Title: How to host a local front-end for Reddit / YouTube / Twitter on

	Title: How to host a local front-end for Reddit / YouTube / Twitter on
	NixOS
	Author: Solène
	Date: 02 September 2022
	Tags: nixos privacy
	Description: This article explains how to use NixOS to host a local
	front-end for services like YouTube, Twitter or Reddit.

	# Introduction

	I'm not a consumer of proprietary social networks, but sometimes I have
	to access content hosted there, and in that case I prefer to use a
	front-end reimplementation of the service.

	These front-ends are network services that acts as a proxy to the
	proprietary service, and offer a different interface (usually cleaner)
	and also remove tracking / ads.

	In your web browser, you can use the extension Privacy Redirect to
	automatically be redirected to such front-ends. But even better, you
	can host them locally instead of using public instances that may be
	unresponsive, on NixOS it's super easy.

	We are going to see how to deploy them on NixOS.

	Privacy Redirect GitHub project page
	libreddit GitHub project page: Reddit front-end
	Invidious project website: YouTube front-end
	nitter GitHub project page: Twitter front-end

	# Deployment

	As September 2022, libreddit, invidious and nitter have NixOS modules
	to manage them.

	The following pieces of code can be used in your NixOS configuration
	file (/etc/nixos/configuration.nix as the default location) before
	running "nixos-rebuild" to use the newer configuration.

	I focus on running the services locally and not expose them on the
	network, thus you will need a bit more configuration to add HTTPS and
	tune the performance if you need more users.

	## Libreddit

	We will use the container and run it with podman, a docker alternative.
	The service takes only a few megabytes to run.

	The service is exposed on http://127.0.0.1:12344

	```
	services.libreddit = {
	address = "127.0.0.1";
	port = 12344;
	};
	```

	## Invidious

	This is using the NixOS module.

	The service is exposed on http://127.0.0.1:12345

	```nix
	services.invidious = {
	enable = true;
	nginx.enable = false;
	port = 12345;

	# if you want to disable recommended videos
	settings = {
	default_user_preferences = {
	"related_videos" = false;
	};
	};
	};
	```

	## Nitter

	This is using the NixOS module.

	The service is exposed on http://127.0.0.1:12346

	```
	services.nitter = {
	enable = true;
	server.port = 12346;
	server.address = "127.0.0.1";
	};
	```

	# Privacy redirect

	By default, the extension will pick a random public instance, you can
	configure it per service to use your local instance.

	# Conclusion

	I very enjoy these front-ends, they draw a lot less resources when
	browsing these websites. I prefer to run them locally for performance
	reasons.

	If you run such instances on your local computer, this doesn't help
	with regard to privacy. If you care about privacy, you should use
	public instances, or host your own public instances so many different
	users are behind the same service and this makes profiling harder. But
	if you want to host such instance, you may need to tweak the
	performance, and add a reverse proxy and a valid TLS certificate.