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.
Not at this moment, but sometimes I am, and I would consider living there long term at some point, so I don't want to screw up the possibility of a future there.
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
Author here. It was a funny coincidence, I had this in the back of my mind for a year or two, being annoyed by the imgur interface getting worse and worse. Then just after I finally got around to making and publishing it, I discovered that imgin had been started almost the same day!
We talked briefly about potentially merging them but for now they live independently. rimgu still has more functionality, I think, but more alternatives are never a bad thing.
Integrate lightning payments To prepay on per-image basis. Using lnurl you can then use it for auth and don’t even need to have users register accounts!
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.
searx or qwant? there isn't an authoritative server for searx, so it can be hit or miss. qwant requires js, so i don't use it. i usually use duckduckgo, though my enthusiasm for it has been waning as it becomes more nakedly commercial.
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.
There are a lot of seemly intentional defects being added to these interfaces, I suspect as a strategy to force users to migrate to the new one. Galleries and some profile features are not supported, and it is (again intentionally) slowed down on mobile.
Reddit jumped the shark already and the current state of affairs is an offense to the memory of Aaron Swartz. Problem is that a new mass migration (as happened in the Digg→Reddit) is way more difficult due to the inertia and amount of content available. I just hope that, when it finally happens, it would be to a distributed or federated system -- Lemmy.ml seems to be the most promising for now.
The gallery thing drives me nuts. It's so buggy on old reddit.
Also links constantly come up with backslashes in them, probably some change in the new interface and they are just letting it be broken on the old interface.
They are without a doubt just letting old reddit slowly fall apart until it's totally broken.
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.
Also: some services deliberately hide behind a login prompt, like Quora. It's impossible to read quora answers without logging in. Same with other walled gardens like LinkedIN and Facebook.
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.
You can also just not visit those sites if you don’t want to be tracked. Whether the companies dodge taxes isn’t really relevant - blame your government for allowing it.
People are certainly entitled to not be tracked, but not to indulge in services for free without payment, tracking or ads.
Ironically, using these services without paying or submitting to trackings or ads and these companies not paying taxes both violate the principal of “not paying your share”
> People are certainly entitled to not be tracked, but not to indulge in services for free without payment, tracking or ads.
They certainly are, and the onus is on the web sites to prevent/limit it.
The rule of the Internet is simple: If you put something on a Web site, everyone has the right to visit it. An obvious example: I cannot put up a static HTML page with images, and demand people who view the images pay me for it. Nor can I demand that they download and view the whole page. As someone visiting any page, I am in full control of what bits from that site I will receive and process via a browser. The site's owner has no say in it - his responsibility is to control what is sent to me - not what I do with what is sent to me.[1] He can do this using access control (e.g. accounts), and other methods.
It's your obligation to design the site in a way that you would like it to be used. It is not the visitor's obligation to understand your profit model and try to honor it.
[1] Except things like IP/copyright/trademark, which is a different topic than the one at hand.
> Lol who came up with that rule? It’s not true at all.
The founders of the Web. And IANAL but I would bet that if there have been any court rulings about this, they will be in line with what I said.
> It’s like arguing theft is ok if a store can’t properly secure their goods.
Not at all. A store is someone's private property and there are laws surrounding it. If I enter a store, the law has already established what I can and cannot do. The same applies to the goods in the store.
When I visit a web site, I never enter their property. I make a request for data, and the web site decides whether to decline or accept the request. The web site can put in mechanisms on conditionally accepting the request.
There's a reason the official terminology is request and handshake.
Since I never enter on to a site owner's property, your analogy doesn't hold.
> The entire premise of your argument is incorrect.
I think we'll have to agree that neither of us is providing any citation for what they are saying. I'd like to do some legwork to get you proper citations and evidence but I'm not sure what the purpose of that would be.
BTW much of what I said regarding how Internet protocols work is not an argument but merely undisputed facts.
It doesn't help that many of those services have used their power to basically become the only available option.
Take YouTube for example, there are basically zero alternatives out there. It is such a dominating force for watching videos. I have basically cut all of google out of my life as much as possible, but YouTube is the one that you can't drop for the random video that you may want to watch. I have zero qualms about using a third party service while "mooching" off of google.
Many others in this list are similar, reddit... discord... etc. I would not have an issue supporting those companies with a monthly subscription if they did not pull shady stuff.
