Most Piped instances are also not working because they use NewPipe Extractor under the hood.

As someone else said in this thread, I have also temporarily switched to FreeTube for Android, because a few of the Invidious instances are still working fine.

The nice thing about the FOSS world is that it’s pretty easy to import subscriptions and other stuff from NewPipe to FreeTube.

I hope this YouTube fuckery is handled soon. I love NewPipe way more every time it successfully deals with the YT weirdos.

I love you brother…

“galactic balls” - I am so going to use this phrase…

Linkedin is Facebook with a necktie and a blazer on.

Agree? (Lol)

Privacy is not binary, it is a spectrum.

You have no fucking idea what a beautiful thing you just wrote.

Not an email service per se, but rather an email-forwarding service, and offers unlimited duck [dot] com aliases with their browser extension and/or mobile app.

I have used their email forwarding service for a while (it is quite decent) before moving over to Firefox Relay.

And if you wsnt a FOSS option for unlimited email aliases - Duckduckgo is a good option.

They were sold to ZippoApps, who specializes in adding crapware to apps.

What else would we expect anyway…

To provide “personal recommendation”, an App would most likely need to profile you, i.e. track your viewing habits and trends, and forecast your areas of interests.

IMO this goes directly against the concept of privacy.

On the brighter side, I think Freetube (local, on windows) and LibreTube (on Android, but needs a piped account) can provide personalized video suggestions, but you yourself should check them out.

Whenever I hear this argument

“Most people are not interesting enough to profile, so they don’t need this XYZ privacy tool…”

I always have this ready as a counter argument

"Only a stupid person would not care about pickpockets just because his wallet does not have much cash - a pickpocket will not ask you how much cash you have before picking your wallet, and even if your wallet turns up to be empty, the pickpocket is not going to be a gentleman and return that to you.

Tracking/profiling for Ads on the internet happen en masse; you are just one of a million data points that build a profile - it doesn’t care whether you as an individual are interesting or not".

and every single one of my friends created accounts and hopped on to chat rooms

FOMO and Privacy usually do not mix well. Unless you can come out of “All my friends are doing it, so it must be cool” mindset, you will find it difficult to appreciate privacy.

You yourself said

and that social life also includes the use of social media apps

Note the keyword “includes”. So Social Life is not JUST social media apps. As someone mentioned already, dating starts best with face to face interactions.

Have you tried the good old phone number exchange, may be to try out texting?

Lastly, if someone wants to understand the real me based on my Instagram profile and activities - I would stay away from that person. YMMV.

However, I would probably trust a provider more if there has been an actual case where police tried getting the logs and the VPN provider gave them nothing

That literally is what happened with Mullvad.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/mullvad-vpn-hit-with-search-warrant-in-attempted-police-raid

Thanks! Appreciate the response.

I guess I should have mentioned in my original post that when I say “exit node”, I specifically mean multi-hop. My bad.

But even for Single hop as well, the world sees that VPN IP as my IP (although they probably don’t know it’s “me”), but

(a) Can my ISP map me with that VPN IP (“my” IP to the world’s eyes) and

(b) Can my ISP see the traffic that’s going out of that VPN IP ? My guess is no, unless that VPN server also uses the same ISP as me (but I’m dumb so feel free to correct me)

This is how my love for uBlock Origin grows day by day…

I used to subscribe to Simplelogin as well - but lately I have been seeing sites/merchants who do not accept the Simplelogin email domains as valid, and I have to put in my personal gmail ID to proceed (e.g. the restaurant POS system “Toasttab”).

I have tried Blokada and RethinkDNS already (I guess DNS66 is no longer maintained - I may be wrong) but finally zeroed in on PersonalDNSFilter.

I don’t see it being mentioned much - but IMHO it is much more lightweight and customizable than the other two.

I point to Cloudflare DoT for DNS, and use the OISD blocklist, and that’s all I need for device-level blocking ( I already use Firefox + uBO in my Android device so I’m good on that front).

https://www.f-droid.org/packages/dnsfilter.android/

This is creepy AF man…

Agreed. This is relatable AF.