[HN Gopher] Alternative privacy-respecting front ends for popula...
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Alternative privacy-respecting front ends for popular services
Author : schleck8
Score : 250 points
Date : 2021-12-23 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| i67vw3 wrote:
| I personally use every single one from the list except for Imgur
| one. Will start using it.
|
| I would like if the redirection is done directly from browser
| without an extension (opt-in).
| technonerd wrote:
| 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
|
| https://codeberg.org/3np/rimgu
| 3np wrote:
| 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.
| stavros wrote:
| I had the opposite idea: https://imgz.org
| 3np wrote:
| I see you already accept BTC. Some ideas:
|
| 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!
| stinos wrote:
| 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?
| technonerd wrote:
| teddit loading slow is a known problem, it loads everything
| on the backend before sending to the user.
|
| https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit/issues/248
| goodpoint wrote:
| How effective are these tools at protecting your privacy?
| no_time wrote:
| 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.
| dartharva wrote:
| >Whoogle
|
| >Google search result frontend without Javascript, ads, cookies
| and tracking. Tor and HTTP/SOCKS proxy support
|
| Isn't Startpage the same?
| vngzs wrote:
| 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.
| clairity wrote:
| note that startpage has been (partially) owned by system1, an
| adtech company, since 2019:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Startpage.com
| redman25 wrote:
| +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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why not use old.Reddit or I.Reddit?
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| > Why not use old.Reddit or I.Reddit?
|
| 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.
| nullwarp wrote:
| 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.
| pydry wrote:
| I wonder if it's possible to combine all of these in a single
| docker container.
| NmAmDa wrote:
| probably docker stack
| gausswho wrote:
| 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.
| mawise wrote:
| 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.
| novok wrote:
| 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
| jsmith99 wrote:
| 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.
| 42jd wrote:
| 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/*
|
| See (also on chrome under same name):
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
| 3np wrote:
| 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.
| 3np wrote:
| This way more exhaustive list was on the front-page just the
| other day.
|
| https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620275
| dheera wrote:
| 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.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| I think Facebook's wettest dream is to make WhatsApp into
| something like WeChat. At least in Brazil they are almost
| there.
| 3np wrote:
| Not as critical situation as WeChat, but otherwise I say the
| same about LINE.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Interesting perspective. Are you in China?
| dheera wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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.
| mindslight wrote:
| 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.
| satyrnein wrote:
| 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.
| mindslight wrote:
| 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.
| StockHuman wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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"
| oauea wrote:
| If you don't want people making their own frontends, blame
| your government for allowing it.
| endisneigh wrote:
| This makes no sense.
| yosito wrote:
| > 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.
| StockHuman wrote:
| > 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.
| gausswho wrote:
| > You can also just not visit those sites if you don't want
| to be tracked
|
| Facebook's like button tracks you all over the web
| slothtrop wrote:
| 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.
| tomthe wrote:
| 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).
| endisneigh wrote:
| You're not forced though. I've never used Twitter
| personally, for example.
|
| It's pretty simple - I assume you have a job, and that
| they have customers. Would you want those customers to
| basically take your work without paying?
| tomthe wrote:
| 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...
| endisneigh wrote:
| Would you agree that people can steal from Amazon for the
| same reason? Your logic seems arbitrary.
| oauea wrote:
| Well one thing is clear, you wouldn't download a car.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >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_.
| nerdjon wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You can purchase for YouTube Premium and get rid of ads.
|
| I don't see how people can justify blocking the ads.
| Content producers need people to view the ads to get
| paid.
|
| I'm sure at your workplace you wouldn't like people using
| your services or consuming your products without paying
| in some form.
| gaius_baltar wrote:
| 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.
| nerdjon wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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.
| nerdjon wrote:
| The problem is, the 2 have been intertwined.
|
| Largely thanks to google, ads are how we are tracked (or
| at least one of the ways).
|
| if I want to block tracking, I am blocking ads (among
| other things).
