Hi, I wanted to ask if you watch YouTube content related to many of your different interests? If so, I’m curious how do you feel about it privacy-wise? I used to spend a lot of time on YT and I realized it might know almost everything about me - my hobbies, lifestyle, political opinions, beliefs, not to mention behavioral patterns and more. And I think it’s a common case for people. Do you think there are any reasons to be concerned about this? Or, if it depends on personal preference, are you concerned about it?
Also, I may be paranoid, but do you feel comfortable watching a lot of privacy- and anonymity-related content on YT? For my example, I have been watching privacy channels regularly, but when I started to learn about Monero, I felt that it’s no longer something I would like YT to know about me, or at least combined with the rest.
Yes, you’re right to be concerned about Youtube profiling.
I would suggest to use a frontend to avoid having an account being tied to your activity on the platform.
Freetube is what I personally prefer.
Any company having your entire life story saved on their servers is just going to eventually bite you in the ass. Whether PII gets leaked in a data breach and you suffer identify theft because of it, or data brokers pick up your data and sell it to insurance companies who then use your “personality” do determine how they want to raise your premiums. Or Google serving you endless content in political niches that rot your brain and warp your perspective on life.
If you can’t quit YouTube then at least use a frontend, or clear your site data and storage so your algorithm gets reset every now and again.
I’ve de-googled most of my tech. There’s only 1-2 services remaining and one of it is Youtube. Can’t get off of it. It (and the algorithm) just provides too much value for me. I have been trying to find other things to replace it (like reading more) with relative success but I still use too much of it. So I don’t feel good using it (I mean it’s Google…) but I’m not killing myself over it.
That being said, I think I’m more concerned about the ethical side of using Youtube and supporting Google rather than the privacy aspect. Maybe in due time I will also start caring about that.
To me the concern with Google was always that they had a lot of different services that were tied to your account. Once I de-googled most of them I don’t care much about 1 service. The one other service I use is Google maps, but even then rarely. I try to go for openstreetmaps when possible.
Even my android phone is running GrapheneOS without google play services (mostly).
Understand, that’s quite the same like me, I’ve dumped pretty much all google services except for YT, which is difficult to me for now. And thanks for the video, I actually knew it existed and was planning to see it. I thought I’d ask the question here anyways, but maybe this video will help me.
Thanks for the response. For the alternative frontends, the problem is, they are malfunctioning so often that it’s difficult to me to use them on the daily basis.
Speaking about Google’s manipulating the recommendations for me, I don’t worry about that much, I try to avoid having them displayed as much as possible - I use the Unhook extension in the browser and some settings in Revanced, and I’m thinking about a workaround for discovering new channels.
Responding also to @user1, I think currently I’m the most concerned about the second part of my question, that is the privacy-related channels. I don’t know if it’s a sensible worry though, as it assumes that this information would ever make it to a government or a related institution, and that they’d actually care to use it against me. But this presumes that governments would fight privacy very heavily. Don’t know what you (or others) think about it.
I’ve been using Flow for YouTube, it has its own recommendation algorithm that runs locally. It has some bugs, and yes the developers use ai in their workflow, but I think it’s the best alternative to YouTube right now. Better than NewPipe, Freetube etc.
I think it’s a valid concern, not paranoia. YouTube can build a surprisingly detailed profile based on what we watch, search for, and interact with. While I don’t think we need to be overly worried, it’s wise to be mindful of what we share with these platforms.
I have tried to switch to Odysee but find it hard. YouTube is where all the content is and I try to mask what I can with FreeTube. Many drawback but Its something.