These companies are way too comfortable abusing their users. I was trying to get support from Microsoft for a product I bought. With pihole on my network I was unable to load chat because someone had the bright idea to host the css and js for it on their ad domain.
Does YouTube premium get rid of all the google tracking every single thing I do across the internet? No it does not, even worse due to the nature of it being a paid product I have to be logged into Google giving them even more data.
Ads are not the real issue here. It is the tracking and privacy invasive practices that these companies like google practice.
You may pay for YouTube premium, but you are still the product to google.
Yes, that’s the business model for search, and for social media in general.
I don’t have an issue necessarily with blocking tracking, my issue is with people trying to use YouTube without allowing the content creators to be compensated.
I will NOT reward a company for continuing to track me after I pay them.
You are missing the issue here. I will pay a company if they do not engage in these shady behaviors. But they nearly all do, so I refuse to give them money to remove one thing (the ads) but continue to track.
Why would I pay to remove ads when the key reason I don't want ads is because I don't want to be tracked? When they will just use other methods to track me.
I will use YouTube as little as possible, but that is nearly impossible because google used their power to make YouTube the only available option to view some content.
I hope wherever you work you don't push privacy invasive technology onto customers who don't know it is there.
Please provide an alternative to YouTube for viewing trailers, news, game reviews, etc. It is basically non existent. Nearly every site uses YouTube for hosting their videos now.
You are continuing to ignore the key issue here. I personally don't have an issue with ads in theory. But ads have simply become one of many avenues that companies like Google use to track users. I will not support that.
Why would I choose to compensate anyone (even a content creator) after they non-consensually violated my privacy?
If they want me to compensate them, then they should bother to put a second copy of their content up on a platform that supports payments, and is not morally reprehensible.
lol why don't you just not consume their content, aka steal - instead of rationalizing your theft? then your privacy will not be violated, of course you won't get the content, either.
Ad-free tiers, in the rare cases they are offered at all, are never surveillance free tiers. While I’m personally opposed to all advertisement, the surveillance is really the massive problem with modern ad-tech and there’s just no sense at throwing money at offerings that continue to do all the surveillance and just don’t show the ad.
>Ads have been the only proven way for many people on the web to monetize sustainably.
That's as may be, but it's not my responsibility to view ads or accept tracking/surveillance on my private property.
If you (as a website or other resource) want to monetize the content on your private property/hosted resource, I have no issue with that. At all.
However, I choose to limit tracking/ads on my private property. That doesn't force you to do anything.
If you want to require viewing of ads/allowing tracking (which some sites do) in order to access content, that's fine with me too.
But I'm under no obligation to allow ads/tracking on my private property.
It's not about circumvention or wanting to "deprive" someone of compensation for their hard work. Rather, it's about limiting the amount of tracking/surveillance about me and my private property.
I don't agree to be tracked or advertised to. Full stop.
If folks don't want to share their content with me because I don't agree to be tracked/shown ads, then those folks need to take action. I have nothing to do or say about that.
But I do have the right to control what is displayed/executed on my private property, which includes my browser. That's not "stealing," that's protecting my own interests.
A lot of what’s funded through ads on the web is garbage the world would be better off without anyway. For the rest, I don’t think there’s a single silver bullet answer. We can’t take the world as it exists today and swap out ads for something less harmful without other changes in the landscape. A world without a surveillance driven internet would look very different to the one we have today in far more ways than just the lack of ads.
Unfortunately momentum is hard to overcome, and even with a good monetization strategy for a single product it’s impossible to shift the market without also trying to more broadly shift consumer behavior to make the current state less profitable and to push the industry to more collectively and broadly searching for alternatives.
YouTube Premium is not a solution, it actually makes the problem worse by requiring you to log in using an account that is also tied to your real world identity (for payment processing). You just end up giving more data points to Google to track.
> Ironically, using these services without paying or submitting to trackings or ads and these companies not paying taxes both violate the principal of “not paying your share”
That is my point, yes; we are already past that point of paying one's fair share as a legitimate concern. I don't owe such a consideration for fairness to an entity that doesn't honour the same to me.
> People are certainly entitled to not be tracked, but not to indulge in services for free without payment, tracking or ads.
