FOSS Front-Ends and Alternatives for Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube and more…

murdaFSM

Here’s a currated list of free and open source alternatives and front-ends for Twitter, Instagram, reddit, YouTube and more. Not in any particular oder….

01. Twitter
02. Facebook
03. Instagram
04. Reddit
05. YouTube
06. LinkedIn
07. GitHub
08. Search Engines
09. Wikipedia
10. Medium
11. URL Shortner
12. Google Translate
13. Tiktok
14. Remove Paywall
15. IMDb
16. Google Analytics

 

Twitter
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Nitter Nitter is a free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy. – No JavaScript or ads
– All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Twitter
– Prevents Twitter from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
– Unofficial API (no rate limits or developer account required)
– Lightweight ( 60KB vs 784KB from twitter.com)
– RSS feeds
– Themes
– Mobile support (responsive design)
– AGPLv3 licensed, no proprietary instances permitted		 GitHub
Mastodon Mastodon is a free, open-source social network server based on ActivityPub where
users can follow friends and discover new ones. On Mastodon, users can publish anything
they want: links, pictures, text, video. All Mastodon servers are interoperable as a federated
network		 GitHub
Yotter Allows you to follow and gather all the content from your favorite Twitter and YouTube accounts
in a beautiful feed so you can stay up to date without compromising your privacy at all.		 GitHub
Misskey a decentralized microblogging platform born on Earth. Since it exists within the Fediverse,
it is mutually linked with other social media platforms.		 GitHub
Pleorma Pleroma is a federated social networking platform, compatible with Mastodon and other ActivityPub implementations.
It is free software licensed under the AGPLv3. It actually consists of two components: a backend, named simply Pleroma,
and a user-facing frontend, named Pleroma-FE.
It also includes the Mastodon frontend, if that’s your thing. It’s part of what we call the fediverse, a federated network of
instances which speak common protocols and can communicate with each other. One account on an instance is enough to talk to the entire fediverse!		 ## Pleroma-FE
Pleroma-FE is the single column user interface bundled with Pleroma.
– Detailed theme system
– NSFW attachment hiding
– Keyword filtering
– Your own custom emoji!
– Standalone, can be run in parallel with other interfaces
– The best and latest in conversation view technology
## Pleroma
– High-performance
– Light memory usage
– Simple to deploy
– Runs on a Raspberry Pi
– Speaks ActivityPub
– Provides an extended Mastodon client API		 GitLab

 

Facebook
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Friendica A decentralized Facebook-style social network Features GitHub
Diaspora A decentralized Facebook alternative focused on freedom and privacy. GitHub
Minds A free & open source social network dedicated to privacy and freedom GitLab

 

Instagram
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Bibliogram Bibliogram is a website that takes data from Instagram’s public profile views and puts it into
a friendlier page that loads faster, gives downloadable images, eliminates ads, generates RSS
feeds, and doesn’t urge you to sign up.		 Sourcehut
Pixelfed Pixelfed is an image sharing platform, an ethical alternative to centralized platforms like
Instagram.		 GitHub

 

