Previously: Part Zero, Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.

 

Part V: Video Sharing

 

The 800 pound gorilla in the video sharing room is, of course, Google’s YouTube, although TikTok is giving them a run for their money among zoomers, whose attention spans top out at around 40 seconds. Like every other Google product and service, YouTube is designed to mine your data and show you ads, and is abysmal from a privacy standpoint. There are numerous alternatives to YouTube for hosting and watching video content, which we will get to shortly. But since YouTube has such a colossal repository of existing content, some of which is not available elsewhere, it is difficult to avoid entirely. That being the case, let’s look at some ways to interact with YouTube while preserving more of our privacy.

The best way to access YouTube is through an alternative front-end rather than the default web front-end you see when visiting YouTube.com or the default app you install on your mobile device. Invidious accomplishes precisely this. You can access Invidious from a web browser through any number of instances, or host an instance yourself, but there are also several stand alone desktop and mobile apps that use the Invidious API to present an alternative to the YouTube app or web interface. On the desktop, I use the FreeTube client. Essentially, this client can use the Invidious backend, or render the YouTube page directly in a sandboxed window, and includes ad blocking as well as the SponsorBlock extension, which uses crowdsourced data to skip over those obnoxious sponsored segments in YouTube videos. SponsorBlock is not enabled by default, but can be toggled on in the settings panel. While you are in the settings panel, make sure to examine the Privacy Settings menu and ensure it is to your liking. If you so choose, you can subscribe to channels or keep your watch history, and those subscriptions and history are only stored locally on your machine – no YouTube account required, no information being exchanged with Google. On mobile, I use LibreTube, although NewPipe is also a serviceable alternative. Both are available through F-Droid and operate similarly to the FreeTube desktop client, just on your phone instead of a desktop machine. For consuming content, I find these alternatives much more pleasant than the official YouTube site or app.

That said, it is obviously preferable to avoid YouTube altogether, and there are at least dozens of alternatives and copycats. We’ll focus on just a few of the more privacy-respecting alternatives here, beginning with LBRY (pronounced “library”). LBRY is a protocol and blockchain-based content distribution network. There are desktop and mobile clients that allow you to search the platform and consume content. Interestingly, Jeremy Kauffman, one of the co-founders of LBRY, is a Free State Project member and libertarian shit-disturber affiliated with the Mises Caucus within the Libertarian Party, and is at least partially responsible for helping the Mises Caucus gain a majority position within the LP. Because LBRY is only a protocol and the clients are peer-to-peer, you may run into some filthy content on there if you have the NSFW filter disabled (it is enabled by default). Realizing this, the people behind LBRY spun off a sister site and service called Odysee, which works more or less like YouTube: the content is more curated (although not – for now at least – censored), the interface is more familiar, and you can sign up for an account and do all of the sorts of things you do with a YouTube account, such as subscribing to channels, liking content, and even tipping creators. Odysee is not my first choice as it is still a centralized platform. While it uses the LBRY protocol for hosting its video content, it is a centralized node on the LBRY blockchain. Odysee also recently introduced advertising, which has historically been the camel’s nose under the tent for censorship. However, it is a more normie-friendly product that more closely approximates the video sharing experience with which many people are familiar than any other relatively privacy-respecting video sharing site, and is therefore a less-bad option than YouTube. If you are a YouTube content creator, you can syndicate your videos to Odysee with a single click in your user profile. There is a small catch, however. In order to upload videos to the LBRY network (including the Odysee node), you must stake your video with a minimal amount of LBRY’s shitcoin called LBC. When creating an account on Odysee, you will receive a small token amount of LBC, and can earn more by watching videos and participating in the community features of the site. You can earn back LBC in the form of tips, or by requiring payment in LBC from users in order to watch your videos. Fiat ad revenue sharing is also a possibility down the line. Initially, LBC was the only way to make money on the platform, but LBRY is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the SEC over whether or not their initial coin offering violated US securities law. Consequently, it is currently tedious to exchange LBC for fiat currency or other forms of cryptocurrency, which is in part why advertising and fiat tipping was introduced to Odysee.

LBRY was not the first and is not the only decentralized video sharing platform. Dtube operates on a similar principle using the STEEM blockchain, while using IPFS to deliver content. Similar to Odysee, the Dtube website provides a familiar YouTube-like user interface. It has been my experience that there is less content on Dtube and that streaming is slower with more buffering required. Your mileage may vary. PeerTube is another completely decentralized, federated video sharing platform based on the same technology that powers Bittorrent. Unlike Odysee and Dtube, PeerTube does not provide a centralized instance or front-end to its service. Instead, anyone can host a PeerTube instance from which to access the PeerTube network, and federate with other PeerTube servers. While this has major advantages in terms of privacy and censorship resistance, it is also a less normie-friendly experience. Worth mentioning for the more technically inclined self-hosting aficionado, the GNU MediaGoblin project, rather than provide a centralized service of its own, is a software solution that enables creators to essentially spin up their own media content sharing server, which federates with others. This is by far the least normie-friendly option for video sharing, but an interesting project nonetheless.

In response to YouTube’s politically-motivated content moderation censorship policies, several YouTube alternatives with more lax policies, such as Rumble and BitChute, have sprung up. While these arguably serve a function by driving traffic away from YouTube and providing a platform to those outside of the Silicon Valley mainstream, most are no more respectful than YouTube of user privacy, and because they are centralized platforms, they have the exact same ability as YouTube to censor and remove content if they should choose to do so. Therefore, I generally avoid those services as well.

TL;DR: To avoid ads and tracking, consider using an alternative front-end for YouTube, such as Invidious, FreeTube, LibreTube or NewPipe, instead of the official website or app. If you can avoid using YouTube entirely, so much the better. Consider using LBRY, Odysee, Dtube, PeerTube or other decentralized technologies to share videos instead of centralized services like YouTube and its mainstream competitors.

Next, “Part VI: Chat/Instant Messaging/Communications.“