ROW, a Readable filter for the web. Put distance between your hardware and the trackers.
Use ROW when you want to:
- do a simple search, e.g. "why is the sky blue"
- read an article, e.g. from a newspaper, blog, Wikipedia, Medium, etc.
- be adventurous and try a text only version of your favourite site
Tips upfront:
- If the text is too small, adjust your browser zoom, ROW is styled simply and for all browser types.
- Use a reader app or reading mode if you want more complex styles! The point of ROW is mainly to prevent tracking.
ROW is a little Node.js server which makes search and web page requests on your behalf, and spits back just the text and links (plus optionally images and videos, though these are off by default). It acts as a proxy.
The server attempts to remove all possible tracking mechanisms while keeping text content, if possible. Web pages served back to your browser will be extremely clean and supremely minimal, like the first web page you made in pure HTML.
Cookies, JavaScript and images are not loaded even on the server (a virtual DOM is contructed), so most tracking methods will fail instantly. If any do get through they will only be able to track a little server in the cloud, mixed in with the usage of multiple people. There will be some exceptions.
It's basic and simple to use, and appropriate if you're just interested in the text. There are a few options but these are kept to an absolute minimum.
Row, row, row your browser
Gently up the stream.
Merrily, merrily merrily, merrily,
Now your page is clean.
Note, this image is served by ROW service (or GitHub if viewing readme there)
This service applies Mozilla's Readability standalone library to extract article formatted text. It will generally only work with simple pages or standard articles, although it works on a lot more webpages than I was expecting.
To use it, you supply search terms or a URL using the handy form on the home page, or more technically as a query parameter q to the server endpoint /search or /url. There are some options also, detailed below.
All links are prepended with the ROW server address so clicking them routes them back through the service, keeping you protected.
Pages are cleaned using DOMPurify before creating a virtual DOM using JSDOM, and the results are passed into the Readability code to generate an article. We do this even for search results from Duck Duck Go.
URLs are cleaned of tracking, marketing and other extraneous query parameters to reduce the trackable surface of queried resources. This process is applied internally and does not remove them from the query paramater URL given (i.e. you will not see them removed from the browser bar, but they are stripped before actual contact with remote server).
Additionally images, embeds and iframes are explicitly blocked, and there's also a HTML tag whitelist that's applied. Options are togglable and full restriction is on by default (if no options provided). All options are provided by URL query parameters to keep all communication highly visible and usage completely stateless.
You'll see a footer with these options appended to the page rendering where available. There is also the option to "exit" ROW, that is, to visit the URL directly with your browser, totally leaving the service. This will be necessary if ROW fails to render it well enough.
The only form elements allowed are the search and go to URL bars that appear on this page and are added to the search page results at the top.
NEW: Media Bias/Fact Check article publisher search integration into article metadata header section if publisher can be detected. Continues to route through ROW and is a separate link, MB/FC is not queries automatically.
#### Adapters
Some webpages will need an additional click through or some custom webpage cleaning to make it work with the Readability transformer. The following is a list of supported adapters:
- DuckDuckGo: clean results for instant answers and "did you mean" type page headers that disrupt readability processing
- retro WWW feel
- looks great in Lynx terminal browser
It's clear that web pages have lost the run of themselves, and browsers have failed to step in decisively. All major browsers (yes, even "privacy first" Firefox) are implicitly committed to facilitating any number of tracking methods on your machine by supporting current web conventions. See below for a summary of some examples of what ROW blocks.
We need to get to a web where acceptance of the advertisers bottom line is not traded in for providing rich media experiences and modern functionality. Every time you are forced to accept cookies just to use a site (or have given up in the face of the new pop up epidemic and just accept everything, as I imagine many do) you are given a false choice. ROW is an experiment in rejecting that false choice. It also protects you against the powerful and useful, but ultimately ungoverned power of the JavaScript engine, which is most often not a choice at all.
Where we find ourselves today is downloading web apps when all we want is information. No longer is content just styled and presented in a nice way, as often even the most static of content is transmitted with a huge amount of active code. For example, the news article you want to read (and see images and perhaps a video of) comes overstuffed with code from dozens of 3rd party sources, showing ads, tracking you, wasting your bandwidth and processing power, and generally getting in the way.
