I just use it without account and subscribe to my favorite channels using external RSS feed reader. This way I still keep track of my fav content and doing it entirely outside of Google. If they track me as guest, I really don’t care that much.
Ironically, YouTube is one case that’s much better with personalized recommendations. I even open links from social media in incognito tabs so as to not pollute my recommendations accidentally.
Any time I happen to open Youtube’s main page in an incognito tab, it’s filled with complete trash that’s offered to my region by default. It’s not even my usual snobbery talking — the content is like wall-to-wall Jerry Springer Show.
the hardest thing to stop them tracking you is digital fingerprinting. they don’t need you to sign in, they have a profile with dozens of data points unique to your hardware/browser, unless you’ve got things installs specifically to prevent fingerprinting
you can kind of ungoogle youtube by using invidious https://invidious.io/
I just use it without account and subscribe to my favorite channels using external RSS feed reader. This way I still keep track of my fav content and doing it entirely outside of Google. If they track me as guest, I really don’t care that much.
Ironically, YouTube is one case that’s much better with personalized recommendations. I even open links from social media in incognito tabs so as to not pollute my recommendations accidentally.
Any time I happen to open Youtube’s main page in an incognito tab, it’s filled with complete trash that’s offered to my region by default. It’s not even my usual snobbery talking — the content is like wall-to-wall Jerry Springer Show.
the hardest thing to stop them tracking you is digital fingerprinting. they don’t need you to sign in, they have a profile with dozens of data points unique to your hardware/browser, unless you’ve got things installs specifically to prevent fingerprinting
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
That site is brutal. No matter what I do or what browser setup I use, it always says that I have a unique fingerprint
i think the message is there’s no such thing as 100% private/anonymous–there’ll always be something giving you up