# The timeless modern web experience (minus the creepy parts)
> Reading reddit, twitter and watching youtube on old machines without javascript
> Note that these projects are intended for viewing content, not so much for active participation. You do not need to run javascript to use either of these.
A friend of mine raised a good point regarding the open sea which is the internet and its various corporate enclaves. "I
may not like what they do, but I'd still very much like to know what they do so that I may know where they'll strike
next."
Similarly to my short guide on the luakit browser, I will not play the part of a privacy advocate. While the primary
reason why you should know about the following projects is undoubtably concerning your privacy, there are other more
practical cases.
Maybe you do find some malevolence in the fact that someone is still attempting to construct your perfect copy that may
be studied in an effort to serve you tailor-made content despite you refusing such services, but maybe, in a much less
tinfoil-hatty approach, you'd simply like to view someone's tweet without the need to register an account of your own or
visit a reddit thread without downloading half the internet. Or you're like me and watching a video on youtube sends you
down its algorhytmic spiral - once you finish watching the sixth recommended video that you don't really know why you
watched, you don't even remember what you were watching in the first place.
I write this from the perspective of an old tech enthusiast who refuses to be 'gatekept' by awful internet practices,
dopamine overloading web design and blatant disregard of basic functionality.
The fundamental purpose of the internet is to serve text. Someone should inform its new generation of architects.
## teddit.net | old.reddit sucks
Disregarding the culture of reddit itself, its not-so-recent reimagining of what the user experience should be clearly
sent a message to its authors, since old.reddit.com still exists and does everything the new one can, while retaining
the vastly superior user experience and simple web design. Alas, the only reason you should be using old.reddit is if
you have an account of your own which you use to post. For everything else there is teddit.net.
teddit is an opensource project that works as a front-end to reddit. What it does is serve you reddit content without
the need to use reddit whatsoever. But it is not just a reddit browser! It can locally store your subscribed subreddits
so that you may customize what is shown to you.
The beauty of its simplicity is in the method by which you can now access reddit content. Say that you find a reddit
link that you would very much like to open. Take the link that will look a little something like:
``
https://reddit.com/somestuff
``
and change the address to look like this:
``
https://teddit.net/somestuff
``
You're changing 4 letters to get a javascript free, tracker free, poor-ui free reddit experience. Now that's not a whole
lot of work for such a trade off, if you ask me.
A pattern emerges which makes all the services I mention here extremely handy and easy to use.
## nitter.net | twitter
To keep things short - nitter.net does very much the same things teddit does, only for twitter. Want to visit a twitter
link? Change the twitter.com/ part of the URL to nitter.net/. Use it for profiles of your favorite tweeters, use it for
direct links that your local news station posted as a source of their recent claims, use it to read replies to a tweet
that would otherwise be accessible to you only if you had a twitter account, use it to not use twitter.
## invidious.io | youtube
The best for last? invidious is THE front end to youtube. Not only can you safely watch any link to a youtube video you
come across, you can create an account and subscribe to your favorite creators. invidious is highly customizable and
will offer you the perfect blend of functionality and distraction free experience. No algorhytms here mean the related
videos will stay related to the video you're watching. There are a bunch of other useful tools invidious offers, but I
leave that to you to discover.
Unlike nitter and teddit, invidious is a project that exists in many independent instances, hosted by freedom
enthusiasts. You could host your own or pick one of the many from the officially curated list(see Resources below).
Just to make things clear - you have a youtube link:
``
https://youtu.be/watchAVIDEO
``
replace the youtube part with the instance of your choosing. ie:
``
https://yewtu.be/watchAVIDEO
``
## Bonus points
If you're like me, either a degenerate or a minimalist, you will appreciate that these projects are the perfect matches
for text browsers such as my all time favorite links. Happy browsing, dear reader.
Resources
*
https://teddit.net/about - about teddit
*
https://nitter.net/about - about nitter
*
https://invidious.io - invidious instances
