Predirect: A manifest v3 web extension with minimal permissions to automatically redirect popular sites to privacy friendly frontends

testman , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

so this is similar to LibRedirect?
github.com/libredirect/browser_extension
libredirect.github.io
check out this list of privacy frontends and see if you can implement any of them in Predirect

Also, I see that you only handle one instance for redirect. Either the default instance or custom instance.
Consider implementing multiple instances. Here is list of instances that LibRedirect uses:
raw.githubusercontent.com/…/data.json
Here is a list of instances that Farside.link uses:
raw.githubusercontent.com/…/services-full.json

Both LibRedirect and Farside still have to deal with the rate-limiting problem with Youtube and Reddit and I assume other sites as well. Invidious instance or Teddit instance can be rate-limited, resulting in video not playing or post not showing up.
If your extension does not distribute user traffic across multiple instances, then I assume that your chosen instances will get hammered into ratelimit even faster than other instances.
So consider thinking about solution for this.
One of suggestions that I like is to allow user to provide an URL to a list of instances.
That way, someone or some automated system can periodically compose a list of instances and users can “subscribe” to that list.

Also some useful links:
github.com/digitalblossom/alternative-frontends
github.com/pluja/awesome-privacy#social-networks-…
github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends
matrix.to/#/#alternative-frontends:tchncs.de

libreom OP , 7 months ago

Yes, Predirect currently chooses randomly from list of instances from farside/official(I’ll make it updatable/refreshable in near future) or one custom instance (I’ll also add editing list of custom instances in far future) [ofc if chrome store allows these two]. I didn’t add libredirect/reddit due to ratelimiting problems and GotHub, anonymous overflow due to usability issues. I’ll add search, maps in near future and also others. Predirect does distribute traffic by randomising instances so not an issue. Thanks for suggestions and contributions are welcome for any of these

ninjan , 7 months ago

Excellent stuff! Been looking for something like this and while I love greasemonkey it’s a bit fiddly on Android so this is a great, much simpler, alternative!

loki , 7 months ago

Redirector works perfectly on Android.

addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/…/redirector/

Rooki , 7 months ago

Nice work!