TL;DR: AmputatorBot is a Reddit bot that replies to comments and submissions containing AMP URLS with the direct and original link.
TL;DR: Google’s AMP is a major threat to the Open Web and your privacy.
AMP means “Accelerated Mobile Pages” and is a framework designed to make websites faster. In many cases, it does exactly that. However, it comes at a high price.
AMP is a massive power-grab by Google that threatens the Open Web. AMP was developed in secret alongside some news corporations. By the time it was made, Google’s spec and infrastructure were basically settled and non-negotiable. And now Google is prioritizing AMP pages in their search results. This forces more and more companies to implement AMP, increasing the power of an already huge and monopolistic company.
And while Google is increasing their control over the internet, you’re losing control over your privacy. Google’s entire business model is about collecting as much personal data as possible. AMP is just another tool to do so. As described in Google’s Support article:
When you use the Google AMP Viewer, Google and the publisher that made the AMP page may each collect data about you.
To protect the Open Web and your privacy, u/AmputatorBot provides the direct link (bypassing Google) by replying to Reddit comments and submissions.
u/amputatorbot currently works with a select number of subreddits: r/amputatorbot, r/audio, r/bitcoin, r/chrome, r/degoogle, r/europe, r/gadgets, r/google, r/firefox, r/gaming, r/history, r/movies, r/politicaldiscussion, r/programming, r/robotics, r/security, r/seo, r/tech, r/technology, r/test and r/todayilearned.
Hit me up on Reddit (u/AmputatorBot) with questions or suggestions and I will try to respond ASAP! Thanks for the love!
Unfortunately, not everyone likes u/amputatorbot. It's not allowed on these subreddits: r/android, r/conservative, r/news, r/politics, r/worldnews and r/worldpolitics. Some of these subreddits banned u/AmputatorBot.
The most recent version fixed a recent but annoying bug that would allow for AmputatorBot to reply mutiple times to the same comment or submission. Sorry about that. Check out the entire changelog here.
AmputatorBot is a really important project for me and I want to spend as much time and resources into accomplishing it's goal: to make people aware of the dark side of AMP and to give people a choice. You can support the project in two ways:
If you have some spare change laying around, you could make a small donation. You can donate via PayPal by clicking on this link: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=EU6ZFKTVT9VH2&source=url. It costs €8.26 per month to host the bot 24/7. You can fill in any amount of money, but don't feel obligated to donate much, I'm just trying to cover the costs.
If you have some spare time laying around, please give me feedback, critism or create a pull request! Are you aware of a sub where a lot of AMPs are shared and where bots are allowed? Let me know! You can reply to this post or send me (u/Killed_Mufasa) a DM via Reddit.
Thanks for the tremendous support you've given me and u/AmputatorBot <3