It seems like the main benefit of such frontends is the lack of trackers and fingerprinting, but what if the browser, like Firefox, already did that with UBlock Origin and fingerprinting protection?
- Adblockers aren’t perfect, and unless you’re running an ultra-paranoid uMatrix setup, you’re likely running some scripts you don’t want to.
- Cookies, even “”“necessary”“” first party ones, can be used for tracking.
- Unless you use reddit’s old. subdomain (which they might kill at any moment), reddit’s and youtube’s webclients are bloated beyond belief.
- Browsers have far more ways to fingerprint you than some api calls or webscraping over tcp on a 3rd party client; especially with javascript enabled.
- Webclients are often ugly and painful to use.
- You can completely avoid the algorithm.
- Due to the relative obscurity, you can avoid the arms race between projects like uBlock and social media platforms. youtube-dl got some legal flak, but yt-dlp is continuing its legacy.