On inv.nadeko.net what you listed is almost exactly what the front page looks like.
If you’re getting the recommendations on the front page, it’s likely the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. When you watch a video, the side bar recommendations are based on the video you’re currently watching though. There are instances like invidious.nerdvpn.de that disable the homepage if you’d prefer.
Yeah, that’s generally what most invidious pages look like. Some lean much more into political news, but otherwise it’s generally those guys.
Your argument is nonsense, but the meme you attached reminded me of this:
Would you mind sharing screenshots (or at the very least name specific examples)?
What you’re describing is technologically and financially infeasible for Google to do at scale (or even to one specific person). If Google were able to track you that well, they wouldn’t modify the recommendations for you, they would quietly add it to an ad profile on you. The only reason the YouTube algorithm exists is to keep people on the platform for longer, when you use invidious, you are losing YouTube money, so they have no financial incentive to modify their algorithm for you.
If you’re using a small few person instance, then what you watch can actually influence the recommendations (at least until the token rotates), but that isn’t Google tracking you specifically. If you use a more popular instance (like nerdvpn or nadeko) what you watch will do little to influence the front page algorithm.
As I mentioned in my previous comment, I’d suggest you look into how the various privsec technologies you’re using actually work, and also look at how companies are actually able to track you. If you just assume a company can do something because they’re big, powerful, and scary, suddenly the company seems much bigger, more powerful, and scary than they really are. It’s also important to remember that just because something can be used to correlate activity with the user doing, that doesn’t mean it’s something that can be done at scale.
Judging from your previous posts and comments, it sounds like you’re quite new to privacy. This kind of mentality (in one form or another) is very common amongst people who are new to caring about their privacy. Surveillance has been happening for your entire life, so it’s not going to hurt to take a bit to think about things with a clearer head. Of course, if you’re in a situation where lack of privacy might cause physical harm, find help ASAP, but generally you can take things at a slower pace to help on the long run. That’s not to say stop caring at all, but you don’t need to suddenly drop everything and move to a bunker in the woods. Too much change at once can lead to privacy fatigue, which only makes it less likely that you’ll escape any of the surveillance of the modern world.
According to the repo, it’s available on Linux and Windows.
You said somewhere else that you don’t use android. Cromite is exclusive to android due to how iOS restricts browsers.
iOS forces all apps to use WebKit as a browser engine (though that might change soon in the EU), so you don’t really get much better than Safari / Brave on iOS.
Not really. You can lie in your request header and say you’re running chrome instead of Firefox (or vice versa) but there are other ways to identify the browser type, so it’d just make you stand out.
With browsers like Tor, identification can get as good as “This user is using the Tor browser”, but most services will just ID the browser engine (Gecko (Firefox), Chromium (Chrome), or WebKit (Safari)).
I’ve seen a handful of your posts before. I don’t think Google is still tracking you.
If you were to open YouTube in one tab, and Invidious in another, Google could maybe correlate the two (realistically, even that is enough seperation) but you wouldn’t notice anything. Invidious uses one token for multiple users, so if YouTube is recommending something to you, it’s recommending it to everyone using the instance. That only really applies to the frontpage though, when you watch a video, those recommendations are based on the video you’re watching.
You describe using a lot of services that help protect your privacy, but you don’t seem to understand when, why, and how to use them properly (e.g. Qubes is security focused, and incidentally good for privacy, while Tails is privacy focused and decent for security). I’d suggest taking a look at privacyguides.org (not affiliated) for a more in depth explanation of various services.
Your DNS could help identify you, but only if someone already has a handful of other data points. DNS fingerprinting is only really helpful if someone has DNS leaks with their VPN.
The Tor browser is based on Firefox. The Tor browser has a lot of fingerprinting protections that aren’t included in regular Firefox, so if you like the Tor browser, there’s not much of a reason to use regular Firefox.
On the flip side, unless you’re browsing Tor, there isn’t really a reason to use the Tor browser. You can achieve better fingerprinting protections by using more popular privacy browsers.
The point is, saying “we need to embrace linux phones” is silly. Android uses the Linux kernel, therefore it is a Linux phone. I know that’s not the point of saying “Linux phone” but the line should be drawn better. Ideally, the Linux kernel should be completely discarded for a better kernel, but if the OS can still run “Linux apps” or “Linux desktops” under that new kernel, people will still probably call it a Linux phone.
Android being owned by Google doesn’t really do much. It is very unlikely Google would close source the project, because any company making an “android phone” needs to modify android for their own stuff. Many features in popular android phones don’t exist upstream, and require modifying android itself. Even if Google closed AOSP, that doesn’t stop the community from working from the last release and moving forward.
(/j)
In all seriousness though, this sums it up quite well: It is a few years old, but most of the problems still apply https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html
I said measurably because I do remember seeing benchmarks somewhere about the browser security, but as of now I can’t find them. That said, while Firefox is worse, from a security standpoint, than chrome, it’s generally more private (letterboxing, resist fingerprinting, etc.) but for me, the security tradeoff isn’t worth it.
I know a lot of people probably won’t believe me when I say this, but I do like Firefox (a lot more than Chrome and its derivatives) but when you can’t sandbox browsers without significantly weakening the browser’s sandbox (a little unintuitive), I choose to put security and browser integrity above personal preference.
If you or anyone else wants to use firefox, it’s not like you’re instantly going to compromise your machine. Firefox just lacks a lot of the security that chrome has, and thus has a greater potential for exploitation.
In fairness, Firefox is still measurably less secure than Chrome, even after everything Google has put it through. You should avoid Chrome (and Edge) as much as you can, but Chromium itself is still better more secure than Firefox (Gecko) unfortunately.
Hopefully ladybird can bring some real competition to the browser market…
Because you can’t run multiple accounts at once? Either I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, or you’re missing the point of a signal backup.
OP is referring to the GrapheneOS feature, well really the android feature heavily enhanced by GrapheneOS, that allows you to run the OS as another user with their own apps and files. OP is asking for help running signal (Molly) in both profile A and profile B as one account. This is technically possible but realistically infeasible because of the way profile switching works on android. I explained why in a different comment.
Bad advice. Signal has its drawbacks, and yet you managed to avoid listing all but one of them. Impressive.
Signal has released an update recently that allows multiple devices (up to 10 I believe). Yes you still need a phone number, but newer commits suggest that is soon to change. Signal has local backups on android, and I haven’t heard of any issues restoring from them. Signal is far from perfect, but they are very trusted, battle tested, and overall a better service than what most people are using anyways. By all means, if you have a better service that works for you, go for it, but advising against using signal outright with no alternative is kinda weird.
IMO, I think you’re being a little paranoid (I say as someone who was extremely paranoid when they first started getting into privacy). Take a bit of time to look into what is actually possible and how you can properly protect yourself, and hopefully that can put your mind at ease.
I don’t mean to say all your fears are unfounded, or to just stop caring about your privacy and focus on learning, but taking a few days or weeks to understand better what Google (or any other company) is truly capable of will probably be better for you in the long run. You should also consider your threat model and what you’re willing to give up (if anything) in order to live a more private life. If you have to watch YouTube, Google will always have some sort of data, but it is possible to remove most (if not all) connections to you.