These services are not just an indulgence for many people. I've had jobs that require me to access things on Discord or Facebook. Many businesses require using Facebook or WhatsApp for customer service. I've needed support for various issues that only existed on reddit or Twitter. These are just a few examples.
Sure, one could opt to not participate in society or to go without essentials. But you shouldn't have to live such an extreme aescetic monk lifestyle just to avoid being tracked and profiled and having your profile sold to people who wish to manipulate your behavior.
Content creators often integrate ad content for sponsors, doing away with the need for 3rd party javascript. Users are entitled to control Javascript on the client side as they see fit. Companies can and do block service for detected ad-blocking or blocked javascript. For the aforementioned with front-ends, they choose not to. They know ultimately they'll make more money from those users in aggregate if they use the service than not. In other words if people "just don't use the service", the service is worse off. There are revenue generators that are effectively endemic to the services by design and cannot be "blocked".
Issues aren't just about tracking. Youtube for instance got where it is today by effectively stealing copyrighted content, and they still facilitate and profit from it, notwithstanding screwing over content creators with illegitimate takedowns. There isn't really a persuasive argument that Youtube is entitled to more of your data.
fair points, but the internet allows unseen concentration and economies of scale. The existence of some services prevents the upcoming/use of others and thus I am basically forced to use some of these services (e.g.: Twitter, Whatsapp), if I want to keep my standard of living that I had before a lot of stuff moved there (Events that are organized only on Facebook come to my mind).
oh yes - But what I produce is open-source and meant to be as widely distributed as wanted anyway.
My ethical framework allows me to justify the use ad-blockers without creating too much cognitive dissonance. Poor Twitter, Facebook and Google and their employers will survive without my donations. But my local newspaper on the other hand...
>Would you agree that people can steal from Amazon for the same reason? Your logic seems arbitrary.
How is blocking ads/tracking "stealing"?
Assuming I don't have a contract with someone, I haven't agreed to allow ads/tracking. And given the chance to enter into such a contract, I will politely decline.
Claiming that blocking ads/tracking is stealing is like claiming that people should have to pay to enter a retail establishment even if they don't buy anything. Is that what you advocate?
Don't want to service people who block ads/trackers? Then don't serve them content. It's not as if that isn't already being done.
Just because someone chooses to support their platform with ads/trackers doesn't create a duty or responsibility for me to see those ads or allow those trackers.
I don't wish to allow ads/trackers on my private property. Why should I be forced to do so?
Because it breaks your business model? That's not my problem. It's yours.
I don't think it follows generally that, if something is offered without monetary cost but with terms of use, and you don't like those terms, you are free to use it in violation of those terms.
For example GPL code is often $0, but that doesn't give me the option of ignoring the copyleft provisions if I don't like them. The only valid options are to comply or to not use it.
> I don't think it follows generally that, if something is offered without monetary cost but with terms of use, and you don't like those terms, you are free to use it in violation of those terms.
I honestly wonder how well this has been tested in courts for web sites. As an example, if I visit a web site that has a "Terms of Use" link, but I don't click on the link, will the courts still rule that I'm bound by them?
An extreme case: If there is a static web site with images, and somewhere on the page there is a Terms of Use along the lines of "If you view these images you must pay me 10 cents", then is that legally binding?
(Note: Copyright is very different from "terms of use").
I vaguely recall there was a ruling that if you buy a physical item and its terms of use are in the box (i.e. you cannot view it without buying), then you are not bound by them. Of course, this is not analogous.
That's an excellent point, and I agree - not just here, but in practice as well - I go out of my way to respect the GPL and similar licenses for my own work and others'.
My respect of copyleft does not come from a want to adhere to legal terms, but instead an appreciation for what those terms hope to achieve more broadly, and the positive impact they have on society. As I described in another comment, I do not owe FAANG respect or legal cooperation it doesn't reciprocate.
Of course, if you feel like it's your duty to run the web without adblockers, I understand that, and more power to you.
That's a strange question, I have no private data about current of future lawbreaking.
We know they're keen to lobby and litigate their way out of laws, and pay paltry fines when they fail to do so, but I cannot predict the next instance beyond enumerating any currently ongoing cases.
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.
AdBlock is a good comparison. But why isn't the web subject to "contractual exchange" like anywhere else?
Like AdBlock, one could make the case that this is less about "contain[ing]" these companies, and more about some sophisticated players finding loopholes they can use to free ride, like using tax experts to shield your assets or something.
