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> You can get the exact same thing with ad blockers. Even better because you can prevent google from tracking every single video you watch and linking this inf

> You can get the exact same thing with ad blockers. Even better because you can prevent google from tracking every single video you watch and linking this information into your IRL details through the payment info. Paying Youtube for privacy is nonsense. You need to send Google more information and log in your account to get rid of the ads and then google will track the videos you watch, link this information to your real life name, CC number, phone, billing address, etc. and then allow advertisers to use this information to push you more ads on other Google services. Just use a good ad blocker, Firefox Multi-account Containers (forcing YT to only open in a dedicated container) and Cookie AutoDelete (despite the name it handles LocalStorage too). When you close the last Youtube tab, your tracks will be erased and the next one will get a clean one -- but, for sake of mental sanity, never click on any of that trashy first page videos :) On Android, just use NewPipe.

bcrosby95 6y ago
You can actually turn off video tracking in YouTube. And the experience completely sucks. It doesn't remember what you have and haven't watched. You can't even resume a video on a different day or device.
- gaius_baltar 6y ago
  > You can actually turn off video tracking in YouTube. And the experience completely sucks. It doesn't remember what you have and haven't watched. You can't even resume a video on a different day or device. But how can we be sure that Google is not storing, using, or keeping this information? If disabling tracking has the same (apparent) effect of not letting it grab the information, I prefer the later. At least I can help them to not "accidentally" track me ;-) This may sound too pessimistic, but I lost all confidence and respect for these companies.
- danShumway 6y ago
  The experience stinks because Youtube makes it stink. NewPipe handles video resuming, downloading, subscriptions, RSS feeds, pulling multiple videos from different services into the same viewer/manager, and they're currently looking into options to do syncing between devices/clients by doing automatic data exports and imports and pushing them into Syncthing. All while being (imo) easier to use and (objectively) less resource intensive than the official Youtube client. It is possible to build good video clients/services without sacrificing people's privacy. The reason Google's tracking is essential for stuff like video resume is because Google integrated those features into their tracking systems from day one, and now they don't know how to separate them. Another example here -- if I turn off search & web tracking in my Google account, Google loses the ability to save locations in Google maps on my phone. They never considered that they could just save my locations locally and not send them to the cloud. Google is being honest when they say they can't do stuff like auto-resume without tracking me, but they're being dishonest when they give the reason they can't do it. It's not because privacy and convenience are so impossible to reconcile, it's because (being charitable) Google engineers and managers don't have the first clue how to build a service that even tries to reconcile those ideas. The less charitable possibility is that Google deliberately makes their services terrible when privacy options are enabled to reinforce the idea in people's minds that it's impossible to have both privacy and convenience. But while I don't assume the best of Google, I still lean towards blaming incompetence over maliciousness.

bcrosby95 6y ago

You can actually turn off video tracking in YouTube. And the experience completely sucks. It doesn't remember what you have and haven't watched. You can't even resume a video on a different day or device.

gaius_baltar 6y ago
> You can actually turn off video tracking in YouTube. And the experience completely sucks. It doesn't remember what you have and haven't watched. You can't even resume a video on a different day or device. But how can we be sure that Google is not storing, using, or keeping this information? If disabling tracking has the same (apparent) effect of not letting it grab the information, I prefer the later. At least I can help them to not "accidentally" track me ;-) This may sound too pessimistic, but I lost all confidence and respect for these companies.
danShumway 6y ago
The experience stinks because Youtube makes it stink. NewPipe handles video resuming, downloading, subscriptions, RSS feeds, pulling multiple videos from different services into the same viewer/manager, and they're currently looking into options to do syncing between devices/clients by doing automatic data exports and imports and pushing them into Syncthing. All while being (imo) easier to use and (objectively) less resource intensive than the official Youtube client. It is possible to build good video clients/services without sacrificing people's privacy. The reason Google's tracking is essential for stuff like video resume is because Google integrated those features into their tracking systems from day one, and now they don't know how to separate them. Another example here -- if I turn off search & web tracking in my Google account, Google loses the ability to save locations in Google maps on my phone. They never considered that they could just save my locations locally and not send them to the cloud. Google is being honest when they say they can't do stuff like auto-resume without tracking me, but they're being dishonest when they give the reason they can't do it. It's not because privacy and convenience are so impossible to reconcile, it's because (being charitable) Google engineers and managers don't have the first clue how to build a service that even tries to reconcile those ideas. The less charitable possibility is that Google deliberately makes their services terrible when privacy options are enabled to reinforce the idea in people's minds that it's impossible to have both privacy and convenience. But while I don't assume the best of Google, I still lean towards blaming incompetence over maliciousness.