Teddit: browse Reddit in a privacy preserving way
Reddit has become a central discussion hub in the past couple of years. The site has received a number of financing rounds in the past decade, the last in February 2019 when it received $300 million based on a €3 billion valuation.
Reddit has intensified advertising and tracking in recent time; some options can be turned off in the Reddit settings, others are based on scripts running on the site. While it is possible to use content blockers to prevent many of these from being effective or loaded at all, some have started to use third-party Reddit clients instead that promise better privacy.
One of the latest ones is Teddit. Teddit is a web frontend, unlike many others that are available only on mobile devices. You can load the site using any web browser to access Reddit's content.
The core difference between Teddit and Reddit is that the former does not track users and that it has no advertising. In fact, you can load Teddit with JavaScript disabled and it will work just as fine.
Teddit loads much faster; you download about 270 Kilobytes to your system to display the site's homepage whereas you will often download more than 20 Megabytes to display Reddit's homepage. The number of requests that Teddit makes to display the site is 30 while Reddit makes about 190 requests.
According to the developer, all requests go through the backend so that clients connected to Teddit never communicate with Reddit directly. Users interested in the code can check it out on Codeberg.
You may access text and media content on Teddit including user comments. A search is provided to find threads or subreddits of interest, and you can check out the posts of individual users.
All account related activity is not available on Teddit. You cannot sign-in to your account, and that means that you won't get a feed of all subscribed subreddit groups or the ability to leave comments, reply to them, or start threads on the site.
Bookmarks are your friend if you need to access certain groups regularly on the site
Closing Words
Teddit is ideal for accessing information on Reddit. Since it is limited to read activity, it is great for accessing Reddit content without being tracked by the site. You can easily replace the URL of any Reddit page by replacing the "r" in Reddit with the "t" in teddit, and the "com" with "net" to load the content on Teddit.
The Reddit URL https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/ becomes https://www.teddit.net/r/firefox on Teddit.
Teddit is not for you if you want to interact with other users on Reddit, but if you require only read access, it may be ideal.
Tip: the option to combine multiple subreddits in the URL to display these all at once is available on Teddit. Check out the guide for details.
There is the danger that the project will go away at one point. If it becomes too popular, it could be shut down because of increasing costs to run it.
For now, it offers an excellent option to access Reddit content in a privacy preserving way. It is also excellent for users who live in countries that have blocked Reddit.
Now You: do you use Reddit? What is your take on the site's development?
assuming there is anything worth reading on reddit…
My take? Reddit, an embarrassment to the internet, is now funded (owned) by Chinese investors. It’s a hotbed of depravity and human misery, and its standards on discussions and its social credit system befit its owners. Reddit is also a greater menace to the internet than anything coming from China.
Everything in America is owned and funded by China. You can thanks Republicans for that. Who opened trade with China? Nixon. Who said “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!?” Reagan.
@uXo
You’re exactly the reason I don’t use Reddit anymore.
Why? Because you dislike the truth? Finishing and winning in Vietnam would’ve prevented the rise of China. Who pulled out? Nixon. A strong East Germany is necessary to prevent the rise of China as a regional Eurasian superpower. Who destroyed the wall? Reagan.
@uXo
No. Because you selectively choose things that happened 50 years ago and completely look the other way when it comes what Obama did for 8 years to let China have so much power over the US.
Your political bias is what made me (and so many others) drop Reddit.
What kind of person thinks that “finishing and winning Vietnam would’ve ‘prevented the rise of China”? You’re telling me that a communist east Germany was necessary to stop the rise of China?
China’s power grew exponentially because of they cheap (slave) labor and how Obama and many other western countries started outsourcing their manufacturing.
Globalism is what made China so powerful in the past 15-10 years.
Where do you people come from?
If you’re going to be arrogant, at least have the knowledge to back it up. Instead you spew absolute nonsense. The most ridiculous nonsense I’ve heard anyone say.
People like you in your little leftist Reddit echo chamber is everything that is wrong with the world.
And because I respect Martin, this will be my only and last post about politics.
China’s growth started many years before Obama became president. Blaming him for stuff that happened before his time makes no sense.