What do you mean "like anywhere else" ? Family, friends, schools, libraries, breathing oxygen, interacting with nature, volunteering, writing this comment. Taking into account non-interaction such as hobbies and DIY, I'd say that contractual exchange comprises a minority of our existence. Contractual relationships are just easy to focus on because they fit into a simple mold, and we're overly focused on them due to needing to run on the economic treadmill encouraged by the government. But just because people are bringing the economic treadmill to the Internet does not mean we have to respect that.
Whether something is a "loophole" relies on what happens if the standard is applied universally. I for one advocate that everyone install Adblock, not just "sophisticated players". When I set up computers for family, they get it by default (people's answer to "do you want to block ads" is invariably "yes"). When I get around to installing eg PiHole, it will be on by default for the entire network. I hope that ad blocking becomes popular enough that ad companies become unprofitable. The web was much better twenty years ago, and while we can't just go back, advertising dollars are the major source of energy powering negative sum interactions.
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.
What are the consequences of ad-tech surveillance in practice?
I don’t understand your view - if you don’t want to be tracked (speaking strictly about the services in the GitHub) why not just not use them?
If they provide so much value such that you still want to use them why shouldn’t they receive compensation in the form of tracking, ads or money directly?
Collecting and sharing massive sets of data on people has a societal cost when that data leaks and is used to target individuals with identity theft. Stalkers abuse these datasets to find and attack their targets. Data breaches are especially common in the ad-tech, marketing, and sales industries because they are largely unregulated and exist to collect data on millions of people at scale.
Not all users of anonymity services are people who have a choice in the matter. And if you're not currently a victim of stalking or identity theft, why invite attacks by openly sharing personal information? It's a personal risk calculus, and everyone's needs are different.
- 622 million leaked email addresses, employers, geographic locations, job titles, names, phone numbers, & social media profiles from PDL [0]. According to the PDL website, the purpose of this data was for PDL clients to "supercharge [their] software with over 3 billion profiles. Tap into the resume, contact, social, and demographic information for over 3 billion unique individuals, delivered to you at the scale you need it."
- 125 million leaked email addresses and 9 billion data points on users from Apollo [1]. Dataset includes email addresses, employers, geographic locations, job titles, names, phone numbers, salutations, & social media profiles.
Suppose you collect visitor data, and then leak it (accidental or otherwise), and users have their identity stolen and lose a lot of time/money dealing with the fallout. Would you agree that as a site owner who collected this data without securing it properly that you are morally obligated (and ought to be legally obligated) to fully compensate all the damage caused by the leak?
> What are the consequences of ad-tech surveillance in practice?
My views on this are a bit deeper than I can easily cover in a single comment that I’m writing on my phone, but the question reminds me that I need to publish a talk I gave last year on the subject. The short version is that the development of recommendation systems, both for targeting ads and for generating engagement loops for users so that you can show more ads, have some chilling second and third order social effects. The algorithmic bubbles that come from social media are a well known problem, as are the privacy implications of data breaches associated with these systems. Even outside of actual systems being compromised, these systems are open to side channel attacks that can both allow data collection and influence on the sorts of content people see. In short, the system isn’t complex and open to abuse, and the incentives built in are not aligned with building a healthy society.
As for not using the services- there’s no simple satisfying answer here. You can cut out a lot of things, but ultimately it’s nearly impossible for an individual to completely opt out of a bad decision the rest of society has collectively made, and so we need to find ways to mitigate the damage where we can.
>What are the consequences of ad-tech surveillance in practice?
The consequences are that I am forced to share information I'd prefer not to share.
If there's a requirement that I do so, I will choose not to use resources that require it. But it's not my responsibility, nor is it feasible, to for me to choose, before I am aware of such a requirement, not to connect to a resource.
Don't want folks like me who block ads/trackers on your site? I have no issue or complaint about that. It is, after all, your site.
There are tools you can use to keep me from viewing your content. That's your choice and your responsibility. Not mine.
Don't frame ad/tracker blocking as "theft." That's not even close to the truth.
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`.
The last three commands are the whole installation (`git clone` and `cd` would be required anyway). Adding a completely unnecessary dependency to a second build tool just to invoke tasks in the build tool they already use would be pretty silly though. They could just define a nimble task to do all three at once.
https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620275