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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
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.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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ayy a peertube mention good work :) keep it up
Recently Freetube, which I mainly use for Youtube stopped working and I had a pleasure to open Youtube link in incognito mode. Adverts popping up on the beginning of every video, in random moments while video was playing and when switching to specific timestamp made me realize how much I should be thankful for adblockers and alternative frontends.
Another example of the all or nothing mentality.
Sounds like an overreaction. Theres a shit ton of useful information on YouTube. Its like if you said 'I’m trying to quit wikipedia because I don’t like the company that owns it"
Theres no reason to hinder yourself just because you don’t like google. Maybe a bit of self control is what you really need
Unhooked is a nice extension to help self contrrol.
I literally got brainrotted with Shorts and I couldnt stop scrolling for 3h. Additionally doing Homework was impossible with a narrowed consciousness which I call brainrot.
I forces myself to walk in the Forest to regain my brain, memory and control.
Unhooked helped not seeing recommendations when open up youtube and on learning phasesto not see further recommendations when watching something. Unsure if I had a second extension to kill shorts entirely because they are the worst and not giving anything good back.
I never really watched the shorts on YouTube as theyre not what I went there for and just constantly hit ‘stop showing me thsse’ in my recommendations. They still recommend them but it seems less so sometimes.
It sucks because all the other recommendations are usually pretty good. I blame the outrage over tiktok by the USA for google adding that shorts crap to YouTube. They thought they could seize a market of short attention span people(they were right) but just took the worst aspects of tiktok and added it to their platform.
I donr have energy for that and mostly rather click on a interesting title because of ADHD and repeating thoughts about that title till watched. I am someone who changes everything to my liking and when I see myself forcing to press 2 stupid buttons to not be distracted everytime, then I see myself changing this behaviour or stop using the service if not possible. So in other words. I press 100 buttons to never press a button again.
Reasons why I use Arch Linux with KDE instead of Windows where you cant change 90% of things, and if you do, you can only do by external Programs that will break after a Windows update.
Quitting youtube completely is difficult.
I installed leechblock extension. I was also finding myself scrolling shorts and clicking youtube videos aimlessly. Set leechblock to only give me 30 min a day and unused time rolls over. Turns out, I don’t need it as much as I do.
Im impressed that you managed to do this, youtube for me is the last thing Im struggling to give up on.
grayjay is a happy medium for me - you can create your own feed from different platforms (odysee, peertube, nebula and youtube etc) and adverts are blocked
I find that youtube videos can be very helpful if I search for a subject of interest. Freetube has a good search function for youtube. Freetube usually works for me, although sometimes I have to change my vpn location.
I also have a number of channels that I follow using RSS (QuiteRSS). I can be very selective in which channels to follow. I regularly add and delete channels. I use Freetube to search subjects and find channels to follow related to those subjects. I watch the RSS videos in a librewolf browser that deletes cookies every time I shut it down, and it has medium privacy settings.
The youtube feed is horrible, as are the advertisements. I don’t get any advertisements, I am not sure if it is because of adblock or if it is because I never sign in to google/youtube on my device. The sidebar of related videos is somewhat like a feed and contains a lot of junk, but occasionally I find an interesting video or channel by looking at the sidebar while watching a video.
I am happy with the way my setup is working now, but of course things could change at any time.
I don’t personally cut my usage of YouTube content at all; I just simply use necessary tools to prevent the apps and services from over-sharing too much data at a network level. DNS and IP level filtering is done typically to prevent well-known domains and telemetry targets from being utilized and any account preferences are set to minimize consent given. NewPipe and FreeTube are used interchangeably with yp-dlp if needed. No account is necessary…my viewing patterns aren’t being recorded except in a generalized aggregate manner which enforces a reasonable amount of privacy.
I’m of the opinion that a completely de-googled device lacks critical features I use often; and restoring equal function is oftentimes made difficult. Unfortunately this also covers video content; there’s no real viable FLOSS alternative with enough content. The creators typically do not have a motivation to use PeerTube or other viable FLOSS software that does exist currently and do not publish videos there; which introduces a heavy timelag; even if the creator or even someone else IS willing to export the YT content out to PT.
the post is too much for me to read right now. Every youtuber I like is constantly getting demonetized and/or having their revenue stolen. So I watch with some heavy duty adblocking filters on multiple levels.
And then for let’s plays where each video in a playlist is 40 minutes or more I use alternative front-ends exclusively
Huh?
So the goal is to replace YouTube with non-video content not just replacing it with a different ui or provider. That sounds more doable. Good to hear that it improved.
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Yeah I liked that too then they suddenly say they replaced it with Peertube… which doesn’t make anything sense to me.
Replacing YouTube with reading is a great idea but replacing YouTube with peertube still makes no sense. No tracking for .0000000001% of the content.
It makes their goals in this post unclear to me. Is it to degoogle or to devideo.
I understand your point. I suspect the main advantage the post isn’t making clear is that PeerTube doesn’t have the same ensnaring algorithm that YouTube does, so it doesn’t keep you endlessly watching the next video or at least suggesting another video to you.
I think that’s kind of an advantage of a lot of fediverse alternatives is they’re comparatively “boring” in that they force you to be more intentional. They don’t just serve you up the next thing that they’ve calculated you’re likely to engage with. If you subscribe/follow accounts, you’ll see them, but you won’t see content you don’t subscribe to.
Not that you can’t get just as addicted but it’s at least much less convenient.
I honestly find this a negative which is spread around carelessly as a positive. On Peertube I see zero content except linux. On Mastodon I can only either find that one star trek dude, linux and foss dudes, or libs complaining about politics. Lemmy is easier to find stuff but has very little content.
I’ve let go of all other google and social media formats but youtube has actually good content and honestly a good algorithm. I search for something I want or watch something from my youtube rss feed then it recommends what I want. I have ads and tracking blocked. I only get the content I want.
I can’t say the same for most of the fediverse honestly.
That’s honestly just showed me how pointless it all is…
I mean, those are definitely fair points. I don’t think the fediverse services are for everyone and frankly I don’t engage with them that much cause they aren’t great at this point. I think I like the idea and the ethos more than the reality, but I keep trying hoping it will improve.
Fully agree with you, ethos is much better than reality. What do you use instead then?