this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024

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Privacy

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110

Twiiit: A tool to find Nitter instances that haven't been ratelimited (twiiit.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] neutron 13 points 9 months ago

OP: Hello. Here is something useful that searches for alternate front ends that are operational when you need to access privacy invasive services.

ITT: throws a fit because it lets someone to do something they don't like

This is why us privacy conscious folks are labeled freaks and weirds. Not because we reject privacy invasive services, but we can't deal with anything that isn't absolutely perfect.

[+] [email protected] -8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Just be done with it

[–] [email protected] 42 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Some people will find this useful. Yes, we should really just abandon Twitter in all its forms, but there are legitimate reasons to view its content; and if there's a way of doing so without compromising our privacy, surely that's a good thing?

[+] [email protected] -7 points 9 months ago (3 children)

there are legitimate reasons to view its content

There are?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

For example, there could be an important announcement from a content creator or business that you couldn't find elsewhere.

It's surprising how many people and places are only on one social (or antisocial) media.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

At this point it's kinda insane to only use twitter for announcements. Most people don't have it, and you can't view tweets without an account or some complicated workaround like this.

I mean some people still do only post their stuff on twitter. But I'd imagine that's getting less and less every day.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

There are some local news sources that post info about local traffic issues, emergencies, etc, much faster on twitter than elsewhere.

Also, there are some experts on international topics who write articles elsewhere, but still discuss those issues with each other on twitter. There's a list of english speaking experts on ukraine I keep up with. everyone's migrating, but not as fast as I'd like.

I use nitter for that stuff. Here's hoping they move soon, but people who know what I want to know aren't always good at social media.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I'm not interested in the twitter format at all, so it does not make sense to me to use mastodon. The only reason I use nitter is a single person, who does not use mastodon. In my case there's literally nowhere to move.

[+] [email protected] -26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I don't see the sense to use an front end for an front end to see a Tweet, apart with one whose PP is quite questionable

...Here is an example of a request in the log file:

::ffff:127.0.0.1 - - [14/Feb/2022:00:02:58 +0000] "GET /jack HTTP/1.1" 302 60 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/77.0.3865.120 Safari/537.36" Using twiiit.com adds a layer where one's IP is visible. One's IP is visible to twiiit.com then to whatever Nitter instance twiiit.com redirects the query to. Is this correct?

Yes. When somebody uses the site their IP is visible to the service. Once they are redirected to one of the Nitter instances their IP is visible to that particular instance.

You can use Tor or a VPS to obfuscate your IP address and useragent.

This last is what I can do also without the need to use Nitter and Twiiit apart of the trackerblocker and randomizing fingerprints which I use anyway. Nitter sadly is dead and patch it with an front end don't fix it at the long therm. Whats the next, another front end for Twiiit to see a Tweet ocassionaly?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

What in the absolute hell are you talking about with the IP shit? I feel like I've had a stroke.

In normal circumstances, your IP address is always available to each and every server you connect to online to retrieve content from.

Like at a restaurant, you put your order in, they need to know the table you're sitting at to bring the food out to you. The table is your IP here.

This is absolute base line principles of TCP/IP! It's the reason "servers" are called that, they serve the content to you!

You could always have someone else go to the restaurant, then bring the food to wherever you are, that would be the equivalent of a VPN, or a proxy, etc.

But tl;dr- everything you access online sees the IP address for your connection. It's not some security issue that any specific site points that fact out. It's how the internet fucking works.

Sure as hell isn't a red flag in a privacy policy. Most sites leave it out because it's like saying the sky is blue.

I can't even. You get wet if you go swimming. Your IP address is seen if you do anything online.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Copying the user agent string from the network requests tab obviously makes them a cyber security expert, didn’t you know?

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It is logical that any page can see my public IP, at least if I do not use a VPN, but it is one thing to be able to see it and another to log this and my data. So why the hell do I use a front-end to see a fucking Tweet, when then I also have to use VPN, Ad/trackerblocker and others to prevent Twitter from possibly logging my visit or putting crap on my computer, what I do anyway? Resurrecting a dead front-end by putting another front-end on top is simply absurd and causes more problems and privacy attack points than going straight with proper protections. What do you do on Facebook for example or on others that are even worse than Twitter, where there is no valid front-end? What do you do when Twitter definitively turns off the Nitter code and sends this Twiiit to hell with it, put on a tin cap?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Twitter, without an account, is pretty much unusable. It doesn't show you follow-up tweets or replies, and sometimes no tweets at all. The choice isn't "do I access tweets using this or Twitter", it's "do I access tweets with this or not at all". If there's useful information in a tweet, I don't have a problem using this service, even if it logs my IP - that's a pretty normal thing for any service that is big enough to e.g. need rate limiting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

If you already has an account in Twitter, the front-ends are irrelevant, because Musk already has your data and also see that is you, even using a front-end, except you use a VPN, strong fingerprint protection, and other measures. It's for users without an Twitter account, to avod a data collection and tracking (way more than only the IP) when they follow a link to Twitter in a site.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, and I obviously don't have a Twitter account, so what's your point?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The point is, if you don't have a Twitter account, it's enough with your normal privacy protections you use, if you have an account too, in both cases a Twitter front-end and more an front-end for an Twitter front end is pointless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Yes, and I don't have an account. So what's your point?