this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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18
Shoelace: Alternative frontend for Instagram's Threads (sr.ht)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/9960845

Hello Lemmy! Yesterday I released the first version of an alternative frontend for Threads: Shoelace. It allows for fetching posts and profiles from Threads without the need of any browser-side JavaScript. It's written in Rust, and powered by the spools library, which was co-developed between me and my girlfriend. Here's a quick preview:

A screenshot of Shoelace's homepage, showing the logo on top, the title "Shoelace", the subtitle "an alternative frontend for Threads", an input bar with the tooltip "Jump to a profile...", and at the bottom three links: "hub", "donate", and "v0.1".

Mark Zuckerberg's profile on Shoelace, showing three posts: One showcasing columns on the official Threads frontend, another congratulating himself for 1.2M+ downloads in his company's new AI software, and the glimpse of a post related to the "metaverse" Post by münecat on Shoelace, announcing the release of a video essay criticizing the field of evolutionary psychology

The official public instance (at least for now) is located at https://shoelace.mint.lgbt/, if y'all wanna try it out. There's also instructions to deploy it inside the docs you can find in the README. Hope y'all enjoy it!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

These kinds of websites are generally nicknamed alternative frontends

Yeah, the problem with that is that frontends are often interactive.

Mastodon could be considered an alternative frontend for Threads as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

However, with Mastodon you have to deal with Meta collecting data from your profile, including any relations such as likes and follows. Furthermore, not all accounts from Threads have Fediverse integration enabled, and those who do are limited to the US, Canada, and Japan. This is more anonymous and functional than that. I also plan to add RSS support soon, to have an equivalent to following someone.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I know that. I think the problem is, specifically as it pertains to Threads, is that "alternative frontend" can mean different things. Moshidon is an "alternative frontend" for Mastodon. The backend is all the same. So if I were to be advertising this project, I would be making sure to make that distinction somehow. Probably by including "private" somewhere in the title.

Regardless, does this allow you to generate a personal feed or is it just supposed to be a redirect like Nitter?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You're right. I was calling it a private frontend when referring to it beforehand, and the repo description states it, but I looked at other projects and they used the phrase "alternative", so I switched to it, since that's the common term.

For now it doesn't have personal feed functionality, but if a lot of people want that I may be able to implement it similarly to how CloudTube does. As in, generate a secret, store it in a cookie, and from there save user data. For now though, I want to prioritize RSS subscriptions.