8 ms·

The death of privacy front ends?

83 points by throwoutway 3y ago

Given_47 3y ago
Ayo I just recently started using the tux.pizza Nitter instance as my main
userbinator 3y ago
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 3y ago
  > 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?
  - userbinator 3y ago
    I mean the idea of promoting a separate "API" that you need to specifically request access to ("API keys") and possibly agree to other conditions, just to get the same information you'd already be able to with the "normal" way using a browser, but in a possibly slightly easier to parse format. That's why I like to say that all sites already have an API: HTTP + HTML.
    - 38 3y ago
      yep. people seem to forget that the whole API key is a recent invention. for many years you could just access many APIs anonymously. this should still be possible. if abuse is an issue, all they need to do is set rate limits for anonymous access. GitHub does this, and even Instagram. the only point of an API key is to extract information from API users that would otherwise be anonymous.
klardotsh 3y ago
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.
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  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.
  - klardotsh 3y ago
    @tags are just one of many features, and the lack of a matching user on the import side isn't a critical issue: a link back to the original post instead suffices. And regardless, Twitter-alikes aren't the only thing worth considering. Exporting all of one's video data from YouTube, or all of one's comments from Reddit, or all of one's search history (and Google Voice texts, and Docs documents, and etc.) from Google are all usecases that fall under these data moats that are useful to be able to take with you and move to another service. There's probably more usecases I'm not even thinking of, but the point is that by exposing all the data by mandate, we don't have to be limited by the imagination of today, we have the data, we can build whatever future frontends and replacement services and etc. we want.
    - arielcostas 3y ago
parentheses 3y ago
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.
- monkaiju 3y ago
  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...
- 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
  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
  - kelnos 3y ago
    But that's only if the producer wants to provide an RSS feed. While annoying, it's perfectly within their rights not to provide one. > That's the whole idea of internet. I think it's very hard to assert that anything is "the whole idea of the internet". If you want to go back to its roots, the "whole idea of the internet" was to have a reliable military/government communications system in the case of nuclear war. These days the internet means different things for different people, and no one person can credibly assert that any particular purpose is valid or invalid.
    - bobmaxup 3y ago
      They surely meant the "world wide web", which is often used interchangably, and (to some) incorrectly, with "internet"?
  - 3y ago
Santosh83 3y ago
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.
hkt 3y ago
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.
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  > [...] 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 https://sonnet.io/posts/hi
  - hkt 3y ago
    This is fantastic and I may just take you up on it if you're still doing it!
    - rpastuszak 3y ago
      yeah, I've spoken to +100 people so far this way. Come and say hi! :)
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  > 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.
  - grrdotcloud 3y ago
    My real friends use group text. Nothing fancy. Real names. Real numbers. No data collection. No cost. Memes flow. Links get posted. All is just a setup for the next IRL meeting. I found the end of the internet in '99. This is the last few sites that have a low bot ratio.
branon 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 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 3y ago
  I believe it's the same for Libreddit.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
aquova 3y ago
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.
waithuh 3y ago
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 3y ago
site dead: > curl -v https://tux.pizza * Could not resolve host: tux.pizza * Closing connection 0 curl: (6) Could not resolve host: tux.pizza
- tuxpizza 3y ago
  [dead]

83 points by throwoutway 3y ago

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

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 3y ago
> 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?
- userbinator 3y ago
  I mean the idea of promoting a separate "API" that you need to specifically request access to ("API keys") and possibly agree to other conditions, just to get the same information you'd already be able to with the "normal" way using a browser, but in a possibly slightly easier to parse format. That's why I like to say that all sites already have an API: HTTP + HTML.
  - 38 3y ago
    yep. people seem to forget that the whole API key is a recent invention. for many years you could just access many APIs anonymously. this should still be possible. if abuse is an issue, all they need to do is set rate limits for anonymous access. GitHub does this, and even Instagram. the only point of an API key is to extract information from API users that would otherwise be anonymous.

klardotsh 3y ago

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.

pavel_lishin 3y ago
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.
- klardotsh 3y ago
  @tags are just one of many features, and the lack of a matching user on the import side isn't a critical issue: a link back to the original post instead suffices. And regardless, Twitter-alikes aren't the only thing worth considering. Exporting all of one's video data from YouTube, or all of one's comments from Reddit, or all of one's search history (and Google Voice texts, and Docs documents, and etc.) from Google are all usecases that fall under these data moats that are useful to be able to take with you and move to another service. There's probably more usecases I'm not even thinking of, but the point is that by exposing all the data by mandate, we don't have to be limited by the imagination of today, we have the data, we can build whatever future frontends and replacement services and etc. we want.
  - arielcostas 3y ago

parentheses 3y ago

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.

monkaiju 3y ago
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...
2Gkashmiri 3y ago
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
- kelnos 3y ago
  But that's only if the producer wants to provide an RSS feed. While annoying, it's perfectly within their rights not to provide one. > That's the whole idea of internet. I think it's very hard to assert that anything is "the whole idea of the internet". If you want to go back to its roots, the "whole idea of the internet" was to have a reliable military/government communications system in the case of nuclear war. These days the internet means different things for different people, and no one person can credibly assert that any particular purpose is valid or invalid.
  - bobmaxup 3y ago
    They surely meant the "world wide web", which is often used interchangably, and (to some) incorrectly, with "internet"?
- 3y ago

Santosh83 3y ago

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.

hkt 3y ago

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.

rpastuszak 3y ago
> [...] 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 https://sonnet.io/posts/hi
- hkt 3y ago
  This is fantastic and I may just take you up on it if you're still doing it!
  - rpastuszak 3y ago
    yeah, I've spoken to +100 people so far this way. Come and say hi! :)
OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> 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.
- grrdotcloud 3y ago
  My real friends use group text. Nothing fancy. Real names. Real numbers. No data collection. No cost. Memes flow. Links get posted. All is just a setup for the next IRL meeting. I found the end of the internet in '99. This is the last few sites that have a low bot ratio.

branon 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 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 3y ago
I believe it's the same for Libreddit.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

aquova 3y ago

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.

waithuh 3y ago

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 3y ago

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

tuxpizza 3y ago
[dead]