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LibRedirect – Redirects popular sites to alternative privacy-friendly frontends
- anthk 1y agoX.com works bet with lightbrd.com instead of xcancel with captchas.
- HelloUsername 1y agolightbrd also needs cloudflare captcha
- teddyh 1y agoTry nitter.tiekoetter.com.
- HelloUsername 1y agoThat also uses a captcha, not Cloudflare, but Anubis
- jorvi 1y agoI have never seen an xcancel captcha..
- pndy 1y agoNeither do I - just the usual "verifying your request" screen: https://i.ibb.co/MyWRVtFj/xc.jpg https://i.ibb.co/MyWRVtFj/xc.jpg
- mslansn 1y agoWhich is a PoW CAPTCHA, but a CAPTCHA nonetheless.
- CaptainFever 1y agoHowever, if your JS is disabled (or if you're running LibreJS), you do get redirected to a CAPTCHA which only works sometimes.
- pabs3 1y agoJust nitter.net is better than both of them.
- bmacho 1y agoA web extension is an unnecessary security risk. A userscript will do it just fine. edit: one of my previous attempt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35229211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35229211 I actually have made it extensible, with closely coupled source of rules and domains; but then I lost it Edge forgot all my userscripts :(
- londons_explore 1y agoUser scripts have super wide permissions. For example a user script scoped to YouTube.com can make payments from any cards you have saved in Google pay. And most user scripts are so long a typical user won't be able to spot a couple of malicious lines amongst 10k lines of minified webpacked libraries.
- bmacho 1y ago> And most user scripts are so long a typical user won't be able to spot a couple of malicious lines amongst 10k lines of minified webpacked libraries. Exactly! That's why you should use 3 lines for it instead, that are - inspectable - not updateable by the Chinese/Russians - written by you anyway
- danielspace23 1y ago[flagged]
- Muromec 1y agoCritique and distrust of an (authoritarian) government is not racism.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bmacho 1y agoI've chosen them as example elements of the larger group: people that would harm you. It's a type of synecdoche[0,1]. I was considering reformulating it, in $CURRENTYEAR there is always someone that claims that using Russian or Chinese as a synonym for 'enemy' is Russo- and Shinophobic. I've decided against it this time. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche#Part_referring_to_whole_(pars_pro_toto) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche#Part_referring_to_w... [1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pars_pro_toto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pars_pro_toto
- bdhcuidbebe 1y agoFarside extension, 847 stars: https://github.com/benbusby/farside https://github.com/benbusby/farside Using venrable farside.link https://sr.ht/~benbusby/farside/ https://sr.ht/~benbusby/farside/ https://farside.link/ https://farside.link/ Why use your offering?
- iLoveOncall 1y agoMaybe for the fact it as 4 times as many stars on GitHub if that's what you care about?
- imiric 1y agoThis comment could've been phrased better, but Farside does have an important feature that LibRedirect lacks, which is automatic instance selection based on reachability. Instances routinely fail and new ones are added, so automating that aspect instead of requiring manual instance selection by the user is a powerful feature. Anyway, thanks for mentioning it!
- MallocVoidstar 1y agoUsing Farside means the initial redirect goes through Farside, so they are capable of knowing what videos you're watching, what tweets you're looking at, etc. You have to trust them not to monitor this. Using a client-side extension means only the instance you use knows this.
- imiric 1y agoIt's a Go project that seems trivial to self-host. By your logic we shouldn't trust any of the instances of the alternative services either since anyone could be monitoring their use as well.
- pndy 1y agoOverall it works but the problem lies in instances that tend to die-off pretty fast. There were homebrew "hubs" solely providing redirects out of pure kindness to many big sites and services but now it seems it's hard to find one that works without being blocked/rate limited. Big sites and services fight back, which isn't really surprising. Privacy Redirect was prob the first extension that introduced this idea. It did the job as well but up until bad-actors figured out they can redirect people to their dangerous sites.
- kelvinjps10 1y agoI love this extension
- Razengan 1y agoHow long before browsers disable these kinds of in-user-favor workarounds? Like Apple removing the "Disable JavaScript" menu option from Safari and moving it into Developer Tools, which can be detected by websites before you can disable JS >:(
- reddalo 1y agoI think the real question is: should we keep using browsers that are developed by ad companies? And the answer is no, we should just use Mozilla Firefox.
- v5v3 1y agoWe should all use Tor browser alongside Firefox. Download today people https://www.torproject.org/download/ https://www.torproject.org/download/
- akimbostrawman 1y agoFirefox should be replaced with an actual private clearnet browser like mullvad browser that is using most of Tor browsers protection without the mozilla tracking and ads.
