this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025

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Privacy

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New pipe, invidious, freetube , brave, ublock none of them are working for me. How can I access YouTube privately. (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I don't know if it's the right place to ask.
I don't want a Google account. I don't use yt that much but I still need it.
I even tried yt revanced. None of them works

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Invidious still works very well, however it is an ongoing battle with YouTube. They ban an instance and the instance's ban evasion routine tries again, or in the case of IP range bans migrates to another provider and the game goes on. Despite this, it is the only way I know of to access YouTube relatively pain free using a public VPN provider. By now YouTube has blocked a lot of public VPN IPs. To me, this advantage makes it worth it.

The best way to keep up with which instances are currently functional is via the Invidious Matrix room, https://matrix.to/#/#invidious:matrix.org. You can also check the instances list https://instances.invidious.io/ but it may get out of date sometimes.

Finally, I've found the best way to use Invidious is via FreeTube (Linux) or Clipious (Android).

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (18 children)

Grayjay still works and is being actively maintained. They also support other platforms like PeerTube and Odysee, which you can easily enable.

https://grayjay.app/

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

I'm not 100% certain if it's fully private, but I've been using a VPN and LibreWolf + uBlock Origin. I watch what I want to and reset my browsing session when I'm done.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago

One trick is going to ghostarchive.org and sticking the link in there.

Another is using yt-dlp

Both of these are future-proof because you will end up with the data hoarded off of their server.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Noticed errors in newpipe recently too. Did you try Firefox with ublock? In mobile u can enable background something too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah I tried it with fennac

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Shouldn't you be able to access YT without a Google account? So uBO correctly configured (at least on Firefox) should do a lot already. Maybe sharing with us what specific issues you're facing or what you want to be able to do may help you getting more specific solutions?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

They are currently A/B testing blocking access to videos without an account. That's why some people are getting errors. It's likely that it will be rolled out to everyone in the future.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Oh, thx for the clarification. That certainly would not help.

It looks to me like Google has that idea they own their viewership and can treat them like trash if they fancy doing so. The not too distant future will tell us if they were right or not.

What I can say is that they don't own me. I was a Premium subscriber fir years (I can afford it and I want to support creators) but I cancelled the day they became serious against ad-blockers. For me, it was not about them forcing people to pay a sub. It never was. It was about destroying the free Web and making it a privately-owned something a few corporations would then be able to do what the fuck they wanted with. I certainly did not want to give them a cent more of my money to achieve that.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, login gating worked for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (it's not dead yet despite some people's claims). We here are tiny minority of social media users.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

even if you find a method.. whats your exit strategy? its inevitable that you will be unable to use it in the near future without an account, just like facebook.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Honestly: books and PeerTube.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 weeks ago

whats your exit strategy?

books

👑

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

FreeTube v0.22.1-nightly-5404 Beta with the Local API is working fine for me. Try the latest nightly build.

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