[HN Gopher] Nitter: Alternative Twitter Front-End
___________________________________________________________________
Nitter: Alternative Twitter Front-End
Author : ducktective
Score : 115 points
Date : 2021-08-24 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Old discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21849744
| jchw wrote:
| When Nitter first came around, it was incredible. It really goes
| to show just how easy it would be for Twitter to provide a fast
| and accessible version of their site if that was their goal. Too
| bad it isn't and Nitter instances will forever run into rate
| limiting.
| leephillips wrote:
| Page says "Uses Twitter's unofficial API (no rate limits or
| developer account required)". What is this unofficial API?
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| It means using the "guest token" (gt) for sending GraphQL
| queries. The gt is public and is distributed via the
| twitter.com public web page. The gt is the same for every
| member of the public.
|
| To see the gt, read the contents of twitter.com
|
| For example, using Chrome chrome view-
| source:mobile.twitter.com Ctrl-F gt=
|
| or curl curl
| https://mobile.twitter.com|grep -o gt=[0-9]*
|
| To retrieve tweets three steps are required: 1. retrieve the
| "guest token" (gt), 2. retrieve the "REST ID" (rest_id) for
| the twitter.com user and 3. submit a GraphQL query to
| retrieve the user's tweets.
|
| Javascript provided by Twitter in the twitter.com can do
| these three steps automatically (but this requires using a
| Javascript-enabled browser), or it can be done without a
| browser, e.g., with a different scripting language
| (personally I use the shell).
|
| For example, some folks use Python:
|
| https://pypi.org/project/twint/
| jchw wrote:
| Never have I been more happy to be wrong. It used to be
| impacted by rate limiting quite a bit, but it looks like the
| situation has improved, probably due to this unofficial API.
| terafo wrote:
| I would guess that it's some kind of reverse-engineered
| internal API that official apps use.
| zedeus wrote:
| The old rate limit errors were false flags caused by a bug in
| the API token parser. Nitter instances have yet to run into a
| real rate limit.
| alpb wrote:
| If anyone's trying to tame their twitter, I'd recommend `refined-
| twitter` chrome extension and `tweak-new-twitter` extension.
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tweak-new-twitter/...
| These two significantly help me remove useless features (e.g.
| Trends, Moments, recommendations) and even stuff like retweets
| which I mostly don't care about.
| argvargc wrote:
| Could this be used as a base to fork the existing ecosystem away
| from centralised control and back to its users? Say using
| decentralised storage and a synched side chain?
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| That would be amazing. Even an opt-in system that automatically
| mirrors your tweets to Mastodon or something would be useful.
| ruined wrote:
| twitter ratelimits nitter servers, so you'd need every
| individual user (or a good portion of users) running a personal
| server and then you'd have to collate the data somehow. and at
| that level of effort it would be easier to just convince people
| to use mastodon.
| rglullis wrote:
| It can work as a migration path for those on the fence, and
| that could still work in a decentralized manner.
|
| Example: I run a Mastodon instance on communick.com. I am
| thinking of running a nitter instance _AND_ a secondary
| instance of Mastodon (or Pleroma) that acts as twitter
| mirror. I can then let users of the main communick instance
| to follow people on twitter, but still keeping them inside
| the Fediverse. The idea gets a bit more complicated if we
| want to make it two-way bridge, but I _believe_ that can be
| done with a bit of Pleroma 's MRF magic.
|
| The beauty of this solution is that it does not require any
| change from those that have no interest in moving out of
| Twitter, but it does break the garden walls.
| argvargc wrote:
| It feels like there could be a way to automagically solve
| collation as part of decentralising the storage. If there
| were deterministic way to create the decentralised hash for
| example, and then it could simply attempt to load it before
| committing it on fail. The user could be provided a constant
| heads up on side chain synch.
|
| Have never run a nitter server, so maybe this is not possible
| - but could one be included as part of a web client? Ie, user
| surfs to "twinitter.com", receives a nitter server that takes
| their twitter credentials and starts posting their activity
| to the new chain and optionally to twitter also. If the user
| supplies no credentials, the server would simply run like a
| user-led crawler, adding more data to the new chain in what
| could be presumed to be some kind of optimum fashion, as it
| would always be the content users of the dual chains were
| interested in.
| zedeus wrote:
| This isn't actually true, the "Instance has been rate
| limited" error was a false flag. It turned out to be a bug in
| the API token parser, found and fixed by a contributor.
| Nitter instances have yet to run into a real rate limit.
| debarshri wrote:
| Is it just me who thinks UI/UX of the web app feels like MySpace?
| Lammy wrote:
| I choose to interpret this as praise and hope that was intended
| :)
| ruined wrote:
| privacy redirect is a browser extension that can automatically
| redirect twitter links to the nitter instance of your choice. it
| also handles youtube->invidious, instagram->bibliogram,
| reddit->teddit, and more
|
| firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/privacy-
| redir...
|
| chrome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/privacy-
| redirect/p...
| gizdan wrote:
| It's a shame Mozilla butchered Firefox mobile, cos this still
| doesn't work on it.
| syrrim wrote:
| Werks on my machine.
|
| There's an anal process to enable it, and I think it only
| works in beta/fennec, but it works.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| It does work on Firefox Android but the extension is not part
| of the default set. You need to use a version of Firefox that
| supports _Custom Add-on Collections_ like a Nightly build or
| the F-Droid Fennec build. Once you 've got this installed you
| need to enable the debug menu by tapping the Firefox logo on
| the 'About Firefox' screen five times (see [1] for more
| info), add the Firefox ID and repo name for a repo with the
| required extension in the 'Custom Add-on collection' section
| and install the extension the normal way. Luckily the author
| of PrivacyRedirect has created just such a repo [2] which you
| can you to install the extension without the need for a
| Firefox ID (which I do not have and do not want, I'm still
| waiting for an easy way to run a Firefox auth/sync server on
| my own hardware) or having to create such a repo yourself.
|
| Once installed you'll quickly find out the 'More options'
| page - on which you can configure which servers are used for
| redirection - does not appear. Fortunately the actual URL is
| entered in the location bar, it just doesn't open the page.
| Simply press the button, then close the 'Settings' page using
| the arrow on the top-left of the screen, then select the
| location bar (which should now contain a _moz-extension:_
| URL) and press enter on the keyboard.
|
| The extension works fine, at least for me, on Firefox
| Developer Nightly on Android.
|
| [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-
| extensio...
|
| [2] https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-
| redirect/issues/140#...
| gsich wrote:
| >instagram->bibliogram
|
| no longer works.
| superkuh wrote:
| The ability to get RSS feeds of twitter users and twitter keyword
| searches from nitter is the only reason I still pay attention to
| that ecosystem at all. It took a long time to find a semi-stable
| nitter mirror but things have been running smoothly for almost a
| year.
| RenoCommenter wrote:
| This might be a shot in the dark, but: is there a Twitter
| "frontend"* that is as clean/compact as HN or even old.reddit? I
| get it was made with phones in mind, and that its primary use
| case is real-time news and short messages from influencers, but,
| as someone who primarily consumes social media on a desktop and
| whose interactions with the platform consist of reading tweets
| from niche accounts, i've found the way Twitter displays
| conversations to be -much- worse than what we have here on HN.
|
| *I use "frontend" quite liberally here, i mean, honestly maybe a
| browser plugin that shrinks a tweet to half its size, indents
| replies much like HN comments are indented, and loads more tweets
| in a single page, maybe that would be enough to make Twitter 90%
| more pleasant to use.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| There certainly are. I quickly wrote one 'mvp' for myself and
| it is the primary way I interact with twitter since several
| years, but it does the bare minimum I need and I never had time
| to clean it up and publish it (also I do not know whether
| anyone would pay for a cleaned up, purely chronological twitter
| feed with configurable filters?)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-24 23:00 UTC)