Reddit
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Teddit Teddit is a free and open source alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy. – No JavaScript or ads
– All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Reddit
– Prevents Reddit from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
– Lightweight (teddit frontpage: ~30 HTTP requests with ~270 KB of data downloaded vs. Reddit frontpage: ~190 HTTP requests with ~24 MB)		 Codeberg
Lemmy Lemmy allows you to subscribe to forums you’re interested in, post links and discussions, then vote,
and comment on them. Behind the scenes, it is very different; anyone can easily run a server, and all
these servers are federated (think email), and connected to the same universe, called the Fediverse.		 – Open source, AGPL License.
– Self hostable, easy to deploy.
– Comes with Docker and Ansible.
– Clean, mobile-friendly interface.
– Only a minimum of a username and password is required to sign up!
– User avatar support.
– Live-updating Comment threads.
– Full vote scores (+/-) like old Reddit.
– Themes, including light, dark, and solarized.
– Emojis with autocomplete support. Start typing :
– User tagging using @, Community tagging using !.
– Integrated image uploading in both posts and comments.
– A post can consist of a title and any combination of self text, a URL, or nothing else.
– Notifications, on comment replies and when you’re tagged.
– Notifications can be sent via email.
– Private messaging support.
– i18n / internationalization support.
– RSS / Atom feeds for All, Subscribed, Inbox, User, and Community.
– Cross-posting support.
– A similar post search when creating new posts. Great for question / answer communities.
– Moderation abilities.
– Public Moderation Logs.
– Can sticky posts to the top of communities.
– Both site admins, and community moderators, who can appoint other moderators.
– Can lock, remove, and restore posts and comments.
– Can ban and unban users from communities and the site.
– Can transfer site and communities to others.
– Can fully erase your data, replacing all posts and comments.
– NSFW post / community support.
– OEmbed support via Iframely.
– High performance.
– Server is written in rust.
– Front end is ~80kB gzipped.
– Supports arm64 / Raspberry Pi.		 GitHub
Lobste.rs Reddit alternative. Lemmy allows you to subscribe to forums you’re interested in, post links and discussions,
then vote, and comment on them. Behind the scenes, it is very different; anyone can easily run a server, and
all these servers are federated (think email), and connected to the same universe, called the Fediverse.		 GitHub
Raddle It’s been said Raddle is a community for outsiders, malcontents and wayward dreamers.
Tor link: http://lfbg75wjgi4nzdio.onion/		 GitLab
Aether Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities. Open source, self-governing communities with auditable
moderation and mod elections		 GitHub
Ruqqus Open source Reddit Alternative GitHub
SaidIt Open Source Reddit clone GitHub
Libreddit An alternative private front-end to Reddit – Fast: written in Rust for blazing fast speeds and safety
– Light: no JavaScript, no ads, no tracking
– Private: all requests are proxied through the server, including media
– Secure: strong Content Security Policy prevents browser requests to Reddit		 GitHub
littr.me This project represents a new attempt at the social link aggregator service. It is modelled after (old)Reddit, HackerNews, and Lobste.rs.
It tries to combine the good parts of these services while mapping them on the foundation of an ActivityPub generic service.		 GitHub
Tildes Self-hostable GitLab
Aether Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities – Ephemeral – It keeps 6 months of posts by default. It’s gone after. If something is worth keeping, someone will save it within six months — but not from beyond that. If you screw up, argue for the wrong opinion, and then think otherwise, that’s okay. No one is going to come after you — it gives you the freedom to be wrong, and move on.
– Privacy-sensitive – It’s peer-to-peer, and it has no servers. It’s privacy sensitive because of that, source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined. Aether is private by default, so that you can choose to be fully private, or fully public yourself. Most people use pseudonyms, though you can use your real name, or company.
– Transparent – Actions of moderators are visible to users. No content can just ‘disappear’, if something gets deleted, you’ll know who did it, why they did it, and if you want, how to get it back. Everyone watches the watchmen. Moderation is important for healthy communities, and Aether adds onto it some checks-and-balances.
– Democratic – Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. If a mod behaves inappropriately, users can disable that mod locally as well. Doing so reverts all changes by that moderator for the user, and counts for one impeachment vote.		 GitHub
Akasha Decentralized Social Media Platform powered by Ethereum and IPFS GitHub
notabug.io Decentralized content aggregator GitHub

 

 

YouTube
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Invidious Invidious is an alternative front-end to YouTube – Copylefted libre software (AGPLv3+ licensed)
– Audio-only mode (and no need to keep window open on mobile)
– Lightweight (the homepage is ~4 KB compressed)
– Tools for managing subscriptions:
– Only show unseen videos
– Only show latest (or latest unseen) video from each channel
– Delivers notifications from all subscribed channels
– Automatically redirect homepage to feed
– Import subscriptions from YouTube
– Dark mode
– Embed support
– Set default player options (speed, quality, autoplay, loop)
– Support for Reddit comments in place of YouTube comments
– Import/Export subscriptions, watch history, preferences
– Developer API
– Does not use any of the official YouTube APIs
– Does not require JavaScript to play videos
– No need to create a Google account to save subscriptions
– No ads
– No CoC
– No CLA
– Multilingual (translated into many languages)		 GitHub
FreeTube FreeTube is an open source desktop YouTube player built with privacy in mind. Use YouTube without
advertisements and prevent Google from tracking you with their cookies and JavaScript. Available for
Windows, Mac & Linux thanks to Electron.		 GitHub
LBRY Alternative to YouTube. LBRY is a place where users can find great videos, music, ebooks, and more: imagine a vast
digital library that is available on all of your devices. But under the hood, LBRY is many components working together.		 GitHub
Odysee Video platform backed by the creators of LBRY and uses the LBRY blockchain protocol GitHub
Yotter Allows you to follow and gather all the content from your favorite Twitter and YouTube accounts in a beautiful feed so you
can stay up to date without compromising your privacy at all.		 GitHub
PeerTube PeerTube is a free, decentralized and federated video platform developed as an alternative to other platforms that centralize our
data and attention, such as YouTube, Dailymotion or Vimeo.		 GitHub
Piped An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube frontend which is efficient by design. GitHub

 

LinkedIn
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Vutuv a business network which is hosted at https://www.vutuv.de. Think of it as a free, fast and secure open-source alternative for LinkedIn or XING GitHub

 

Github
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Radicle open-source alternative to GitHub. Peer-to-peer, removes the dependency for a centralized server. – Ability to add multiple remote peers
– Manage multiple peers
– Feature to follow a project from a specific peer
– Share your project using a unique ID
– Does not depend on central servers
– No censorship
– One network interconnected with peers
– Ability to work offline
– Local issues & patches
– Built on Git to make it easy and comfortable for most developers
– Your infrastructure
– Ability to receive funding from your supporters (Ethereum)
– Manage codebases together		 GitHub

 

Search Engines
Alternative Country of Origin Privacy Policy Tor Source Code
DuckDuckGo US 🇺🇸 Yes Yes GitHub
StartPage Netherlands 🇳🇱 Yes No No ( why not? )
Searx N/A 🌍 N/A Yes GitHub
Qwant France 🇫🇷 Yes No GitHub
Mojeek UK 🇬🇧 Yes No No
MetaGer Germany 🇩🇪 Yes No GitLab
YaCy ( P2P ) N/A 🌍 N/A N/A GitHub

