I have an old Google account that I only use for one specific thing today: YouTube recommendations.

Their algorithm is actually decent. Which is not something I hear myself very often. And while it can be a trap, it does actually recommend me a fair bit of high quality content as long as I stay away from the obvious traps, make sure to block channels I don’t like, and use the feature “not interested” on videos that I don’t like.

However. I would like to only use my web feed client and no Google account at all, but I would then miss out on the recommended videos.

Is there some privacy respecting alternative to this that I’m not aware of?

  • dannitien@piefed.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    I use a front end called Grayjay. You can log in with your YouTube account in the settings and transfer everything over, or you can set up a Polycentric account and never use YouTube directly at all. It’s ad-free on my device and I notice that it even shows locked Patreon content on some channels.

    I downloaded it directly from their website and use F-Droid as the repository. I was able to do all this on an Android tablet, so it’s fairly simple.