I DON’T HAVE to tell you that Twitter is, increasingly, an awful place to be, which is why I’ve mostly deserted the site. Now, I’m a lot happier. Yet occasionally, a friend will send me a Twitter link, and I’m curious what it is. The issue: If I open Twitter, I’ll see some alerts, start scrolling, and realise I’m in a terrible mood when I still haven’t stopped scrolling a half-hour later.

That’s why I like Nitter, a free tool that enables you to glance at a tweet, thread, or profile fast without becoming engrossed. In essence, you can substitute any Twitter URL with a Nitter one and the tweet will appear without any advertisements, tracking, or other junk. This is a lightweight, private front-end.

Here is an example of my Twitter profile for context:

Not Operating? Try a Different Instance

Sometimes Nitter is overloaded, which causes error messages like “Tweet not found” for tweets you are aware are there. I advise switching to a separate Nitter “instance” in these situations, which is really just a different server hosting the service. On Nitter’s GitHub website, there is a list of active instances that is updated frequently. Go to your preferred redirecting browser extension or programme, copy one from the nation you are in, or just one with a URL you like. In nearly all cases, this should resolve the issue.

Naturally, there’s always a potential that Twitter will try to block Nitter like they did with other third-party applications. This will be challenging, though, as Nitter just scrapes the Twitter website, whereas other apps relied on an API, and anyone with the necessary knowledge may easily build up their own instance. But, we could always hang out on Mastodon if it stops functioning.