I happen to visit Reddit pages, no account, javascript disabled, and redirected to old.reddit.
i.reddit (old mobile site) is even faster/lighter than old.reddit
https://i.reddit.com/
@Kenny, thanks for the tip : adopted.
In fact after having used a redirect reddit->old.reddit via the excellent ‘Redirector’ Firefox extension, the latest version of another extension, ‘Privacy Redirect’, includes a Reddit redirect option to either old. or i. and I must say I kept .old because habits sometimes blind with the concept that ‘if it works, don’t change it’ which is fundamentally not the wisest attitude. I’m adopting i.reddit on the basis of your comment (faster/lighter than old.reddit) because I’d need a minimum of testing to reamize that by myself.
Thanks!
Thanks Martin for this discovery, with a dark theme available and an old reddit interface, it’s perfect. Already I’m in need of a new toogl dot es which was the same for youtube. All these big websites are getting heavier and heavier, even unbearable, it’s crazy that we don’t have the right to simple and efficient things anymore.
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/irc-server#1-overview
Still works rather well, with suitable client.
‘more than 20 Megabytes’.
All this shows is how bloated the modern web has become. Reddit’s new mobile ish UI doesn’t either help in this regard.
Is there something like that for youtube? Especially something which would disregards the login popups YT is currently filled with?
Check out Invidious, though the YouTube API changes frequently and leads to breaking changes from time to time. There are a number of running instances so try different ones if things don’t quite work as expected:
https://instances.invidio.us/
Search for Vanced (on android).
In addition to what thebrowser said, try Freetube for Windows and Linux. I’ve been using it for over a month – you can browse YouTube, subscribe to channels and read comments. It’s still in beta so there are some bugs.
Try with FreeTube app :)
and NewPipe for Android :)
ublock blocks everything on youtube.com
SmartTube is the best youtube app for the TV. That with a Rasberry Pi I get Zero ads
I agree with all the critical comments! Reddit is a disgrace, and the people who run it are hypocrites and full of themselves.
It’s great that Teddit exists. At the moment though, Teddit doesn’t seem to be noticeably faster or lighter than old.reddit.com on my end. In comparison, Nitter is much much faster & lighter than Twitter.
Another issue is that whilst Reddit provides RSS feeds for all subreddits w/o account login requirement, Teddit doesn’t have a similar feature. For instance, https://teddit.net/r/NoStupidQuestions.rss gives a HTTP 404 error.
The good news is that Teddit RSS feeds are supposedly in the roadmap, although no roll-out date has been indicated:
https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit/issues/3
https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit#roadmap
I’ve never used Reddit as a primary resource but I *have* come across some helpful subreddit threads in general-search-engine results on a variety of subjects (network-attached storage, single-board computers, and the like). I’m not really very familiar with it, apart from noticing that its interface became *markedly* more confusing and “promotion-oriented” maybe … a year or so ago?
At one point last spring I tried to register an account — to participate in those “helpful” subreddits and to say hi to a Ghacks user! — but I ran into showstopping problems, possibly because I had recently switched from NoScript to eMatrix (~uMatrix) and was still an eMatrix beginner. I was pretty sick at the time and didn’t have the energy to pursue it, but even now that I’ve somewhat recovered, I remain wary of threats to my privacy if I become an active participant.
Anyway, for passive Reddit readers like me, Teddit sounds like a good alternative interface, but I’ll have to give old.reddit and i.reddit a try, too. (I’d never heard of those until now. I told you I wasn’t very familiar with Reddit! ;-)
I’m getting invasive ads from teddit. Not work it.
Probably not teddit.net if you are getting ads. Fix your computer dude.
OK, I am messing with this. How do I auto redirect all non-logged in Reddit.com traffic (like from a link in a search engine) to Teddit.net (for privacy)? I also want to have the option to use old.reddit (or something else) on the very rare occasions I want to log in to Reddit.com (because Teddit doesn’t let you log in).
I am currently using both Waterfox Classic and Vivaldi mostly. I think I can do it. In Waterfox I installed the Redirector addon to redirect unlogged in Reddits to Teddits. Then I installed the Privacy Redirect addon to redirect logged in Reddits to old.Reddits.
