Privacy @lemmy.ml TheTwelveYearOld @lemmy.world 5mo ago

Privacy@lemmy.ml: Do you count switching from official YouTube apps to watch YouTube as having "de-googled" from YouTube?

If you quit YouTube then you also quit all the content on YouTube that isn't elsewhere. The best solution if you still want to use it is to use 3rd party apps. Personally I would actually count that as having no reliance on Google in particular anymore. If a video platform owned by Google wasn't the most popular then it would be another platform. I don't think you should think of 3rd party apps as YouTube frontends, but rather, apps that scrape videos hosted on Google's servers.

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With grayjay (assuming you use Android) you can follow creators and not platforms.

Able to access quite a few different services with just 1 app
- In theory yes, but in practice Grayjay doesn't really work that way. I think for it to work as intended, the creators need to actually create a Grayjay identity and connect it to their accounts. Which literally none of them do.
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  Grayjay just let's you find creators only any platform there are plugins for. If a creator is on twitch and YouTube for example, it's really just up to you to decide if it's the same person when looking at the search results.
Sort of. If I'm not logged into google or they can't monetise my data or serve me ads then I feel I have 'de-googled' from a privacy and convenience point of view. Nevertheless, if I'm still using what they are providing then I'm not doing anything to support or legitimise google's competitors. I'm also still going to see the sort of content that is cultivated by youtube's algorithms and business practices.

Third party apps are great though, especially if they can support multiple video hosting platforms and download videos to view offline. Newpipe is a good example of this. I can quickly go between my youtube subscriptions and my peertube ones.
- I’m also still going to see the sort of content that is cultivated by youtube’s algorithms and business practices.
  
  I think if you can avoid the youtube algorithm recommendation too is the best you can get with "de-googled" youtube, what is impossible to avoid is how the algorithm influences what the creators do with their contents.
  
  how the algorithm influences what the creators do with their contents
  
  Yes, that's exactly what I meant. The impact of business and technology on culture.
  
  I would much prefer to see content from something like peertube or from independent websites.
- That may be true but if you're using a frontend then you're just trusting them with your data instead. Perhaps many of those could be run by people with even more malicious intent. I have interacted with quite a few invidious/piped instance owners, and most of them are quite... unstable individuals.
  
  Unless those instance owners have access to someone's google account data then I'm guessing they have no more data on said user than any other website they visit.
I'd look at it in regarda whether or not Google can get your data (or more somply), do you volountarily connect to Google's servers: if not (Piped/VPN) I'd count that as being degoogled. If yes (Invidious etc.) you're still getting the video from Google servers (albeit without ads) but Google still gets their grubby hands on some info about you. By 'volountary' I mean if you block connections to Google with e.g. Noscript and keep google enabled (be it tag manager, gstatic, fonts or user-facing services like Youtube). If you have to enable gstatic or tag manager on a few sites because they're broken, I'd say that's involountary since it's not your reliance on Google showing as much as it's the developers'.

Being 100% disconnected from Google servers is outright impossible these days.
in my opinion, it's up to you. there shouldn't really be a strict definition, since everyone's needs and starting point is different. don't worry so much about trying to live up to a particular standard and figure out what level and methods of disengaging from Google (or any other tech company) works best for you.

(edit: autocorrect fix)
@OP use a browser based proxy instance for these web services, works great

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/
To use an Alphabet product is to support Alphabet regardless of how you access it. If you want to de-google, then stop using their products 100%.
- Explain how this makes any sense. Using alternative clients effectively kills their access to the users, including, but not limited to, serving targeted ads.
  
  If you believe I'm wrong, feel free to counter me with evidence.
- I'd assume that using the service without paying (money or otherwise) for it would introduce costs to the provider hence being worse than not using it at all.
  
  It still maintains their market position, which has value. For example, you might not visit other sites because they don't have the content you want (and the content stays on YT because they have the viewers), or you might even share YT links to other people.

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