Parasitter

Twitter via RSS with privacy

Parasitter allows you to follow your favorite Twitter accounts with full privacy. Parasitter uses Nitter's rss feed in order to gather the latest tweets from your favourite accounts and builds a twitter-like feed so you can read them. We will never connect you to Twitter so your privacy is safe when using Parasitter. Parasitter is written in Python and Flask and uses Semantic-UI as its CSS framework.

Parasitter doesn't try to compete with Nitter. It is a complement of it, as it beneficiates from it. Parasitter is not a Twitter viewer as Nitter is. Main difference between Parasitter and Nitter, apart from UI, is that Parasitter allows you to follow users, save Tweets and set up some configuration for your feed.

Parasitter is possible thanks to several open-source projects that are listed on the Powered by section. Make sure to check out those awesome projects!

Index:

• Features
• Security
• Privacy
• Self hosting
  • Local
  • Update
  • Server
• Powered by

Features:

• No JavaScript.
• 0 connections to Twitter.
• Uses RSS feeds (could be expanded to more social networks)
• Follow Twitter accounts.
• Save your favourite Tweets. (Coming soon)
• Tor-friendly.
• Terminal-friendly.
• Easy 1 minute self-hosting deploy.
• No need for domain, runs locally.
• And many more to come.

Security

Only the hash of your password is stored on the database. Also no personal information of any kind is kept on the app itself, if a hacker gets access to it only thing they could do would be to follow/unfollow some accounts.

I always recommend self-hosting, as you will be the only person with access to the data.

Privacy

Parasitter cares about your privacy, and for this it will never make any connection to Twitter. We use Nitter's rss feed to fetch all the tweets from your followed users. Images are also loaded from nitter. If you want to use a specific Nitter instance you can replace it on the file app/routes.py.

It is always recommended to set up a self-hosted instance. It is quite easy and conveninent and will give you full control over your data. The only data that is stored on the Database is:

• Hash of the password
• Username
• Email (we won't send you any mails so you can make up the mail) - This is for future versions.
• List of followed users
• List of saved posts

Self hosting

Local

You don't need a server to run Parasitter. You can run it on your computer locally and own your (little) data. The installation process is done on a GNU/Linux environment, but should be pretty similar on other platforms.

1. Install python3, pip3, python3-venv (optional) and git.

2. Clone this repository:

   • git clone https://github.com/pluja/Parasitter.git

3. Navigate to the project folder:

   • cd Parasitter

4. [Optional] Prepare a virtual environment and activate it:

   Python lets you create virtual environments. This allows you to avoid installing all the pip packages on your system.
   If you don't mind about that, you can jump to step 5. and ignore everything about "[env]".

   • python3 -m venv venv
   • source venv/bin/activate

   Now you are inside of the virtual environment for python. All instructions wiht [env] indicate that must be done inside the env if you decided to create one. From now on, you will always need to start the application from within the virtual env.

5. [env] Update pip

   • pip3 install --upgrade pip

6. [env] Install the required libraries:

   • pip3 install -r requirements.txt

     Use sudo or, preferably --user, if not working.

7. [env] Initialize and prepare the database.

   • flask db init
   • flask db migrate
   • flask db upgrade

8. [env] Run the application.

   • flask run

9. Go to "http://localhost:5000/" and enjoy.

Updating to new versions:

NOTE: Updating will never delete your database, your following list will not be erased.

1. Navigate to the git repository (the one you cloned when installing).

2. Pull new changes:

   • git pull

3. Install new packages (if any):

   • pip install -r requirements.txt

   It may be that there are no new packages to install. In that case, all requirements will be satisfied.

4. [opt] This next step is only needed if you are running a version previous to 15.07.2020. Then you will need to update the database:

   • flask db migrate
   • flask db upgrade

5. Done! You are on latest version.

See CHANGELOG for a list of changes.

Server

Another option is to host a Parasitter server so you can access it from anywhere or give access to your beloved friends/community. Installation is a little bit more complex than the local, but should be easy if you follow the steps.

WARNING: This section is under construction.

Installing the app:

1. Install base dependencies:
   • sudo apt-get -y update
   • sudo apt-get -y install python3 python3-venv python3-dev
   • sudo apt-get -y install mysql-server postfix supervisor nginx git

   Installation of MySQL will require you to enter a database root password.

2. Install the application:
   • git clone https://github.com/pluja/Parasitter.git
   • cd Parasitter
3. Prepare the environment:
   • python3 -m venv venv
   • source venv/bin/activate
   • (venv) $ pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Install deployment packages:
   • (venv) pip install gunicorn pymysql
5. Edit the .env SECRET_KEY:
   • nano .env

   This will open an editor. Make sure to change the SECRET_KEY to a string of your like. Make it random and long enough.

6. Set up FLASK_APP environment variable:
   • echo "export FLASK_APP=parasitter.py" >> ~/.profile

Database configuration:

1. Enter the MySQL command prompt:
   • mysql -u root -p

   It will prompt for the "root" password. This password is the one you set on the MySQL installation.

2. Create the database:
   • mysql> create database parasitter character set utf8 collate utf8_bin;
   • mysql> create user 'parasitter'@'localhost' identified by '<db-password>';

   Replace <db-password> as the password for the database parasitter user. This one needs to match the password set on the DATABASE_URL in the .env file (See Step 5 of App installation)

   • mysql> grant all privileges on parasitter.* to 'parasitter'@'localhost';
   • mysql> flush privileges;
   • mysql> quit;
3. Upgrade the database:
   • (venv) flask db upgrade

TO BE CONTINUED!

Powered by:

• Nitter
• Flask
• SQLAlchemy
• Semantic-UI
• requests-futures
• microblog