Until we get to a better future, with web apps that are actually trustable, with code that is independently reviewed and protected at a fundamental level, while still providing rich content experiences, we'll have ROW and projects like it.
ROW argues that simple text-based information can happily exist as lightly formatted text and nothing more.
If you are anything like me, a significant proportion of your web usage is looking up something interesting, reading something topical, checking a fact or the state of some item of interest, and reading the news.
When using ROW you can say goodbye to:
- Cookie tracking, (3rd party, 1st party, all the parties) the main way advertisers and other surveillers track you, not to mention the annoying cookie acceptance overlays and click-throughs
- Tracking pixels, i.e. loading secret images that track you (in ROW images are turned off by default, but can be optionally enabled)
- IP tracking. ROW acts as a proxy, hiding your IP (as long as images and videos are off)
- JavsScript, as it provides many methods of tracking. In ROW scripts are never run (which does break some web pages rendering)
- Device fingerprinting, i.e. querying the browser for device info (or using iOS or Android ads IDs) to build a unique device fingerprint which is paired with a personally identifying profile. Blocked as JavaScript is removed and HTTP request headers not transmitted via the proxy.
- Cryptominers. Again, no JavaScript will be run on your machine at all, even will full options turned on.
- Query parameter tracking, often used for referrals (most broadly of the
UTMfamily). All known tracking parameters are always removed before querying the web page.
As a downside you can also say goodbye to cool graphics, animations, annoying custom scroll intertia effects, design choices of any kind other than my terrible CSS (sorry), input forms, logging in, logging out, messaging. But you can still have gifs, if you want. ROW is concerned with the text only.
Known tracking exceptions:
- Short-links and other referral links will still inform trackers the links were used. These are common when getting sharing links or from links provided in newsletters and mailing lists, or even intra-site click links. If a way is known to unroll these they can be added in an adapter on a per-site basis.
- Did I miss something? Let me know
As ROW is essentially Firefox's Readability mode with additional cleaning on top of a proxy, the best results come from articles and search results.
It will not work at all for:
- anything you have to log in to, ROW is stateless, doesn't use scripts, cookies or local storage
- anything with forms or any interactivity of any sort, bar hyperlinks
- videos, except gifs (which as we all know are technically not videos!), i.e. YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
- access of any non HTML based resource, such as an audio file, direct image URL, etc.
I cannot formally guarantee that ROW will protect you from tracking, but it is an experimental tool to further that goal. I also cannot guarantee that it is legal in your area, though I see no reason why it should not be. Use it at your own risk, of course, just like anything else.
There is a permanent development deployment currently sitting at https://row.onl and hosted by OpeNode which is open for anyone to use. I use it myself. Of course if you use it I (or employees of OpeNode) could see your IP address and what you're using it for. I don't want to know what you look at and don't intend to check, but you'd be foolish to rule it out, you don't know me.
So, you are encouraged to set up your own little server, it's pretty straight forward to do and there's some info on how to do it further below. The more people using a single server the better, but up to a point as no server should have too much data logged by the service. I'm not sure what the ideal balance point is but you should assume your usage is being monitored by the service, although that should not translate into advertising tracking.
I quote from their URL params info page:
[...] However, if using them [parameters] for that purpose or any other beyond individual use (e.g. for apps/extensions), please do not remove our branding (ko, kr params etc.) or advertising (k1, k4 params etc.) as we have contracts in place that we would be violating if you did so.
I have removed both in the search options used in ROW, for obvious reasons. Arguably they could remain as it would only be tracking the ROW server, however I have removed them since it's possible and this is an experiment in maximum anti-tracking.
I may change them in the future if it seems wise to do so, but for now branding and tracking is off.
There are some who will argue that it is ethically wrong to block cookies as there is an implicit (or even explicit) contract to allow tracking in exchange for viewing content. In my opinion that's a bad deal. If, as a website, you want to restrict your content, by all means do so. You cannot fault someone querying a resource on a free and open channel in a reasonable manner if you provide it.
There are also grounds to argue that services like ROW obstruct the ability of sites to manage their GDPR responsibilities to visitors. As far as I know, any resource on the web that can be fetched is fair game to see as it is, and if no personal data is transferred to them in this fetch, there is no responsibility on their part to manage any data on fetchers. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
Hopefully initiatives like ROW will put pressure on web service providers to look into alternative content access and distrubtion models. Tracking isn't worth it, and as I'm showing, is circumventable.