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sure, but in the case of YouTube and Reddit you can pay
| and and get rid of ads whilst be tracked.
| nerdjon wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm not sure what the issue is - Google never says if you
| pay you won't be tracked, they say you won't see ads.
|
| The question is, will you indulge in YouTube anyway and
| deprive them from ad revenue n or will you just not use
| YouTube?
| nerdjon wrote:
| 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.
|
| Google did this to themselves.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You don't have to view the content though. I hope
| wherever you work your customers pay for your services.
| nerdjon wrote:
| 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.
|
| I also have zero concerns for google financially.
| endisneigh wrote:
| You ever think that they're using YouTube for a reason?
| What I'm saying doesn't apply to them specifically
| anyway.
|
| And as for alternatives you can use Vimeo and PeerTube.
| If you don't see the content you want there think about
| why that is.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I know why that is, Google abusing their dominate
| position in search to sway the entire market to a single
| service.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I disagree. Get your government to break them up.
|
| Also, my logic applies to any company really. So I'm
| having a hard time reconciling your position with a
| smaller company that tracks and uses ads.
|
| Basically you feel it's ok to not compensate content
| creators because they're using big techs platform. Weird
| hedora wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Ads have been the only proven way for many people on the
| web to monetize sustainably.
|
| If you have another way that works there's a lot of money
| out there ripe for the taking.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| 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.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >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.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Lol who came up with that rule? It's not true at all.
|
| Your analogy breaks down because people actively
| circumvent restrictions.
|
| It's like arguing theft is ok if a store can't properly
| secure their goods.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Please show me a quote that says that.
|
| The entire premise of your argument is incorrect.
| progman32 wrote:
| I rather think it's more like getting a free sample of
| pie from the deli and only eating the whipped cream.
| satyrnein wrote:
| 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.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > 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.
| StockHuman wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm curious, which laws have FAANG broken that they
| haven't already been fined for?
| StockHuman wrote:
| 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.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| 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.
| endisneigh wrote:
| 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?
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| > 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.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >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.
| vngzs wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0]: https://www.troyhunt.com/data-enrichment-people-data-
| labs-an...
|
| [2] https://www.wired.com/story/apollo-breach-linkedin-
| salesforc...
| endisneigh wrote:
| Talking about leaks without the benefits of
| centralization seems disingenuous.
|
| Besides spam what's the actual harm from a leaked email?
| Thiez wrote:
| 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?
| no_time wrote:
| 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.
| flotzam wrote:
| Too bad that there isn't one for TikTok yet.
| anaganisk wrote:
| What wrong with existing tiktok ui, its minimal and actually is
| very good.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Tiktok is banned in India, a proxied seamless version would
| be good.
| yosito wrote:
| According to the Exodus privacy report, there are 5 trackers
| in the TikTok app. https://reports.exodus-
| privacy.eu.org/en/reports/223238/
| beauHD wrote:
| 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
|
| Hard to make sense of all that :/
|
| What's 'Nimble' and 'scss'?
| atestu wrote:
| They could place the last 3 commands in a Makefile. Not very
| trendy I know...
| gumby wrote:
| The whole installation could have been a Makefile.
| juki wrote:
| 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.
| 1986 wrote:
| 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.
| gen220 wrote:
| `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`.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/nim-lang/nimble
|
| [2]: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/blob/master/nitter.nimble
| 3np wrote:
| Alternatively, from a couple of lines below:
|
| To build and run Nitter in Docker: $ docker
| build -t nitter:latest . $ docker run -v
| $(pwd)/nitter.conf:/src/nitter.conf -d -p 8080:8080
| nitter:latest
|
| A prebuilt Docker image is provided as well: $
| docker run -v $(pwd)/nitter.conf:/src/nitter.conf -d -p
| 8080:8080 zedeus/nitter:latest
|
| So one or two lines depending on if you're OK with pulling a
| provided image or not.
| als0 wrote:
| Would love one for LinkedIn profiles, but I don't think it's
| realistic given their behavior.
| tantalor wrote:
| Aren't these just proxies? Wouldn't a VPN give you same
| protection?
| 3np wrote:
| 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.
| adg001 wrote:
| 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.
| beauHD wrote:
| 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.
| worg wrote:
| you can read quora answers anonymously by adding `share=1`
| as query param
| roywiggins wrote:
| I switched to Nitter after Twitter started demanding you be
| logged in to even click on a profile from a tweet.
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