Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
I found that switching my VPN server allowed FreeTube to work for me. I'm on Mullvad's South African servers atm, which are quite slow. If anyone knows of any unblocked Mullvad servers that are faster, lmk, but those were the first ones I found that you can use FreeTube with.
Most Netherlands servers work for me
Which netherlands servers are working for you? I just tried literally all the wireguard ones and none of them worked.
Newpipe still up as of this morning. Hope it stays that way.
Downie.app (MacOS) and yt-dlp (multiplatform).
I am not watching YouTube content while these are blocked. I will not watch stupid ads. I will not submit to shitty platforms that suck. Until these work again, there is no YouTube.
I'm finding other ways to fill my free time during the holiday break. I'll have a bevy of new content to watch when they're updated.
Vpn
I discovered that I watch enough YouTube to warrant paying for a premium subscription. I've turned off viewing history (after one video, so the homepage renders).
This isn't a solution for everyone, but it works for me.
I personally use libretube (with piped proxy disabled in settings) with proton vpn. If it shows the "sign in to confrim your not a bot" mesaage I just swap vpn servers.
I use a bot on mastodon named birba@rss-parrot.net . It sends me a link of new videos from creators I follow.I directly open the link with Tubular (newpipe fork) or freetube and download it to watch later.
Actually, I have never used piped and invidious to watch the videos themselves. I use them just as subscription feeds and in case I need to search for some video, then I toggle a script I have, I copy the links to the videos I want to watch and I untoggle the script. Then the links I copied start playing on mpv. I don't like to overload piped and invidious services, which I would say is the main reason for them to be shut down, when I can watch/download the video through mpv-ytdlp on my own. Although, I don't know if that answers your question.
Yes its okay if you're using a VPN for downloading which makes your IP untraceable by Google Servers. Currently I am using freetube with VPN. But I need to choose a server that is not used by many for getting around 'you need to sign in' issue.