Post #74724

2025-12-17 18:58 UTC

And I know NewPipe works with video, I meant I strictly use it for music (behind VPN) and nothing else for the reason above. Gotcha, I misunderstood. I still don’t want Google to link the IPs I use to the content I’m interested in. But YouTube’s servers only know that some ProtonVPN (ex.) user is connecting. They aren’t able to discriminate your music requests from those of some other user on the same VPN server - based on the IP alone at least. That’s assuming you never generate any traffic on that node while signed into your Google account of course. Is the video vs music distinction because song listens offer less bits of identifying information than videos? Don’t take this as preaching what you should or shouldn’t do, I don’t judge anyone’s threat model - just always curious about where people draw the privacy vs “comfort” line :)

Replies (1)

@kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2025-12-17 21:03

No worries, I am not reading it as preaching. Basically what I try to do is minimizing the interaction with Google and have some sort of redundancy. So on my phone I connect to a VPN server and use NewPipe for music. I’m fine with that considering that it is just music and lots of people could have similar activity. On desktop I connect to another VPN server and use Piped (or Invidious) because the content I watch is mainly from my country (different than the server location although I’d still avoid it no matter the location) and I feel like I could easily be the only one doing it, so even if it is a VPN IP I prefer to not associate it at all with my activity. Also the server I usually use is blocked by Google anyway, same goes for other that I frequently use on desktop. In the case I REALLY need to open a YouTube video I do it only on desktop through Mullvad Browser from yet another server that isn’t blocked by Google On top of that I don’t have a google account and I don’t use other Google services, not even Play Services on my phone. Disclaimer: I’m not an expert of anything involved here, I just follow my instinct 🤣 so if something I do seems uselessly complicated, it probably is.

Open ##75107