Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
If you have "throwaway" phone, you could use that too. Make fake accounts and let them gather all they want from those, just keep in mind to maintain the separation.
Personally I have always had multiple accounts and names on internet so even having google account feels like they get only part of me. Though even then its like chain on my neck, as I have to dread them banning me for some crazy or not crazy reason. You are correct in not wanting to have one.
You are from a third world country; sharing device with 30 other people/accounts. Google will advertise to all 30 of you.
Grayjay still works and is being actively maintained. They also support other platforms like PeerTube and Odysee, which you can easily enable.
Hasn't worked for me for several months. Not with a VPN anyway.
I've noticed that Google is getting more and more aggressive with VPNs. It won't let me load anything on VPN without logging in. This applies to third-party tools like yt-dlp too.
This probably depends on your VPN provider. Perhaps I can make a throwaway google account just to get it to stfu? I don't know how hard it is to make a semi-anonymous Google account nowadays.
Requires a phone nunber, at least most of the time
Depends on how you sign up. If you sign up with Gmail or Google TV they do not, last I checked.
Interesting, will try that next time. Maybe from a coffee shop without a VPN to have a better chance
I use ProtonVPN* (paid) and using North American servers works most of the time. I also use secure core through Switzerland first befote it goes to the NA servers.
I use Fennec + u Block Origin to watch youtube, works flawlessly 99% of the time.
*Although Proton has a recent controversy with one of its board members, Andy Yen, regarding his opinions on US politics.
Grayjay is great and I look forward to some bug fixes in the next updates. Unfortunately, I also get YT blocking errors mostly when using a VPN (Proton). A side note, for some reason I can't paste links into the search bar, this kind of throws my game off when switching from Freetube or other YT links.
Do you use free tier or paid proton VPN? I am evaluating different VPN options and appreciate the data points
They released an update yesterday. If that doesn't fix it, please report your issues
Thanks for the heads up. I signed up for Futo Chat on Zulip and realized I didn't mention the problem was on my desktop client (MacOS). However, through your link, I found the update for Android. I'm happy with it, so cheers for that. For those interested, the Grayjay announcement on the 17th was: "Hey everyone, we've been aware of playback issues for YouTube and have been working hard to fix them. This fix is now released on the stable channel (and requires an app update). We are aware that age-restricted, controversial videos, or other videos requiring login may not yet work." We will work on this next week. The desktop release required for this fix will also be available next week. Here is the change log for the new mobile version 281:"
Edit: getting a UMP redirect fail issue on Android and can't play YT. When turning off my VPN, it seems to have fixed the issue. (perhaps temporarily)
Did it work for you? Didn't work for me but it seems to have worked for most people.
Nope, I'm getting the UMP redirect fail issue here.
Still get blocked if on a VPN, have to switch servers, often countries. I usually give up and have it download it (by adding to a playlist that I set to download for auto retries). Then watch it when it's available offline
PipePipe is on F-Droid
FreeTube v0.22.1-nightly-5404 Beta with the Local API is working fine for me. Try the latest nightly build.
Thank you, this fixed FreeTube for me. Guess official releases are too slow now or maybe YouTube is attacking the official release specifically
I've been having issues with NewPipe as of late. I have to keep changing my VPN server until one works
Newpipe has a critical bug in its recent version as reported here https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/11934.
Last time I checked, there is no official acknowledgment from the devs yet.
You can try tubular or previous version of the newpipe.
i have to clear cache and switch vpn servers for basically every other video on np
One trick is going to ghostarchive.org and sticking the link in there.
Another is using yt-dlp
Both of these are future-proof because you will end up with the data hoarded off of their server.
Noticed errors in newpipe recently too. Did you try Firefox with ublock? In mobile u can enable background something too.
Yeah I tried it with fennac
I'm not 100% certain if it's fully private, but I've been using a VPN and LibreWolf + uBlock Origin. I watch what I want to and reset my browsing session when I'm done.
From what I've gathered recently, the Mullvad browser left unmodified and combined with a VPN is one of the most private browsers you can use, short of using Tor.
even if you find a method.. whats your exit strategy? its inevitable that you will be unable to use it in the near future without an account, just like facebook.
Honestly: books and PeerTube.
whats your exit strategy?
books
You got any good recommendations for an e-reader?
I have a Boox for when I want a bigger screen, and a Hisense touch (I think that’s the model). I like them both a lot. The Hisense device is also a HiFi audio player which is nice.
I like Odysee but it's kinda controversial due to its conspiracy theories and stuff
Libretube with HLS experimental on. You need to refresh VPN location constantly if you use one.
Invidious still works very well, however it is an ongoing battle with YouTube. They ban an instance and the instance's ban evasion routine tries again, or in the case of IP range bans migrates to another provider and the game goes on. Despite this, it is the only way I know of to access YouTube relatively pain free using a public VPN provider. By now YouTube has blocked a lot of public VPN IPs. To me, this advantage makes it worth it.
The best way to keep up with which instances are currently functional is via the Invidious Matrix room, https://matrix.to/#/#invidious:matrix.org. You can also check the instances list https://instances.invidious.io/ but it may get out of date sometimes.
Finally, I've found the best way to use Invidious is via FreeTube (Linux) or Clipious (Android).
Shouldn't you be able to access YT without a Google account? So uBO correctly configured (at least on Firefox) should do a lot already. Maybe sharing with us what specific issues you're facing or what you want to be able to do may help you getting more specific solutions?
They are currently A/B testing blocking access to videos without an account. That's why some people are getting errors. It's likely that it will be rolled out to everyone in the future.
Oh, thx for the clarification. That certainly would not help.
It looks to me like Google has that idea they own their viewership and can treat them like trash if they fancy doing so. The not too distant future will tell us if they were right or not.
What I can say is that they don't own me. I was a Premium subscriber fir years (I can afford it and I want to support creators) but I cancelled the day they became serious against ad-blockers. For me, it was not about them forcing people to pay a sub. It never was. It was about destroying the free Web and making it a privately-owned something a few corporations would then be able to do what the fuck they wanted with. I certainly did not want to give them a cent more of my money to achieve that.
Well, login gating worked for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (it's not dead yet despite some people's claims). We here are tiny minority of social media users.
Yep, you're right. I tend to forget that... way too often. [Sad face]
that's fun because some of my teachers like to upload their course material to youtube...
They'll tell you to make an account, what's the big deal, everyone uses Google?
And when you tell them how insane it is to lock access to course material behind a Google account, they'll stare at you blankly.
Using Freetube via a personal VPS - never had a problem, maybe because the provider is smaller. Newpipe, however, did have trouble - page had to be reloaded several times before the video showed up. Now trying Pipepipe instead and not seen it repeat yet.
I use Fennec (aka: Firefox minus the Google Play shenanigans) + uBlock Origin, over a VPN
Works 99% of the time (gotta keep the uBlock Origin filters up to date)
If you get a "Sign in to prove you're not a bot", just keep switching servers until it works. Use paid VPNs, because Free VPN IPs are more likely to be flagged.
Use the similar setup, RSS+Fennec+uBO with the hard mode ( I block sign-in related domains with it)
Freetube + socks5 mullvad : works 100% of the time
Newpipe on mullvad, sometimes I have to cycle VPN endpoints if the bot detection gets triggered.