TheProtagonist

I’m on a Mac, so I have to wait for the FreeTube community to fix the problems getting imposed by Google that is putting all it’s efforts in further enshittification of the YouTube API as it seems.

I am not even so much concerned about Google / YT getting my IP (by using a VPN), but I would only watch it though an alternative ad-blocking frontend (like Invidious, Piped, FreeTube) and not the standard YT website or app.

None of my previously used alternative apps / frontends seems to be working anymore (at least that’s my recent experience). Not sure what the difference to (Android) apps, that apparently still work (NewPipe, PipePipe) actually is, but it seems that these apps are the only remaining alternative frontends.

I have no Android, so sadly I cannot test / use this setup.

Is this even possible? My impression is that nowadays Google, whenever they have the impression that a connection to YouTube may been proxied, require a sign-in to prove that "“you are no bot” (I wonder which bots are watching YT videos), but in fact to avoid access via VPN or proxying via Invidious or Piped.

That’s the reason why YouTube is essentially dead for me now.

Same here. I was a uMatrix user for a long time and I was astonished sometimes how bloated some sites were with scripts and tracking domains. Nowadays I mostly use Edge on my work machine which is somehow ad-free but all sites work.

Firefox with uBlock / uMatrix needed often too much fine tuning to make sites work properly.

Me neither, but I guess the tracking will also take place when you just browse the internet and visit websites, that have Google Ad Tracking technologies implemented (which could be the majority of websites). Tracking and Ad-Blockers like uBlock might help a bit, though.

The specifics are complex—these are the algorithms that ingest all the data signals you give off when browsing the internet on any device, some based on who you are—device, IP and credential identifiers, but also the sites you visit and apps you use as a map to be followed and analyzed.

No one is being forced to use Chrome.

Although I doubt that Signal would leave the EU (or that this dangerous regulation would even become something that could ever be applied in practice), SimpleX looks very promising as a possible alternative.

However, it would also mean that you have to convince all your contacts to make the move, too - which was already difficult when I told them to install Signal additionally to WhatsApp, which is virtually on almost every device.

AI is the solution to all our problems… /s

I use Piped, too. But recently it became really slow and unreliable for me. I am using it through Yattee with the default API.

“Privacy-focused YouTube channels” - sounds like a contradiction…

This is why I disconnect my machines from the network while in sleep mode (I use only wired connections). For me it’s perfectly sufficient if they update the apps while I use them.

So Google will not let me log in to my account unless I provide them my phone number? But at the same time they require a regular log in (at least once a year or every two years), so your account doesn’t get deleted?

I have an old Gmail account, I don’t use anymore, but it’s tied to my name, so I wouldn’t want someone else to use it at some point. I thinks there’s one email client that regularly connects to that account. I hope that will be sufficient to preserve it, but I would not feel comfortable giving them my phone number, when I have no other links to Google services (this may be different, if you use an Android phone anyway).

That’s no surprise to me. Ads are Google’s core business. Why should they support technologies that potentially limit their profits?

I guess I use the default one (piped.kavin.rocks).

I’m a big fan of Piped / Yattee, but I had a lot of problems recently, because most videos won’t load. Also privacy redirectors that redirect YouTube URLs to Piped don’t work anymore, because the video won’t load. So I had to watch a couple of videos directly on YT recently.

Possible that YT pushed some API changes or such, which makes it difficult for the privacy proxies to work. Don’t know, but IMHO it used to work much better in the past.

That’s what I meant to say, that your scenario is unlikely in my case.

Thanks for pointing me to this setting. There are two profiles, one is my personal VPN, which I use for device-wide ad-blocking (AdGuard Pro), another one is the MDM management profile. The latter one consists of a list of managed Microsoft apps (e.g. Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, etc.) and various (device) certificates. I guess nothing to be concerned about.

I am actually running AdGuard Pro with a custom DNS on that device.

That could be possible, I don’t know. I am not visiting any adult or otherwise inappropriate sites on that phone, but I do a lot of Reddit, Lemmy, Mastodon stuff in my free time. But it was this way for the past 10 years and I never had any problems. Sometimes I think about buying i private phone, but it seems kinda stupid to have two of these devices.