Finding great & working instances is a hard task and can be overwhelming to new users. They might try one instance, see that it doesn’t work, think this apply to all instances and then give up.
In fact, instances quality varies, because of think like servers quality & quantity, how up-to-date the code is, and whether the maintainer has specific additional patches.
I think there are a couple problems with this idea. I should note that i do agree that finding functional frontend instances can be frustrating; I’m just not sure privacy guides should be curating an instance list. Often specific frontend software will have a sort of instance list on their github page; usually listing “official” instances. Do i could see some benefit in mentioning that these curated instance lists do exist.
The reasons i think Privacy Guides doesn’t need to create their own instance lists are as follows.
Unless this was actually a list fully maintained by the privacy guides community, i can’t imagine that the privacy guides team would have the time to dedicate to this list when other parts of the website with more direct privacy impacts neet their attention.
By listing a frontend instance privacy guides would be endorsing the maintainer of that instance.
The nature of these instance lists is that they are always changing, because people see “trusted instance X” and go there. In doing so “trusted i stance X” gets overloaded and needs to be taken of line temporarily for upgrades. If this instance list where maintained and published by privacy guides there would absolutely be a delay between the time an instance goes down and when that is reflected on the website.
Plus additional traffic coming from privacy guides would only strain the above situation (problem 3) further.
With all that being said i am not a privacy guides team member; so they may have more insight for you. This was mostly my observation/opinion on the issue.
Please, before you consider using my services on a daily basis, take into account that those marked with (Self-Hosted) may go down at any time because they are hosted on my own internet, not rented dedicated servers for these services.(Because I can’t afford to pay for them in the long run, services now are 100% paid using money from donations, but that is mostly becuase of Invidious costs)
Since I use those instances daily, I can update thé list.
Indeed. Why is that a problem ?
I don’t think there is any proof of this. While Nadeko had to disable API and block non-browser user agents because of top much demand, this occured because nadeko is already recognised sa a good instance.
Two things
1- I know he does proxy videos to 5 different servers situated in different countries. So either it first goes to his house, then he proxies it, or it directly goes to those servers. The former would seem very good, as if you rent VPS anyway, you better use them to their full potential.
2- I have never seen the site go down.
3-All or almost all those instances are self-funded/rely on donations anyway. This is the nature of frontends.
A couple of additional points:
We could endorse 3 instances per service to reduce the strain.
Instances ending is a concern, but if we list a few then that this resolve concern + can be updated quickly as people will notice soon.
The reason i mentioned endorsing maintainers of specific instances as “bad” thing, is because, at least from my view it takes more effort to vet individual maintainers than it does to just do a quick sanity check on the stability and privacy stance of a project.
Secondly, once privacy guides recommends a service/website they are basically endorsing the behavior of that site/service. This applies in the case of front ends imo, because reducing the number of solo maintainers privacy guides must vet/endorse.
I just want to reiterate that this part of my earlier post was largely based on my knowledge of front ends and opinions on using them. I do not have adiquate insight into the inter workings of privacy guides to determine if a front ends recommendation list will ever be an official thing.
If you do feel strongly enough about making a front ends list; then maintaining and publishing it yourself may be the way to go.
Hi, I’m new here on the forum. I’m not sure why I never came across this site before, but there’s some great information here! I just thought I’d mention my site https://social.privacyturtle.com. It’s a ‘pet project’ I’m doing in my spare time to learn more than anything else, really. Anyway, I’m running a fairly stable instance of redlib there for a couple months and I try to keep up with their latest releases on github. You’re welcome to check it out. I also have an instance of Whoogle with farside links configured. The entire site is fairly basic right now, but I plan to do more when I have time. Like I said, this is a learn-by-doing project, so any feedback is also welcome.