Can anyone give me the Redirector settings to redirect unlogged in Reddits to Teddits? Or is there a better way for any of this? Max privacy, ease of use, but still have the log in option?
@GoodMeasure, to redirect [*.reddit.com] to [teddit.com] you can,
– either use the new ‘Teddit Redirect’ Firefox extension [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-to-teddit-redirect/] : not sure how it deploys on Waterfox,
– either use the ‘Redirector’ Firefox extension [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/] : not sure how it deploys on Waterfox,
I’ve tried Teddit (resolves to [teddit.net] and not [www.teddit.net] by the way) seems fine, nothing blocked by uBO, no javascript, not even a cookie) and use the ‘Rediector’ extension to redirect my Reddit connexions to Teddit. Because Teddit resolves to [teddit.net] I apply the following rule to include [*.reddit.com] in redirections :
Example URL: [https://www.reddit.com/XXX]
Include pattern: [*://*.reddit.com/*]
Redirect to: [https://teddit.net/$3]
Without the [ ] of course. I have several [old.reddit.com] and [i.reddit.com] bookmarks and they all get flawlessly redirected to Teddit.
About the ‘Teddit Redirect’ Firefox extension : I haven’t tried it so I have no idea if it redirects all [*.reddit.com] or only [www.reddit.com] to Teddit.
Thanks Tom,
I knew I could count on you! After very brief testing, this seems to work great for reading Reddit with greater privacy (hope Teddit lasts for a while!). For the rare times I may want to actually log in to Reddit, maybe I will just have to do that in one of my many other browsers like Vivaldi (or Brave if I can figure out how to turn off Brave’s crazy auto-update behavior).
I will post here if I have any other issues or thoughts.
Thanks again; you are a service to GHack’s readers! I wish I could up-vote you (Martin needs a forum)!
@GoodMeasure,
Fortunately we are many here on Ghacks to provide help and share answers to common or less common problems.
Besides this example and myself I bounce slightly off-topic to point at the general topic of explaining what me are fortunate enough to know.
Some of us know so much, in whatever area of knowledge, that we may pain to either answer or answer with understandable words.
We had a French humorist here in France, Coluche, who would say “When you ask a technocrat an explanation his answer is so complicated that at the end you don’t even understand your own question”.
What I mean, and we’ve debated about this a whole evening here between friends, is that the best relational scheme between he who has the answer and he who lacks it is when the general knowledge level related to the question is thin or at least not excessive : I’m not sure, say Einstein, would have had the right words to explain to a kid the simple area of a circle. This also explains why teachers, especially in school, may or may not have the skill to explain correctly, whetever their own knowledge level which may be high. Explaining requires I guess the ability to understand how the problematic fits in the mind of the ignorant (ignorance in a given area and unrelated to intelligence of course) and, when it comes to topics which are not scientific, to avoid transmitting our certitudes (which shouldn’t be to start with) as a universal truth.
So, to come back to our exchange, I just happened to know little enough to be able to share in an understandable way the little I know and/or have experienced.
I shared? Let’s not forget that the joy of helping often includes an ego’s satisfaction… but that’s another problematic!
Have a nice day :=)
I discovered Teddit around a week ago. I’ve since switched over to using it.
Once the API is opened up, I hope someone develops a mobile app for it. The current site is passable on moble devices, but could be better.
Occasionally I follow a link to reddit hoping to solve a problem but that rarely occurs. I guess if you live in subreddits, it has some value; as an occasional visitor, there’s little.
A big thing for me is the interface, a cluttered mess with topics inside weird boxes and so many hidden comments. There’s always a photo of something stupid just out of sight that takes you on journey to la la land, similar to You Tube’s bait and switch search results.
It’s really, really simple to make a readable, well formatted forum but reddit looks like something from the wayback machine.
Thanks! This is a much better experience for browsing Reddit.
Great to have alternatives. Unfortunately you can’t expand pics/text like you can on reddit. This means to view anything more than just the subject line in Teddit, you have to open the link. I think with work though, Teddit could really make reddit look decent and useful, unlike the mess reddit is now.
I get this message on teddit , so no thanks.
“Ad block detected”
“Please disable your ad blocker and reload the page.”
Teddit is a playfield for sociopaths and nazis to expose and defame other people.