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?
What’s your browser setup if you don’t mind sharing?
Firefox. I used an incognito tab, and I have all extensions turned off since I mostly use incognito to check if they’re fucking with something.
Good idea but doesn’t that expose you to tracking via browser fingerprint?
What? Using Firefox? Or using incognito with no extensions?
Afaik, browser fingerprinting is pretty much unavoidable. Your best option is to just use the most generic setup possible. Alternatively, I’ve heard librewolf has some anti-fingerprinting options. No clue if they’re useful or that browser even works since I don’t use it.
The incognito with no extensions. That should produce a pretty unique fingerprint.
I’m not incredibly concerned with it- checking that was like the third time I’ve done that in the last six months. I only use incognito specifically to test if my extensions are breaking something or a webpage is just fucked.