Libreddit and more

Hi guys, for probably a few years now, people have been talking about the “Big Tech Exodus”. This is essentially a move from using large centralized tech platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google among others, to using smaller decentralized platforms. The move is for reasons such as privacy and fear of censorship (in the case of social media). With the recent ban of Trump on all major platforms, Parler from Amazon’s web services, and the Facebook Cambridge Analytica situation, this move isn’t without reason (Stallman warned us!).

There are new social media platforms being made like Mastodon and Peertube, which are Twitter and YouTube like. These sites are examples of federated software. With federated software you can host your own instance, and have it “talk” to others. So people on my instance of mastodon could still see toots(tweets) from your instance. But I can never really be banned from the platform totally. I can just join a new instance. Federation is one benefit, the other is that these platforms are libre software. So if you host your own instance, you know exactly what is happening to your data.

But some people don’t want to delete their social media accounts, or they have friends and family that won’t switch, or whatever reason. There are solutions that allow you to still use/view these sites while having better privacy. There is free software that you can host yourself to act as a proxy between you and the original website. Libreddit, Nitter, and Invidious are some examples. These instances provide better privacy because if you host it on a vps or some other way: your actual IP isn’t shown, a massive amount of data isn’t sent to these companies, and if you have multiple users using the same instance then the browsing habits are much more erratic and obscure. There are public instances that you can use too.

I have decided to host my own instances of some of these sites. I currently have Libreddit working, which is for Reddit, but I will have to wait for Nitter and Invidious because I messed up while making the certs. You all reading are most welcome to use it. If it becomes too much of a bandwidth hog or anything I might have to figure something else out.

I want to make a Video talking more about the Big Tech Exodus, but I’m still getting my thoughts together on it. For now, here is a good link of some videos and alternative platforms and videos detailing the dangers of big tech.