and ultimately it may no longer be very feasible for us nerds to just drop out.

[rpastuszak]

> [...] and reach your communities with email.

"office hours" / calls with random people where they can ask for advice, talk about their ideas (or just rant!) worked pretty well for me: https://sonnet.io/posts/hi

[Given_47]

Ayo I just recently started using the tux.pizza Nitter instance as my main

[parentheses]

It's not just a privacy frontend. You're accessing content and services without helping the freely provided stuff be monetized. I get that you want to protect your identity. Then don't use these services or data. It's not public and not free - nor should it be.

Privacy is not piracy. This is piracy.

[kelnos]

"Piracy" is a bit of a strong denouncement. If someone puts something on the internet, and their server responds to your request for data with... y'know... the data, then the you can display that data however you want.

Certainly the server owners can try to do tricky things to make it so you can only display the data in ways they want you to display it, but there's no natural right that makes it morally or ethically wrong for you to display things how you want.

[2Gkashmiri]

RSS by its very nature is designed to not be restricted to the "way of presentation and ad earning of the producer".

Producer produces content and RSS syndicates it that can be read by clients IN WHATEVER MANNER OR FORM THEY DESIRE.

That's the whole idea of internet. Now, you go ahead and lament how this is piracy. Its not. YouTube provides RSS feeds. Same do other platforms so as long as they do, we can do whatever the hell we want with the feed

[monkaiju]

Seeing as how this is hurting usage to the point that monetization is hurt, maybe they should actually just let the privacy-concious users be...

[oaththrowaway]

Surveillance capitalism is one of the most immoral things I can think of. Privacy and piracy are not only ethical but necessary

[prmoustache]

No it is not.