Suggestion: clean up the instances

[tiotrom]

I love this plugin and we use it by default in our TROMjaro linux. I suggest a few clean-up ideas.

Try to only use "instances" for resilience and consistency.

I love when Twitter redirects to any random Nitter. All seem to look quite similar so I don't have to bother with that. I feels like a natural redirect. I have the same feeling with Invidious and Bibliogram. OpenStreetMap is the only one that is not an "instance", but it works differently so all is fine.

Reddit uses a few instances and other websites. I suggest using only the instances. Like libreddit. Works great and is consistent in terms of functionality and design.

As for search engines I suggest only leaving SearX, since there are so many instances of SearX and all work very well. They are based on the same principles of Bibliogram, Nitter, or Invidious.

Twitter to Nitter instances
Youtube to Invidious instances
Instagram to Bibliogram instances
Maps to OpenStreetMaps
Reddit to Libreddit/Teddit
Google to SearX (I also suggest redirecting most search engines to SearX, not just google. Like yahoo, bung, duckduckgo, startpage, etc.)

This way there will be a consistency and resilience built into this addon.

And for the above, would be better to use their official lists of instances to pull them at random from, rather than adding them manually in the addon code itself.

Nitter instances list: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances
Bibliogram instances list: https://git.sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram-docs/tree/master/docs/Instances.md
Invidious instances list: https://github.com/iv-org/documentation/blob/master/Invidious-Instances.md#list-of-public-invidious-instances-sorted-from-oldest-to-newest
Libreddit instances list: https://github.com/spikecodes/libreddit#instances
SearX instances list: https://searx.space/

[miku86]

And for the above, would be better to use their official lists of instances to pull them at random from, rather than adding them manually in the addon code itself.

This is what I thought about too. This would remove the manual labor of keeping the lists up-to-date in the extension. E.g. Invidious Instances has a simple API.

We could also add a fallback, e.g. from the web archive.

Let us know if you are open for PRs.

[Mennaruuk]

Awesome idea!! It’d save so much time tinkering around instances as uptimes change. Configuration settings would be a challenge, though, so I’d have to go to most of these instances and “sync” my settings. Otherwise, a wonderful suggestion, and I think it’d save Mr. Brazell and other developers the headache of constantly removing and adding new instances.

[SimonBrazell]

Let us know if you are open for PRs.

Certainly! I'm limiting the amount of time I spend on this project lately as my other paid work is piling up and deadlines are looming... so any help would be much appreciated!

[zdm505]

There is a searx instance api at https://searx.space/data/instances.json if you'd like to use that instead of specific searx instances.

[xanoni]

There is a searx instance api at https://searx.space/data/instances.json if you'd like to use that instead of specific searx instances.

This would be cool together with the randomization / pool feature.