How can one consume media these days with any sort of privacy?
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Well, depending on where you live, there’s still old-school linear TV and radio. Piracy… Or the Blueray collection in the local library.
Where do you live that has Youtube channels being broadcast on TV or available on discs at the library?
wrote last edited by [email protected]I thought the question was more about media in general, not about Youtube channels in specific.
But I live in Germany, the collaboration between public broadcasting and Youtube creators is called Funk. They occasionally broadcast stuff on the speciality channels and some creators landed a show on the main program, resulting in shows like MaiThink X. Though that kind of stuff is then in turn sometimes not published on Youtube, since they want to promote their own internet streaming platform, called "Mediathek". And you're going to have a hard time accessing all of that unless you're inside of Germany, since they use geoblocking. We also have a few other nice shows on public TV, like Feuer und Flamme, some satire / late-night shows, content for children, good regional news etc.
And the products I see from Youtubers and podcasters (" Influencers") in the library (or bookstore) are mostly books. Like cookbooks, sometimes novels, or they'll write some long form essays about the same thing their regular content is about and they'll try to make some extra money by selling books to their fans. I don't think they do DVDs. Most people are still on Youtube or TikTok and borrowing discs or watching linear TV is too cumbersome for their target audience.
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With a privacy protecting setup, the mainstream internet is almost unusable. To sign up for social media or even a gmail account, one has to provide a phone number for verification. Youtube doesn’t work when not signed into a Google account, or if one is connected to a VPN. Even downloader programs like yt-dlp and freyr have been rendered useless by the strict access controls of the major platforms. There is a vast amount of community, DIY, and educational material of all sorts behind these platform walls, so how can someone who doesn’t want to be tracked access any of it these days?
There are alternatives like archive.org and peertube which are wonderful but have nowhere near the amount of content that people have been uploading to YouTube over the years. For example, if I need to fix a washing machine and there is a tutorial on YouTube, how can I see it while still preserving a modicum of privacy online?
ProtonVPN (Paid) does work fine with Youtube for me. I think that VPNs with a small number of servers are gonna get blocked more often that bigger VPNs with more servers (since users are more spread out and it wont seem like there are 10,000 requests coming from the same IP)
As for Movies and Tv, you can pirate.
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Install jellyfin on your computer, Buy second hand DVDs from people who are selling them, rip them onto your PC.
That's a good strategy if you're into movies but I'm looking for more DIY/repair videos, mostly about tech.
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You should check out..
Particularly their Grayjay app, but definitely check out their other privacy focused projects as well.
Great, thank you.
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Youtube doesn’t work when not signed into a Google account, or if one is connected to a VPN.
Youtube works fine without an account? I just checked. It also works fine with a VPN, again I just checked. Maybe this is a country thing, or something with your browser?
What's your browser setup if you don't mind sharing?
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What's your browser setup if you don't mind sharing?
Firefox. I used an incognito tab, and I have all extensions turned off since I mostly use incognito to check if they're fucking with something.
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That's a good strategy if you're into movies but I'm looking for more DIY/repair videos, mostly about tech.
I have been tossing around the idea of hosting a peertube instance for DIY.
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You should check out..
Particularly their Grayjay app, but definitely check out their other privacy focused projects as well.
Futo has a giant list of usefule stuff! Thanks for sharing! I had no idea this existed!
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With a privacy protecting setup, the mainstream internet is almost unusable. To sign up for social media or even a gmail account, one has to provide a phone number for verification. Youtube doesn’t work when not signed into a Google account, or if one is connected to a VPN. Even downloader programs like yt-dlp and freyr have been rendered useless by the strict access controls of the major platforms. There is a vast amount of community, DIY, and educational material of all sorts behind these platform walls, so how can someone who doesn’t want to be tracked access any of it these days?
There are alternatives like archive.org and peertube which are wonderful but have nowhere near the amount of content that people have been uploading to YouTube over the years. For example, if I need to fix a washing machine and there is a tutorial on YouTube, how can I see it while still preserving a modicum of privacy online?
I'm surprised that no one mentioned NewPipe
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I dont have that issue. Most Mullvad servers work for me on Youtube via Tubular (Newpipe). If it doesnt work I just change servers.
Same here. Watching YT is fine (logged in or not), but using yt-dlp doesn’t work. I have to run a split tunnel with my terminal to do this.
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You should check out..
Particularly their Grayjay app, but definitely check out their other privacy focused projects as well.
I use their Keyboard as well as their Grayjay app for YouTube. Amazing shit. And open source. People please donate if you can.
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I'm surprised that no one mentioned NewPipe
I'd never heard of it, but I appreciate your comment, thank you.
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Install jellyfin on your computer, Buy second hand DVDs from people who are selling them, rip them onto your PC.
I boosted my self-hosted movie collection with about 800 DVDs I bought off a guy for something like $100
Totally doable if you don't want to pirate. -
I have been tossing around the idea of hosting a peertube instance for DIY.
Would it be possible to host all the terabytes of DIY videos that are on YouTube currently or would it be more of a "start from scratch" situation? And as an aside- is it legal to do so or is there an issue with copyright and ownership? I doubt that the videos on YouTube belong to the creators but hopefully I'm wrong.
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Firefox. I used an incognito tab, and I have all extensions turned off since I mostly use incognito to check if they're fucking with something.
Good idea but doesn't that expose you to tracking via browser fingerprint?
