Nitter (OpenBSD)

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
$ mkdir /etc/nitter
$ cp nitter.example.conf /etc/nitter/nitter.conf
$ cp nitter /usr/local/bin

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 rcctl enable redis && rcctl start redis (or redis-server depending on the distro). Run Nitter by executing ./nitter or using the rc service below. You should run Nitter behind a reverse proxy such as Nginx or Apache for security and performance reasons.

rc.d

To run Nitter via rc you can use this service file:

#!/bin/ksh

daemon="/usr/local/bin/nitter"

. /etc/rc.d/rc.subr

rc_bg=YES

rc_cmd $1

Then enable and run the service: rcctl enable nitter && rcctl start nitter

relayd

# $OpenBSD: relayd.conf,v 1.5 2018/05/06 20:56:55 benno Exp $
#
# Macros
#
relayd_addr="0.0.0.0"
insrv3_addr="192.168.10.103"

table <twitter> { $insrv3_addr }

http protocol reverse {
  tcp { nodelay, sack }
  tls ciphers "TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256:TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256"
  tls keypair "owacon.moe"

  match request header append "X-Forwarded-For" value "$REMOTE_ADDR"
  match request header append "X-Forwarded-Port" value "$REMOTE_PORT"

  match response header set "X-Frame-Options" value "deny"
  match response header set "X-XSS-Protection" value "1; mode=block"
  match response header set "X-Content-Type-Options" value "nosniff"
  match response header set "Strict-Transport-Security" value "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"
  match response header set "Permissions-Policy" value "accelerometer=()"
  match response header set "Cache-Control" value "max-age=86400"

  pass request quick header "Host" value "twitter.owacon.moe" forward to <twitter>
}

relay www_tls {
  listen on $relayd_addr port 443 tls
  protocol reverse

  forward to <twitter> port 8089 check tcp
}

relay www_http {
  listen on $relayd_addr port 80
  protocol reverse

  forward to <twitter> port 8089 check tcp
}

Contact

Feel free to join our Matrix channel. You can email me at zedeus@pm.me if you wish to contact me personally.