It’s like guerrilla warfare. The point is not to win but to bleed the foe, draw out the fight. Much like resisting censorship on the internet, frontend usage works best when it’s persistent and decentralized.
Giving up is only giving in to whatever they push on you next. Holding on and persisting however we can is the best way to put up a fight. A tiny band of users can still pressure a corporation into playing fairer if they don’t give in.
Honest question, could you just not make a new account giving only an alias email to Youtube and sandbox the app you use? Wouldn’t that work as a “solution”?
That’s what I’m thinking of doing.
Making an anonymous Google account could be tricky, because they could ask for PII, like your phone number if you look suspicious to them and well, Google will know what you like based on what you watch and of course that data will be collected (disabling the watch history in the Google’s My Account site could help, but obviously that’s not going to be 100% private).
I saw someone here recommending this:
I’m wondering if that would work? Note that I haven’t tried it and not sure if that is actually a good option.
It’s unfortunate you cannot bypass the log-in requirement, partially defeating the privacy benefit of front ends.
I am using New pipe with VPN with zero problem. Switched to New pipe because Libretube had to many issues.
It does.
I don’t know how does SMS Pool works, but the problem is that sometimes numbers generated with these services could be banned/blacklisted. That happened to me once when Google gave me an error that the number was already registered or was invalid, I don’t exactly remember.
And because someone that could get that number could hack into your account if you don’t remove the number from the account once you register.
you know what , you don’t necessarily need to use a vpn for watching YouTube with a separate frontend .(in-most cases).
explanation as follows -
Now answer for yourself -
Do you care if your isp knows that you are visiting youtube. com (note it doesn’t know what video you watch)
If Yes - then use VPN
If No -
Do you mind if youtube knows your ip ? (also remember ip is hardly used for any fingerprinting)
If yes - use vpn
If no - Use vpn but add youtube frontend to exception list in split tunnelling setting.
enjoy your favourite channel !
I always put youtube frontend in the exclusion list of vpn as its mostly wastage of bandwith with little benefits . Additionally it helps me keep the feed content localised while connecting to a vpn server outside my country for other apps
As youtube is isolated to a frontend i helps in preventing mixing of my habits with other profiles.
They can also see what times you visit YouTube and how often you visit it.
I’d rather prefer to use Mullvad VPN instead of no VPN as it also gives me a benefit online where I share the same fingerprint with everyone else.
I gave up on frontends. Barely any work. The ones that do work are Invidious which is super slow on the public instances and Grayjay which works well enough, but I don’t use on linux as the app is still in alpha.
you know fingerprinting has very less to do with your ip , so saying that mullvad vpn will help in sharing your fingerprint with others is not truly correct. (read the note in guides How Do VPNs Protect Your Privacy? Our VPN Overview - Privacy Guides)
Maybe you meant to say the browser client mullvad browser ?
mullvad browser could still be a very good option even when not using a vpn. As it does isolate you and shares your fingerprint.
Though i think youtube doesn’t work in the default mode of mullvad vpn and so i don’t exactly know what effect does it have when changing modes.
some frontends still do work like newpipe on mobile where there is no mullvad browser.
thanks
An IP address can be used to fingerprint you. It is part of your fingerprint. If you are not using Mullvad VPN with Mullvad Browser, those fingerprinting protections that Mullvad Browser has to offer are no longer guaranteed because you now have one core data point that stands out from the rest of the people.
See: Mullvad VPN | Privacy is a universal right
And: Privacy Respecting Web Browsers for PC and Mac - Privacy Guides
I will quote some of it:
For the strongest anti-fingerprinting protection, we recommend using Mullvad Browser in conjunction with a VPN, whether that is Mullvad or another recommended VPN provider. When using a VPN with Mullvad Browser, you will share a fingerprint and a pool of IP addresses with many other users, giving you a “crowd” to blend in with. This strategy is the only way to thwart advanced tracking scripts, and is the same anti-fingerprinting technique used by Tor Browser.
Can you elaborate?
Ok what is the actionable thing to do? i am thinking I still keep NewPipe for getting feed list updates without logging on to a Google but at this point, how is this not different from an RSS feed? Maybe I should consolidate all news and media feed at home?
For now I am still on a VPN and all the feeds from NewPipe/Freetube gets pasted into a private browsing with Brave though surprisingly Mullvad also behaves normal and I still dont get adds after the captcha.
I am this tempted to sub to a Floatplane account out of spite (or maybe Patreon) but not all of my Youtubers have floatplane account.
This is annoying…
Enable 2fa via hardware token or an authenticator app and that can’t happen.
Youtube’s been such a pain in the ass this past year that I’m starting to suspect the only reliable way to watch videos is to download them. On my PC, I’ve got an alias called yt-watch that uses yt-dlp to download the video to /tmp/ and then deletes it after 10 seconds. On my phone, I open NewPipe and hope for the best (using the terminal on a phone is a nightmare).
I was a big Mullvad fan, but nowadays I barely use it cause it’s unusable on YouTube and other select website.
Proton on the other hand has 2 country that always work for me.
That’s actually a good idea. I’ll open a topic on this.
I think this varies vastly. Mullvad for me works great with YouTube. Reddit does suck with VPNs in general, but I can just use the Mullvad proxy extension to work around it.
i am not sure where do you get these misinformation from. I would suggest reading mullvad browser docs.
It has very less to do with your ip address .
The use case for vpn is different, it essentially mask your traffic from your isp provider.
So using mullvad browser with a vpn just makes sure you have both the bases covered.
You still get the same protections from the website you are visiting in mullvad browser if not using a vpn unless you are in some static ip situation.
read the quote from PG Mullvad brower recommendation - Privacy Respecting Web Browsers for PC and Mac - Privacy Guides
Anti-Fingerprinting
Without using a VPN, Mullvad Browser provides the same protections against naive fingerprinting scripts as other private browsers like Firefox+Arkenfox or Brave. Mullvad Browser provides these protections out of the box, at the expense of some flexibility and convenience that other private browsers can provide
Hope your misconceptions are cleared reading this and ip address is not the “core” data point.
Also for you to really blend in with the ip pool , you need to ensure most people are using the same mullvad server as yours while using mullvad browser , otherwise you still won’t be able to fool any advanced fingerprinting.
In this age where thousands of users have shared ip and behind a NAT, ip hardly gives that much info about you compared to your actual browerr config.
I meant in the aspect of advanced tracking scripts. Also yes, mainly it is for privacy from my ISP. In many parts of the world, ISPs can simply sell your data.
This is CGNAT. Not a regular NAT… You can still be tracked using regular IP based tracking.
Not necessarily. All the IP address needs to be is part of the pool. Anything sophisticated enough can figure out the IP is from Mullvad because many people have visited the website using the same IP.
For example:
I don’t know. What I currently have setup is an RSS aggregator called Miniflux that fetches the feeds every hour.
What are we supposed to do? Google has the largest monopoly in the world. I used to be happily self-hosting Invidious and now, it straight up doesn’t work. The current public Invidious instances are very slow compared to regular YouTube, and the apps I even have managed to work now are Grayjay, FreeTube, and MPV. I just gave up and went back to regular YouTube.
This isn’t going to change anytime soon till more people start caring about their privacy online. Regulation can also take a part in this, but in the US the only laws that are vastly even close is the CCPA in California.