 

Wikipedia
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Wikiless A free open source alternative Wikipedia front-end focused on privacy A free open source alternative Wikipedia front-end focused on privacy.
– No JavaScript or ads.
– All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Wikipedia.
– Prevents Wikipedia getting your IP address.
– Self-hostable. Anyone can setup a private or public instance.		 Codeberg

 

Medium
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Scribe An alternative Medium front-end Sourcehut

 

URL Shortner
Alternative Description Features Source Code
unshort.link Prevent short link services from tracking you by un shortening the urls for your. – Access short links for you to prevent the short link providers to track you
– Check links against a blacklist to prevent access to a harmful website hidden behind a short link
– Remove known tracking parameters from the urls behind the short links (e.g. the facebook tracking parameter utm_source)
– Remove as many url parameters as possible by keeping the same website result. This helps to remove tracking parameters that are so far unknown		 GitHub
via Terminal Command:
curl -sLI shortned_link\		 grep -i Location Example:

 

Translate
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Lingva Alternative front-end for Google Translate, serving as a Free and Open Source translator with over a hundred languages available GitHub

 

Tiktok
Alternative Description Features Source Code
ProxiTok Alternative front-end for Google Translate, serving as a Free and Open Source translator with over a hundred languages available – Privacy: All requests made to TikTok are server-side, so you will never connect to their servers
– See user’s feed, trending, tags, video by ID
– Discovery
-Create a following list, which you can later use to see all the feeds from those users
– RSS Feed for user, trending and tag (just add /rss to the url)		 GitHub

 

Remove Paywall

 

Alternative Description Features
12ft “Show me a 10ft paywall, I’ll show you a 12ft ladder.” The idea is pretty simple, news sites want Google to index their content so it shows up in search results. So they don’t show a paywall to the Google crawler. We benefit from this because the Google crawler will cache a copy of the site every time it crawls it.

All 12ft does is to show you that cached, unpaywalled version of the page.

 

IMDb

 

Alternative Description Features
libremdb A FOSS alternative front-end to IMDb.
  • No ads or tracking
    Browse any movie info without being tracked or bombarded by annoying ads.
  • No connection to IMDb
    All requests go through the backend; client never talks to IMDb except for a bunch of requests to m.media-amazon.com for images.
  • No JavaScript required
    Just a few linesof code(~30) to save theme preference, which itself is optional.
  • Modern interface
    Modern interface with curated colors supporting both dark and light themes.
  • Responsive design
    Be it your small mobile or big computer screen, it’s fully responsive.
  • Lightweight
 GitHub

 

Google Analytics

 

 
Alternative Description Features Source Code
Plausible

Plausible Analytics is a simple, lightweight (< 1 KB), open-source and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It doesn’t use cookies and is fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA and PECR. You can self-host Plausible or have us run it for you in the Cloud. Here’s the live demo of our own website stats. Made and hosted in the EU eu
  • Clutter Free: Plausible Analytics provides simple web analytics and it cuts through the noise. No layers of menus, no need for custom reports. Get all the important insights on one single page. No training necessary.
  • GDPR/CCPA/PECR compliant: Measure traffic, not individuals. No personal data or IP addresses are ever stored in our database. We don’t use cookies or any other persistent identifiers. Read more about our data policy
  • Lightweight: Plausible Analytics works by loading a script on your website, like Google Analytics. Our script is 45x smaller, making your website quicker to load.
  • Email or Slack reports: Keep an eye on your traffic with weekly and/or monthly email or Slack reports. You can also get traffic spike notifications.
  • Open website stats: You have the option to be transparent and open your web analytics to everyone. Your website stats are private by default but you can choose to make them public so anyone with your custom link can view them.
  • Define key goals and track conversions: Set custom events or page URLs as your goals and see how they convert over time to understand and identify the trends that matter. Includes easy ways to track outbound link clicks and 404 error pages.
  • Search keywords: Integrate your dashboard with Google Search Console to get the most accurate reporting on your search keywords.
  • SPA support: Plausible is built with modern web frameworks in mind and it works automatically with any pushState based router on the frontend. We also support frameworks that use the URL hash for routing. See our documentation.
 GitHub
Matomo

Matomo is a full-featured PHP MySQL software program that you download and install on your own webserver. At the end of the five-minute installation process, you will be given a JavaScript code. Simply copy and paste this tag on websites you wish to track and access your analytics reports in real-time.

 GitHub
GoatCounter

GoatCounter is an open source web analytics platform available as a (free) hosted service or self-hosted app. It aims to offer easy to use and meaningful privacy-friendly web analytics as an alternative to Google Analytics or Matomo.

 GitHub

MORE RESOURCES:

 

01. HOW TO: Follow People on Twitter and Instagram Without an Account
02. HOW TO: Follow Reddit Subs Without an Account and Subscribe to Newsletters to Declutter Your Inbox
03. HOW TO: Watch YouTube and Keep Your Subscriptions Without Ads and Google’s Tracking