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Contents
About
A redirecting service for FOSS alternative frontends.
Farside provides links that automatically redirect to working instances of privacy-oriented alternative frontends, such as Nitter, Libreddit, etc. This allows for users to have more reliable access to the available public instances for a particular service, while also helping to distribute traffic more evenly across all instances and avoid performance bottlenecks and rate-limiting.
Farside also integrates smoothly with basic redirector extensions in most browsers. For an simple example setup, refer to the wiki.
Demo
Farside's links work with the following structure: farside.link/<service>/<path>
For example:
| Service | Page | Farside Link |
| Libreddit | /r/popular | https://farside.link/libreddit/r/popular |
| Teddit | /r/popular | https://farside.link/teddit/r/popular |
| Nitter | User Profile | https://farside.link/nitter/josevalim |
| Invidious | Home Page | https://farside.link/invidious |
| Piped | Video Page | https://farside.link/piped/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU |
| Whoogle | Search "Elixir" | https://farside.link/whoogle/search?q=elixir&lang_interface=en |
| SearX | Search "Redis" | https://farside.link/searx/search?q=redis |
| SearXNG | Search "EFF" | https://farside.link/searxng/search?q=EFF |
| SimplyTranslate | Translate "hola" | https://farside.link/simplytranslate/?engine=google&text=hola |
| Lingva | Translate "bonjour" | https://farside.link/lingva/auto/en/bonjour |
| Rimgo | View photo album | https://farside.link/rimgo/a/H8M4rcp |
| Scribe | View Medium post | https://farside.link/scribe/@ftrain/big-data-small-effort-b62607a43a8c |
Note: This table doesn't include all available services. For a complete list of supported frontends, see: https://farside.link
Farside also accepts URLs to "parent" services, and will redirect to an appropriate front end service, for example:
- https://farside.link/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ will redirect to a Piped or Invidious instance
- https://farside.link/reddit.com/r/popular will redirect to a Libreddit or Teddit instance
- etc.
How It Works
The app runs with an internally scheduled cron task that queries all instances for services defined in services.json every 5 minutes. For each instance, as long as the instance takes <5 seconds to respond and returns a successful response code, the instance is added to a list of available instances for that particular service. If not, it is discarded until the next update period.
Farside's routing is very minimal, with only the following routes:
/- The app home page, displaying all live instances for every service
/:service/*glob- The main endpoint for redirecting a user to a working instance of a particular service with the specified path
- Ex:
/libreddit/r/popularwould navigate to<libreddit instance URL>/r/popular- If the service provided is actually a URL to a "parent" service (i.e. "youtube.com" instead of "piped" or "invidious"), Farside will determine the correct frontend to use for the specified URL.
- Note that a path is not required.
/libredditfor example will still redirect the user to a working libreddit instance
/_/:service/*glob- Achieves the same redirect as the main
/:service/*globendpoint, but preserves a short landing page in the browser's history to allow quickly jumping between instances by navigating back. - Ex:
/_/nitter-> nitter instance A -> (navigate back one page) -> nitter instance B -> ... - Note: Uses Javascript to preserve the page in history
- Achieves the same redirect as the main
When a service is requested with the /:service/... endpoint, Farside requests
the list of working instances from the db and returns a random one from the list
and adds that instance as a new entry in the db to remove from subsequent
requests for that service. For example:
A user navigates to /nitter and is redirected to nitter.net. The next user
to request /nitter will be guaranteed to not be directed to nitter.net, and
will instead be redirected to a separate (random) working instance. That
instance will now take the place of nitter.net as the "reserved" instance, and
nitter.net will be returned to the list of available Nitter instances.
This "reserving" of previously chosen instances is performed in an attempt to ensure better distribution of traffic to available instances for each service.
Farside also has built-in IP ratelimiting for all requests, enforcing only one request per second per IP.
Regarding Cloudflare
Instances for each supported service that are deployed behind Cloudflare are
not included when using farside.link. If you would like
to also access instances that use Cloudflare (in addition to instances that do
not), you can either use cf.farside.link instead, or
deploy your own instance of Farside and set
FARSIDE_SERVICES_JSON=services-full.json when running.
If you do decide to use cf.farside.link or use the
full instance list provided by services-full.json, please be aware that
Cloudflare takes steps to block site visitors using Tor (and some VPNs), and
that their mission to centralize the entire web behind their service ultimately
goes against what Farside is trying to solve. Use at your own discretion.
Development
- Install elixir
- (on Debian systems) Install erlang-dev
To run Farside without compiling, you can perform the following steps:
- Install dependencies:
mix deps.get - Initialize db contents:
mix run -e Farside.Instances.sync - Run Farside:
mix run --no-halt- Uses localhost:4001
Compiling
You can create a standalone Farside app using the steps below. In the example, the
Farside executable is copied to /usr/local/bin, but can be moved to any preferred
destination. Note that the executable still depends on the C runtime of the machine
it is built on, so if you want a more portable binary, you should build Farside on a
system with older library versions.
MIX_ENV=cli && mix deps.get && mix release
cp _build/cli/rel/bakeware/farside /usr/local/bin
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/farside
farside
Environment Variables
| Name | Purpose |
| FARSIDE_TEST | If enabled, bypasses the instance availability check and adds all instances to the pool. |
| FARSIDE_PORT | The port to run Farside on (default: `4001`) |
| FARSIDE_DATA_DIR | The path to the directory to use for storing instance data (default: `/tmp`) |
| FARSIDE_SERVICES_JSON | The "services" JSON file to use for selecting instances (default: `services.json`) |