Subject: Re: bug#62981: Twitter redirect

From: Mark H Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2023 18:09:50 -0400

Hi Jeremie,

Jeremie King <[email-masked]> writes:

> Version 102.9.0esr (64-bit)
> Clean install from Fedora 37 repos
>
> Problem: Twitter is redirecting to inappropriate websites. It looks
> like maybe there was something that would redirect users to nitter
> (why would that be appropriate anyway, the browser should not be
> interfering with my choice of URL) and maybe the old link doesn't work
> anymore? It looks like it's one of those parked URLs that transfers to
> multiple domains for ad revenue.

This behavior is caused by the "Privacy Redirect" addon, which is
bundled with IceCat but can be easily disabled by visiting the
<about:addons> page.  It includes a built-in list of Nitter instances to
redirect to, here:

  https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuzilla.git/tree/data/extensions/%7bb7f9d2cd-d772-4302-8c3f-eb941af36f76%7d/assets/javascripts/remove-twitter-sw.js

Perhaps that list is now out-of-date and includes some URLs that are no
longer running Nitter.

> How disappointing! I would love to switch from firefox to ice
> cat... but this is nefarious behavior!

I'm sorry that you consider it nefarious.  I can understand why you feel
that way, but here's another point of view: it has become very common
for news articles and other web pages to include embedded tweets.  When
you visit one of those pages with most web browsers, Twitter finds out
that you visited that page and gets to run its own Javascript code on
your web browser regardless of your wishes.  If you block that
Javascript code from running, you simply don't see the embedded tweets,
which may make it hard to understand the article you're trying to read.
Ditto for YouTube and Instagram and others.

Privacy Redirect is a tool to help address this issue.

If you disagree that Privacy Redirect should be included with IceCat,
feel free to start a discussion about it on our mailing lists.
gnuzilla-dev might be a good choice for such a discussion.

For the record, I was not actually the person who decided to add Privacy
Redirect as a bundled addon to IceCat, so I'm not heavily invested in
keeping it.  I'm sympathetic to the reasons for including it, but I'm
also sympathetic to your position.  If you raise the issue, I pledge to
listen with an open mind.  I'd also like to hear from Rubèn, who added
this extension to IceCat in the first place.

       Regards,
         Mark