7622db80b9
This is to support link verification in Mastodon. Mastodon does not have any equivalent to Twitter's blue-tick, so if you want to decorate your profile with some sense of authenticity, you can verify your profile to be associated with a particular URL: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#verification GitHub gained native support for this sort of verification sometime between last November and now, and so when you have a bidirectional link between your GitHub profile and Mastodon profile, the link to GitHub will be green. However, Twitter does not support rel=me, and is unlikely to. With this change, one can link their profile in their Mastodon bio using nitter.net/username, and for as long as their mastodon profile is linked back in the Twitter "URL" field, it will be verified. There have been similar attempts with "trusted" proxy URLs in the past, i.e. Twitter profile mirrors that are set up for the sole purpose of supporting rel=me verification. Those proxies are however unknown to most people, and the entire domain-based verification system kind of breaks down if nobody knows whether the domain can be trusted. People know nitter.net, however, and trust what is written on there to match what is written on twitter.com [1] Who knows whether the same is true for the unofficial Nitter instances, but I think one can ignore them for this purpose. Of course I can deploy this fork today on nitter.woodland.cafe and then verify `@untitaker@woodland.cafe` against `nitter.woodland.cafe/untitaker`, but that's kind of pointless. [1] Whether it is really *known* may be debatable, but of all Twitter mirrors/proxies, I think nitter.net and maybe fxtwitter.com have the highest domain reputation and the best chance at making this kind of verification system work for Twitter. |
||
---|---|---|
.github | ||
public | ||
src | ||
tests | ||
tools | ||
.dockerignore | ||
.gitignore | ||
.travis.yml | ||
config.nims | ||
docker-compose.yml | ||
Dockerfile | ||
Dockerfile.arm64 | ||
LICENSE | ||
nitter.example.conf | ||
nitter.nimble | ||
README.md | ||
screenshot.png |
Nitter
A free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy and
performance.
Inspired by the Invidious
project.
- No JavaScript or ads
- All requests go through the backend, client never talks to Twitter
- Prevents Twitter from tracking your IP or JavaScript fingerprint
- Uses Twitter's unofficial API (no rate limits or developer account required)
- Lightweight (for @nim_lang, 60KB vs 784KB from twitter.com)
- RSS feeds
- Themes
- Mobile support (responsive design)
- AGPLv3 licensed, no proprietary instances permitted
Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/zedeus
Patreon: https://patreon.com/nitter
BTC: bc1qp7q4qz0fgfvftm5hwz3vy284nue6jedt44kxya
ETH: 0x66d84bc3fd031b62857ad18c62f1ba072b011925
LTC: ltc1qhsz5nxw6jw9rdtw9qssjeq2h8hqk2f85rdgpkr
XMR: 42hKayRoEAw4D6G6t8mQHPJHQcXqofjFuVfavqKeNMNUZfeJLJAcNU19i1bGdDvcdN6romiSscWGWJCczFLe9RFhM3d1zpL
Roadmap
- Embeds
- Account system with timeline support
- Archiving tweets/profiles
- Developer API
Resources
The wiki contains a list of instances and browser extensions maintained by the community.
Why?
It's impossible to use Twitter without JavaScript enabled. For privacy-minded folks, preventing JavaScript analytics and IP-based tracking is important, but apart from using a VPN and uBlock/uMatrix, it's impossible. Despite being behind a VPN and using heavy-duty adblockers, you can get accurately tracked with your browser's fingerprint, no JavaScript required. This all became particularly important after Twitter removed the ability for users to control whether their data gets sent to advertisers.
Using an instance of Nitter (hosted on a VPS for example), you can browse Twitter without JavaScript while retaining your privacy. In addition to respecting your privacy, Nitter is on average around 15 times lighter than Twitter, and in most cases serves pages faster (eg. timelines load 2-4x faster).
In the future a simple account system will be added that lets you follow Twitter users, allowing you to have a clean chronological timeline without needing a Twitter account.
Screenshot
Installation
Dependencies
- libpcre
- libsass
- redis
To compile Nitter you need a Nim installation, see nim-lang.org for details. It is possible to install it system-wide or in the user directory you create below.
To compile the scss files, you need to install libsass
. On Ubuntu and Debian,
you can use libsass-dev
.
Redis is required for caching and in the future for account info. It should be
available on most distros as redis
or redis-server
(Ubuntu/Debian).
Running it with the default config is fine, Nitter's default config is set to
use the default Redis port and localhost.
Here's how to create a nitter
user, clone the repo, and build the project
along with the scss and md files.
# useradd -m nitter
# su nitter
$ git clone https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
$ cd nitter
$ nimble build -d:release
$ nimble scss
$ nimble md
$ cp nitter.example.conf nitter.conf
Set your hostname, port, HMAC key, https (must be correct for cookies), and
Redis info in nitter.conf
. To run Redis, either run
redis-server --daemonize yes
, or systemctl enable --now redis
(or
redis-server depending on the distro). Run Nitter by executing ./nitter
or
using the systemd service below. You should run Nitter behind a reverse proxy
such as Nginx or
Apache for security and
performance reasons.
Docker
Page for the Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/zedeus/nitter
NOTE: For ARM64 support, please use the separate ARM64 docker image: zedeus/nitter:latest-arm64
.
To run Nitter with Docker, you'll need to install and run Redis separately before you can run the container. See below for how to also run Redis using Docker.
To build and run Nitter in Docker:
docker build -t nitter:latest .
docker run -v $(pwd)/nitter.conf:/src/nitter.conf -d --network host nitter:latest
Note: For ARM64, use this Dockerfile: Dockerfile.arm64
.
A prebuilt Docker image is provided as well:
docker run -v $(pwd)/nitter.conf:/src/nitter.conf -d --network host zedeus/nitter:latest
Using docker-compose to run both Nitter and Redis as different containers:
Change redisHost
from localhost
to nitter-redis
in nitter.conf
, then run:
docker-compose up -d
Note the Docker commands expect a nitter.conf
file in the directory you run
them.
systemd
To run Nitter via systemd you can use this service file:
[Unit]
Description=Nitter (An alternative Twitter front-end)
After=syslog.target
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
# set user and group
User=nitter
Group=nitter
# configure location
WorkingDirectory=/home/nitter/nitter
ExecStart=/home/nitter/nitter/nitter
Restart=always
RestartSec=15
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Then enable and run the service:
systemctl enable --now nitter.service
Logging
Nitter currently prints some errors to stdout, and there is no real logging
implemented. If you're running Nitter with systemd, you can check stdout like
this: journalctl -u nitter.service
(add --follow
to see just the last 15
lines). If you're running the Docker image, you can do this:
docker logs --follow *nitter container id*
Contact
Feel free to join our Matrix channel. You can email me at zedeus@pm.me if you wish to contact me personally.