Online Privacy: Alternative Frontends for Social Media

Guides and Useful Links
1

Off the back of finding LibReddit only recently, I figured starting a thread on similar privacy focussed tools that either provide an alternative to, or a more private ways to access them.

Platforms like Reddit & Twitter used to be a lot lighter touch when it came to tracking, sign-in/signup walls etc. - they feel a lot more bloated, closed & the tracking seems more intrusive these days, so for casual use, privacy tools help see what’s going on without trading privacy.

(this thread overlaps a bit with Resources for online safety and security but a bit more of a basic Social Media privacy list)

Alternative Frontends

I’ve linked to the Git Repos where possible as they contain a list of active instances.

2 Likes
2

There’s also an Android app that attempts to (I’ve not tried it myself) intercept links to social sites and redirect to the privacy alternative:

And a similar thing for redirection in web browsers:

And a curated list of alternative front-ends:

3

Thanks! I’ve just had to give nitter a go because twitter now shows a very limited amount to those not logged in.

4

I do feel like I should add to this that the ActivityPub ‘Fediverse’ is a very beautiful alternative to the algorythmd world of the current centralised social media platforms.

With this it’s possible to use apps like Friendica (think Facebook), Mastodon (think Twitter) etc. These don’t connect to FB or Twitter (they are centralised) although there are ‘bots’ so you can ‘follow’ your favourites in those platforms within the Fediverse.

There are many, many servers (here’s a good resource that are available for joining… Or you can start your own.

Servers (instances) connect to each other (creating the Fediverse), which means that you on your server can connect to anyone on any other server (on the whole).

What’s nice about these is that:

  1. There is no ‘centralised’ server that keeps your posts.
  2. There is no ‘algo’… You browse through the feed, and eventually get to where you left off… Nothing more than you asked for (followers) and nothing less.

Drawbacks are

  1. finding a server that you get on with… Although you can run your own (and I’d encourage that for you and your ‘friends and family’)
  2. It’s a small community atm… Although it’s growing fast
1 Like
5

Good point - I am active over there (this is me, as is this) and I see a fair proportion of people who have run away from Twitter, and some who have run away from Facebook. (Of course, one is still acting publicly and whatever is said can be captured by someone and saved forever.)

6

Really nice list of resources, thanks Will

8

this is interesting, thanks for the ideas is stimulated. 2 yearsish on does Discord not do all of this now?