I don't have to tell you that Twitter is, increasingly, an unpleasant place to be, which is why I've mostly quit the site. I'm a lot happier now. Sometimes, though, a friend sends me a Twitter link and I want to know what it is. The problem: If I open Twitter I'm going to notice some notifications, start scrolling, and notice I'm in a bad mood a half hour later when I still haven't stopped scrolling.

That's why I'm a fan of Nitter, a free service that lets you quickly look at a tweet, thread, or profile without getting sucked in. This is a lightweight, private front-end—basically you can replace any Twitter URL with a Nitter one and the tweet will open without any ads, tracking, or other nonsense.

For context, here's how my Twitter profile looks in Twitter:

And here's how it looks with Nitter: