I was aware (and used) alternative frontends to various proprietary sites (invidious, teddit, nitter etc…).
On lemmy, it seems that when people want to share a link to a youtube video, or a reddit post, they often share a link to said video/post but through one of those alternative frontends.
In some ways this is great as it allows discovering the alternatives as well as avoiding privacy issues. However, there are still a few issues which makes me think we should keep using links to the original website:
- There are addons that make the redirection for you anyway
- Alternative frontend instances get rate limited. This is most often the case with invidious instances. Having a link toward a specific instance means that it can get rate limited if the post becomes popular, also for people not familiar with it, it leads to a video that doesn’t load, which is a terrible experience. Addons can reduce this issue by redirecting to multiple instances at random for example.
- Instances get shutdown and this leads to nonoperational links. Redirection addons on the other hand can be updated regularly to point only towards operational instances.
- On mobile, it prevents links from being opened in the proper app. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on a video link on Lemmur and having the browser open an invidious instance instead of NewPipe. The same goes for Reddit and the countless FLOSS apps you can use to browse it, which are all a better experience than teddit on mobile.
This makes me think it is better to just share the link to the original website. It could be a feature of Lemmy to warn the users when they click on a link to a proprietary network and offer alternatives though.
I’m interested in getting some counter arguments.
Edit: Add links to addon
I opened a somewhat related issue for Lemmy a while ago, for redirecting links from Youtube to Invidious, from Twitter to Nitter, etc. If that was implemented, there would be no need to post invidious or nitter links directly (and they could be automatically blocked or rewritten).
yeah that would be good
Instances get shutdown and this leads to nonoperational links.
This is one of the most unfortunate things I’ve seen with the alternative front ends… ppl used to link every video to invidious, and now they’re all broken.
On mobile, it prevents links from being opened in the proper app. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on a video link on Lemmur and having the browser open an invidious instance instead of NewPipe.
Agree with this one too, as I use newpipe. Ideally newpipe would add domains to their redirects, but that could also be impossible to keep up with.
I don’t have a strong opinion either way, cause it should be a community consensus thing. The only thing I am opinionated about, is that lemmy not overwrite links… it should be agnostic about the links that are getting posted to a link aggregator.
To be honest invidious did it correctly. If you use a invidio.us link, it redirects you to a page to select your instance, and this page will take you directly to the video that the original link pointed to.
I have the same sentiment, especially for the last paragraph.
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Add-ons are not allowed in every web browser and the same add-on and equivalent could not exist in the other web browsers.
Userscripts can do the same thing. On greasyfork there is one called Y2Invidio.
Scripts need direct browser support or an addon to be used in mostly every case.
It is still an issue.
All browsers I know of that don’t have extensions support userscripts, even surf. Only exceptions I can think of are Netsurf and Dillo, bit these have difficulties rendering static pages I doubt tracking is a huge concern.
Chrome on Android for example doesn’t support that kind of stuff. I’m not sure about Safari.
On Android there is a program on F-Droid called UntrackMe.
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That seems good indeed
I find invidious, nitter, etc. links very annoying. If I had a problem using the source site, I’d handle it myself.
Possibly if people link the invidio.us redirect page as well as the YouTube link so that people can then choose an active instance and not flood one instance
I would think this in the opposite sense: I don’t like them at all because I want to replace that way to distribute content, not because there are plenty alternatives for these who don’t like main service as you are suggesting.
In addition, as ethics must go first as a filter, the FLOSS replacement or adaptation must be always be first and, after that, the rest and not the way you are suggesting.
Invidious links are always better unless a peertube, mediagoblin link or a video hosted through html on one’s own site exists. By having YouTube links, Lemmy would encourage YouTube frontend for those who don’t have NewPipe or a redirecting plugin.
