LibRedirect – Redirects popular sites to alternative privacy-friendly frontends

A web extension is an unnecessary security risk. A userscript will do it just fine.

edit: one of my previous attempt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35229211

I actually have made it extensible, with closely coupled source of rules and domains; but then I lost it Edge forgot all my userscripts :(

The extension links to 50+ services, your script - to 1. Do you now suggest that every single user should figure out how to do it properly and replicate the extension in a script for no better alternative (you could instead spend part of that time reading the extension code and using your private copy)

I don't think that not having all the services is a problem. On the contrary, I think it is an advantage for userscripts, that those only have the redirects a user explicitly adds.

Tho I probably should've demonstrated first that it is possible, before advocating for it. The script I linked indeed only works for one website. Multiple websites with multiple rules, each with a list of instances (that often go offline for a time, so it is worth keeping them around, and make switching easy) indeed complicates it a bit.

So what exactly is the advantage of having to code all the rules yourself for every service you want to use??

> complicates it a bit

a bit of an understatement

> So what exactly is the advantage of having to code all the rules yourself for every service you want to use??

"having to code all the rules" is not that hard, in most cases you can just pass the whole URL, and the instance accepts it.

Advantages: you don't get unwanted redirects from services, and you don't get unwanted redirects to instances. (Even tho the information about the instances will likely be concentrated at libredirect github issues. Chances are that some random person on the internet who has paranoid activities as a hobby will look into the instances, so you don't have to.)

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I don't use many redirects. Nowadays I use exactly 0. But if I needed a redirect for example to xcancel, I would use my user-script as I had done it in the past before I lost it. I definitely wouldn't install a browser extension for it.