- progval 1y agoMozilla is an ad company now: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-the-bar-for-privacy-preserving-digital-advertising/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-anonym-raising-t...
- fsflover 1y agoThis is not at all comparable with the big companies.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoDo any of these YouTube extensions retrieve videos in a way which is unassociated with my IP? I’d really rather not get my google account banned, or my searches rate limited. These aren’t happening now, but I believe they will in the future to the point where I actively avoid using any tooling from my home connection, and vps’ seem to be blocked by YouTube already.
- pimeys 1y agoIf you have a dynamic IP at home, run it in your homelab and access it through Tailscale everywhere. I highly doubt YouTube will block the whole IP block for home users.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoThat doesn’t solve the issue of my google search traffic and fingerprint from coming from the same source as yt-dlp.
- v5v3 1y agoVPNs are not blocked by YouTube. Neither is viewing YouTube using Tor Browser.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoThank you.
- 4ad 1y agoI want the opposite, an extension that will redirect all crappy frontends to the canonical sources (which work better and I am logged-into, I can comment, etc).
- johnisgood 1y agoProxigram? I doubt I could run that on Android.
- lucb1e 1y ago...care to elaborate why you can't visit a website on Android and how this is relevant to anyone else?
- johnisgood 1y agoIt is on the list of "LibRedirect", and it seems to be a self-hosted front-end to Instagram, not something one could just simply download from F-Droid and use.
- lucb1e 1y agoOh you mean that it's a website and not downloadable software, right
- johnisgood 1y agoYeah, I thought I found a FOSS, easy-to-use frontend to Instagram that could replace the Instagram app. :/
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- patchtopic 1y agotime to get rid of the freeloaders with Anubis? https://anubis.techaro.lol/ https://anubis.techaro.lol/
- swayvil 1y ago"privacy friendly". Now there's a modern euphemism.
- Retr0id 1y agoWhat is implied?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fruworg 1y ago[dead]
- b0a04gl 1y ago[dead]
- romaaeterna 1y agoNobody is setting up "privacy-friendly" frontends to track browsing data that they couldn't otherwise get without access to Google's/Twitter's/etc. logs? Because I think they are.
- Funes- 1y agoYeah, the possibility of any of them being a honeypot I'd say is real.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lucb1e 1y agoHow could you ever prove that nobody is doing that? You can believe anything that way One can't prove god doesn't exist either, but as someone who made some privacy-friendly front-ends, I tend to expect honest intentions. If you find one that suddenly asks for your login data or sets tracking cookie, sure, be wary, just as with any other site that asks for data they don't need (see: literally every cookie wall, because if they had good intentions, it would fall under one of the five other reasons to use personal data and they wouldn't need to fall back to asking for consent)
- germanier 1y agoNothing. An acquaintance of mine develops a third-party frontend explicitly marketed as a privacy-friendly alternative and actively looks at lots of user data (which includes the full name) without disclosing. I honestly believe that it's only done for improving the service (and it helps tremendously) but I can't get through with arguing that this should be transparent. You could notice by closely reading the source code.
- udev4096 1y agoDon't use it. Stop shitting on everything you disagree on. Besides, privacy is not black and white. No one is implying such a ridiculous claim. Just because you grew up in a disgusting for-profit driven web, doesn't mean that everyone is trying to get you. Believe it or not, there are people who actually value privacy and actively voluntarily support decentralized and non-invasive parts of the web without hoping for any incentive. Besides, majority of private frontends are extremely fast and loads in an instant, which saves a lot of time
- jamesponddotco 1y agoSeems related, so I’ll share here. I wrote an “awesome” list of privacy-focused front-ends[1] for a variety of services. Haven’t been updated in a while, but I figured it’s still valid. [1]: https://sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/awesome-privacy-front-ends/ https://sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/awesome-privacy-front-ends/
- krick 1y agoInstagram doesn't actually work, right? All frontends are down, and it doesn't seem to work locally either.
- plastic_bag 1y agoOne word - Imginn
- jamesponddotco 1y agoThat is correct, there's no alternative front-end that still works. Self-hostable open source ones, that is—you can still find random ones on search engines that aren't open source.
- pabs3 1y agogallery-dl still works, but doesn't have a web frontend.
- ruined 1y agoimginn works for now
- prmoustache 1y agowhen I see my partner doomscrolling, I think that is for the better.
