Oddbean new post about | logout
 I can try!

A lot of us Nostr and Bitcoin users are privacy-focused and hesitant to give data to big tech companies like Google.  Youtube of course tracks everything that you watch and do on their site.  If you don't want Google to know everything you're watching, there are some ways to help.  These apps are also open-source, meaning there's no corporation behind them collecting your data.

FreeTube is a desktop app (and NewPipe is a mobile counterpart) that will allow you to watch videos from Youtube without directly being on their website and logged in, thus giving you a degree of privacy.  Google doesn't directly know it's you because you're not logged in.

There are other ways to further increase your privacy from Google such as using a proxy and a VPN, but any incremental privacy increase is good - so take it one step at a time and consider using those apps. 
 Okay that all makes sense. Thank you so much.  So like using brave browser only better? I know I’m on a list because of 3 years watching YouTube bitcoin content exclusively. 🫣 I’m trying to level up privacy one step at a time. 
 If you're logged into your Google account when watching Youtube, it doesn't matter what browser you use - the activity would still register with Google.   Keep in mind the tradeoff is that FreeTube won't have your subscriptions and watching history - but that's the idea - you're breaking the link between your identity and what you're watching.

And you can get around this by exporting your subscriptions from Youtube and importing them into Freetube:
https://docs.freetubeapp.io/usage/importing-subscriptions/ 
 Oh wow, that is incredibly helpful. Thank you, sir!