Greetings y’all. I’ve been using ways to circumvent YouTube ads for years now. I’d much rather donate to creators directly instead of using Google as a middle man, needing YouTube Premium. If even pay for premium for just a add free version, if the price wouldn’t be so outrageous. I’ve So far used adblockers, Vanced and then Revanced.
Since the recent developments in this matter, I’ve setup Tubearchivist, a self hosted solution to download YouTube videos for later consumption. It mostly works great, with a few minor things that bother me but I highly recommend it. ReVanced also still works, but nobody knows for how long.
The question now is, if I should use a VPN to obscure my identity to Google. I don’t know if I’m being paranoid here but I wouldn’t put it past Google to block my account, if they see YouTube traffic for my IP address and no served ads. Revanced even uses my main Google account, so not that far fetched.
So far, or at least to my knowledge, Google has never done this but I think they just might in the future. So I’m planning on putting tubearchivist behind a VPN via gluetun.
What do you think? I’m eager to hear your opinions on this.
I can also add my docker compose, if there’s interest and when I’m back on my PC.
I’m in the process of degoogeling my live. I’ve never used it much, but my phone and the apps that I’ve bought over the years are tied to my account. I still use the calendar and have been to lazy to switch. Google maps too is a big plus. I’ve already gotten rid of cloud storage, as I selfhost nextcloud.
I use airvpn, which is recommended now as mullvad got rid of port forwarding.
It’s rough in some spots but doable. If you are looking for search replacement I found that paying for Kagi was the only way to go. Unlike DuckDuckGo and Bing it does not suck. I’m convinced the reason is because they don’t try to sell you ads.
Kagi was somewhat expensive, if I recall. 10 bucks for unlimited searches put me off, as I don’t have a lot of money right now…