I recently discovered alternative frontends - websites that let you use the ‘real’ version of Twitter, Reddit etc. through an alternate website. The advantage of this is that it stops those big sites like Twitter from tracking you, because they don’t see the connection from your web browser.

Anyway, one of the most convenient ways to take advantage of this is through a browser extension like LibRedirect, which will automatically filter links and redirect you to the alternate versions of popular sites. You can even set it as your default search engine, so it can redirect to an instance of SearXNG, a privacy-respecting search engine.

The problem I faced was how to use the libredirect extension on Android. Simply trying to install the addon from mozilla didn’t work. There is a way though, using the Nightly version of Firefox following the steps here.

Here are the steps:

  1. Install Firefox Nightly from the Play Store.
  2. Go to addons.mozilla.org, register and create a collection
  3. Add LibRedirect and other extensions to your newly created collection.
  4. On Android in Firefox Nightly, add the plugin from your collection by:
    1. Going to Settings and tap the firefox logo 5 times to enable debug mode.
    2. Go back to settings and click ‘Custom Add-on collection’
    3. Add your user ID from addons.mozilla.org and your collection name
    4. After clicking OK, install the extensions that should now show up.

All this worked for me and I’m very happy with it, even if it meant switching to Firefox from Brave. I’m using opnxng.com instances where available (eg. n.opnxng.com for Twitter, l.opnxng.com for Reddit) since those seem to be fast from Singapore. It’s so nice to use Twitter without constant ads or Reddit without being blocked or redirected to the mobile app!