- wonger_ 1y agoI just found out about an Android app where you can set up custom redirects for any links, OS-wide: https://github.com/TrianguloY/URLCheck https://github.com/TrianguloY/URLCheck It's a little finnicky to set up, but I'm enjoying it so far. It goes beyond alternative frontend redirects. You can strip URL params, check domains against a blacklist, and choose native apps to open links that match a pattern.
- TheLongLife 1y agoI was very happy when I found about that app, It's very useful. It goes beyond just redirects, it's able to remove tracking elements from links, unshorten links, remember which app to use to open specific domains and more. You almost need an app like this on Android because of its shitty share menu.
- jasonvorhe 1y agoNice, I was looking around for something like this and found this Android app instead: https://codeberg.org/hermeticvm/linkahest https://codeberg.org/hermeticvm/linkahest I started using this last week and it's simple and useful. My main challenge was that I use YT/Reddit/X apps but I hate how the recipients I shared links to posts or videos with often couldn't access it without having to disable ad blockers or having to login first.
- scosman 1y agoAny good YouTube options (including self host)? I’ve tried a few and they always seem to be down more than up.
- az09mugen 1y agoDid you have a look at peertube ? https://joinpeertube.org/en_US https://joinpeertube.org/en_US
- tgv 1y agohttps://grayjay.app/ https://grayjay.app/ perhaps? It's a locally running application. Don't know how privacy friendly it exactly is, but they claim they collect very little information.
- mikae1 1y agoRedirector[1] makes it easy to set up your own redirects. I prefer that. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
- rasengan 1y agoLooking under the hood, some of these things seem like they might be moving your data from one place that might not have your best interests to another place that doesn't seem to have a revenue mechanism? Take for example nitter - it says its using an unofficial twitter API. I'm assuming this means its using one of these third party services that provide an API to something that doesn't necessarily have an API or has limited access thereto. If privacy is the purpose, this seems to be missing the point.
- bramhaag 1y ago> Take for example nitter - it says its using an unofficial twitter API. I'm assuming this means its using one of these third party services that provide an API You misread that. It actually says: Uses Twitter's unofficial API (no developer account required) In other words, it's an internal Twitter API that's not meant to be used for applications like this.
- b00ty4breakfast 1y agothe privacy stuff is fine(if not a bit suspect since we're still relying on the goodwill of the instance hosts to not be sketchy) but for me the biggest benefit for these third party front-ends is that my crappy laptop isn't constantly being pushed to the limits of it's capabilities just so I can read some gosh-darn text. And reddit is not even close to the worst offender in that regard. Seriously, when did displaying words on a screen become so resource intensive???
- hexagonwin 1y agohave you tried old reddit?
- IlikeKitties 1y ago[flagged]
- userbinator 1y agoThe no-JS / reduced-JS aspect of some of these frontends is particularly interesting, since it implies that the JS wasn't ever necessary --- except perhaps its only purpose was to be privacy-invasive and user-hostile.
- b00ty4breakfast 1y agoI reckon a very large chunk of the JS on many mainstream websites is explicitly for data collection and advertising.
- charcircuit 1y agoThis is just going to normalize adware / phishing. These front ends can show ads or ask for users personal information. Redirecting people from trusted sources to these other sites is very risky and opens up opportunities for malicous people to exploit this. That's not even considering this extension is compromised or purchased and these dangerous permissions that it has are used against you.
- poly2it 1y agoYeah, but these front-ends mostly aren't built for authenticated usage. The tracking done by the actual source sites is quantifiable and immense. Proxying is a good option for removing a lot of the tracking capabilities, especially via an instance you control.
- charcircuit 1y ago>an instance you control But most people are not going to do that. They are going to be redirected to a site with no guarantee of what is there. The domain could expire and someone else could register it, a hacker could replace one of the front ends with a phishing page, etc.
- b00ty4breakfast 1y agoI reckon one of these front ends serving ads will have trouble maintaining a user base large enough to justify the effort of serving ads
- pstuart 1y agoIt would be nice to have a containerized host of all these services to have them easily on hand as needed. One more task for Claude to handle...
- silentpuck 1y agoRemoving telemetry from daily tools feels like taking back a little control every time.
- nightcoders 1y agothank you so much brother, the info is very helpful.
- fiatjaf 1y agoThe YouTube alternatives always lag and are bad, unfortunately. I don`t know why. The best way to watch YouTube videos is actually to download them with yt-dlp then watch with mpv later.
- snvzz 1y agoAt a glance, it does not seem like they fixed the main issue with what they forked: Not being able to set up arbitrary targets. I run my own instances for a few of the services they redirect to, and need to be able to point to these.