Two queries are possible, search and URL proxy. Both use the ?q=%s query parameter format which is standard across the web.
Search uses Duck Duck Go to fetch results, which are then cleaned, like all proxied traffic.
It also supports several "bangs". The following bangs are supported:
!ddg, search directly on Duck Duck Go, leaving the service!google, search directly on Google.com, leaving the service!url, go to URL directly, staying in the service
Example:
!google does google really track you everywhere
brings you right to Google.com search.
Or:
!url https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/
Will not search but will use ROW on the given URL.
There's nothing fancy about the URL proxy, just pass the URL as a query parameter to the /url endpoint, and make sure it's encoded. You can also use the URL entry box on index page, or the !url bang in a search query.
Exmaple:
https://row.onl/url?q=https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/
There are four options, which can be included as query parameters, or toggled by click the hyperlinks on any page footer (except index)
imgs: show images (=1) or not (=-1)embeds: show embedded content (=1) or not (=-1)iframes: show iframes (=1) or not (=-1)othertags: show other non-whitelisted HTML tags (=1) or not (=-1)theme: display using light theme (=1) or dark (=2)
Modern browsers provide search in the browser bar, where users used to only be allowed to enter in URLs. Most browsers are set to use Google as their default search engine but this can be configured in many cases to use ROW search. It is a little effort but it could be worth it for you. Don't forget that you can use the bangs described above to get the most out of this feature.
You will usually have to input the search engine URL, so type in the following URL if prompted:
https://row.onl/search?q=%s
Make sure to replace your search engine hostname if you're using your own deployment.
Chrome on desktop allows you to change the search engine in Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines
Here you can add a new search engine in the Other search engines area by clicking the Add button, and then selecting it as your choisen search engine back in Settings > Search engine
Firefox on desktop does not natively support changing the search engine to a non-standard search engine, but you can achieve it by using the "Add custom search engine" add-on, or similar.
Note also that Firefox on desktop supports a kind of search engine change "bang" using the at symbol @ with the search engine name, so you don't need to use !ddg on Firefox desktop, you could use @ddg to search Duck Duck Go without routing through ROW. This is not supported on Firefox mobile or any Chrome version.
Chrome on mobile does not let you input a custom search engine, but they do have a curious feature which makes it posisble to add ROW.
If you visited the ROW homepage (https://row.onl/ in my deployment for example) recently it will appear in the set search engine settings, which can see set at the Settings > Search engine screen, under the Recently Visited heading.
This works because of the OpenSearch description resource which is make available to browsers who visit the main page and lets them know that ROW supports the OpenSearch standard.
Firefox on mobile supports setting a custom search engine in Settings > Search > Search engine, where you can Add another search engine by pressing that button and entering in the relevant details.
- All links on ROW formatted pages will also route back through ROW, giving you seemless usage.
Like most simple Node.js servers you can get it up and running with the following two commands:
npm install
node server.js
This will install the NPM packages this project relies on (you must have npm installed) and then run the server.js script using node, which you also must have installed.
You'll see something like Node app is running on port 5000, so go to your browser and visit localhost:5000 in that case.
The Docker files are set up to be already configured for OpeNode, but you can run it anywhere where Node.js is supported, it's a pretty simple little server.
To use OpeNode, set up an application and simply deploy using the CLI
openode deploy
Contributions are most welcome. I expect I will get this project to a passable state and leave it as is for posterity, but it would be great also if people built on it, especially in the following ways:
- Come up with clean, simple and eye pleasing CSS to make it nice to look at. I've made a best effort at this but I'm not a designer.
- Style the search bars and buttons, currently they look pretty rough.
- Add adapters for allow specific sites to work which have a click through (such as "accept" these cookies).
- Report any non working sites for me and others to check for solutions to rendering issues.
Head on over to the issues page to create one and get involved.
If you have code, create a PR. Don't forget to KISS.
The "logo" for ROW is the Canoe emoji graphic by Jonas Dunkel, included as part of the OpenMoji project and is protected under CC BY-SA 4.0, used here under that license.
Written to prove a point... I mean proof of concept! You can get a lot out of just text. Enjoy the simple life.