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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • You look from a position of a tech-savvy user.

    You give me too much credit, I mostly learn things by hanging around here lol. It’s not difficult to follow some instructions for a few simple things.

    The fact is, we are the minority.

    This is kind of my point, actually. Why go so far for a minority? As you say, most people won’t even try it because it’s too big a hassle, or so they think. Those who will, however, actively engage with their systems to maximize positive user experience. As such, to simply move the goal a few more clicks away won’t make give up, but instead fuel more of their aggression. This is why this whole story began in the first place. That’s why it’s a hilariously bad plan that I can’t help but question. AdBlockers are now better than before thanks to this whole mess, so watching YouTube get beaten at their own game so effortlessly makes me suspicious.

    Or maybe the CEO is stupid lol, that’s also a possibility.


  • To me it seems weird that YouTuber is doing this at all. They should know that they can’t win, I doubt their CEO is that incompetent. Especially after all this time of wasted effort on their side to overpower a very small fraction of users who actually block ads online. Could it be to draw attention from something else that’s actually more worrying?

    Because as an AdBlock user, since I bothered configuring them and using only ublock I haven’t had almost any popups and my experience, especially now on the later stages, is exactly like it was before the ban.

    I can’t help but think there’s more to this because they can’t be wasting resources, further damage their reputation and risk absolute monopoly on video platforms for a fruitless endeavor.

    Even if YouTube isn’t profitable by itself, which, given the user data harvesting and the ads I definitely doubt, google still is. I’d appreciate any takes on this because it’s been bugging me for a while now.









  • I never bothered checking edge’s TOS and data collection since I never considered using it in the first place so idk how bad it is :p.

    But also can’t the person you’re hiding from also buy your data from Microsoft anyway? I mean, they collect them to sell, not only store. Your metadata are the ones they go after first right? Easy to store and analyze, usually betray behavior patterns etc.

    Having said that, I do get your point and maybe it does depend on who you want to protect yourself against. But I’m just asking to verify my own knowledge.



  • I’m pretty much also a beginner when it comes to privacy so I’d be gladly corrected, but if you read the Tor manual you’ll see it works best on its own. VPNs offer very limited protection and if you’re looking to reinforce Tor, you might want to look into Tails instead, since Tor is meant to work on its own.

    A good first point to make is your operating system. Ditching proprietary software is a must there as well since they have back doors from which they can steal most of your data anyway. Use a Linux distro, preferably not Ubuntu based, however it might be a little harder to use and the difference is not that big afaik. Ubuntu hasn’t given us reason to worry other than that it’s developed by a for profit company, in addition to some additions that were not considered ideal by the open source Linux users. I am typing from memory of some videos I watched though, so if you’re looking for a distro you best do your own research.

    One additional necessity is encryption. Use it everywhere you can. Proton mail and other such providers encrypt your emails and allow only the recipient to read them. You can also encrypt your hard drives to protect the information inside them. De-google your devices and use as much open source software as you can. Newpipe or YouTube revanced should be installed instead of the official yt app, Lemmy(as you know lol) instead of reddit, Instagram or any other social media, however this can be hard to execute so what you might want to do instead is delete the apps from your phone and log in to your accounts from a browser that isn’t Tor, since logging in with Tor defeats it’s purpose completely. Alternatively you can use clients for some like frost for Facebook and, as previously mentioned, newpipe or yt revanced.

    Finally, you might want to set up a Tor network server in your residence, as it helps hide your own traffic among the others using it. Additionally, the more wide the Tor network is, the more efficient blending in the crowd becomes. In fact, this is tor’s biggest strength. Using any extensions and add-ons to the browser can help make you stand out from the other users and allow others to track you.

    Sorry for the long response not necessarily explaining what you were originally asking for, network privacy. But if you are to make your online computing private you must shield yourself from all directions and not leave back doors open at all. It’s not all or nothing but it certainly isn’t a one click wonder either.

    TL DR: Leave Tor as is with the strongest default privacy and security settings, replace closed source apps with open source ones(like clients) and get a privacy respecting OS for both phone and PC.