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?

  • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
    171·
    2 days ago

    I will agree with you to an extent but:

    To sign up for social media or even a gmail account, one has to provide a phone number for verification.

    Yes and no. Many of them you can not use a phone number if you know how (Sign up with Gmail) but it shouldn’t be any surprise because all of these companies are data mining and advertising operations.

    Obviously you’re posting to the alternative right now.

    Youtube doesn’t work when not signed into a Google account

    Yes it does?

    or if one is connected to a VPN

    That does complicate things. Sometimes you have to switch servers, but for the most part, it still works.

    Even downloader programs like yt-dlp and freyr have been rendered useless

    I downloaded 78 videos yesterday with it?