Privacy-focused channels on YouTube. Which ones do you watch on a regular basis?
My list:
- Techlore
- Surveillance Report
- NBTV (Naomi Brockwell)
- Mental Outlaw
- Luke Smith
- Eric Murphy
- The Linux Experiment (More about Linux, but there are also videos about privacy)
- Louis Rossmann
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Comments88
TheHatedOne
He's hardcore anti-corpo and money-interests, so much that he refuses any sponserships and condemns them universally.
Good stuff, well researched, only downside is that he takes a long time to upload stuff.
I'd consider that "downside" an "upside" (or whatever the word would be) since better quality, but I see what you mean
Fair point lol.
Thanks for the recommendation, didn't know this channel!
No, that's Techlore
For all the people saying that privacy-oriented Youtube channels are a contradiction.
The point of these channels is to make more people privacy conscious. And where do you find people that aren't very privacy conscious? That's right, YouTube. I actually think what these creators are doing is a great sacrifice in terms of their own, personal privacy, but making people aware.
Exactly!
Mental Outlaw if I want to see a funny corpo le bad video.
Eric Murphy if I'm more serious.
Mental Outlaws tech content is good. But wish he would leave his political views out...
It's sometimes very good content, other times you can tell he's talking out of his ass and trying to be edgy. A good "expert" should be able to admit that they have blind spots, and refer you to better sources of info.
Yeah, I like his content mostly, but he has had a few braindead non-privacy-related takes
such as?
His physical security video after the CTO of square died was not great. It felt too soon to be using his death to spread a message, and it relies far too heavily on the hypothetical idea that a gun could have saved him from harm. I understand that yes, a gun may have been able to prevent the attack, but it felt sort of ridiculous to insinuate that a gun is necessary to avoid a situation like this.
Invidious link: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=KbfKSXlDeIQ
YouTube link:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KbfKSXlDeIQ
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=KbfKSXlDeIQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
What political views? The crypto shilling and advertising his site?
He is very pro to Guns...
💀
heh, kinda same situation 🙂
Its kind of ironic that you posted a list of YouTube links.
yup 🙂
Mental Outlaw
SomeOrdinaryGamers (?)
Louis Rossmann (?)
OOO, Louis Rossmann, how could I forget. Need to add to the list :)
I know its not a YouTube channel but man I will prefer Michael Bazell from Intel Techniques over all these YouTube Channels. He does privacy and security for a living so he knows his thing and its very realistic about privacy and security.
Sounds cool. However, as I understand it, his books are paid, which means that i won’t be able to read them, there are problems with payment :(
You can subscribe to his podcast - it's completely free. It's called "Privacy, Security and OSINT show"
Yes the podcast is really good too.
Wait, did he restore it? SoundCloud was purged some time ago with only the "intermission" being available.
Yeah, not sure. Never used SoundCloud personally
SoundCloud is what Michael used to serve the podcast. Also, I've checked the blog some time after commenting, and
👌
Yes they are paid because he doesn't have any sponsors , no company paid him everything is his own work and experience. He also has a new method to sell his knowledge which is through a PDF so if you are interested let's say how to improve privacy and security on Apple devices you buy the PDF for $15 and then they will keep sending you updates as need it. Its much cheaper than the books and you get exactly what you need not like the book where get everything at once.
The model is good, I agree.
sometimes I'll watch Rossmann but anything more and my anxiety spikes
I love how how angry and focused he is. Sometimes I put him on while doing chores to listen to him ramble
In the realm of privacy, paranoia can often trump reason. Known issue. Passed on myself.
Rob Braxman Tech
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Rob Braxman Tech
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
He is also on Odysee. Here’s the link to his channel.
I watched him before too. But then somewhere in another YouTuber’s video I heard that in one of the repositories, I think his social network, there was a stub for encryption, although it is still stated that E2EE is there. After this my trust was broken. Plus, I have little trust in people who so actively push their products through video. I think it’s not for nothing that his VPN service is not on the lists of the best.
good point! he does shill his phones and services frequently.
Marketing itself is not such a big problem. But unfulfilled promises are already a red flag.
Privacy-focused? YouTube? 🤔
I watch people, not the platform.
Isn't it like buying pro union t-shirts from Amazon?
Firstly, we do not have worthy alternatives (PeerTube and Odyssee are not yet sufficiently developed). Secondly, I watch them through LibreTube, so Google does not know information about me. Thirdly, the world consists of compromises. This is one of them.
This is one of those things that is very true and is very easy to forget until you take a moment to step back.
definetly!
I get it, I just find it ironic that people post privacy related content on a platform run by the worst company in the world privacy wise.
@ExLisper
I think there are defendable grounds for saying someone posting about privacy on YouTube is and is not ironic. How surprising or unexpected it is depends on many factors like the poster's goals, threat models, and degree of altruism, user expectations regarding the poster, and congruence or incongruence with all of the above.
@FarLine99
@xad
Yep, totally depends how you look at it.
Andthee worlds servers are hosted by Google, Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft (Azure). Are we not supposed to use the internet now?
Yes, for sure, by simply connecting to the internet using my local provider and public backbone infrastructure (I'm not in US) I'm supporting corporations. Next you will tell me I'm supporting Saudi Arabia by turning light on in my bathroom.
The modern world consists of irony, albeit often sad. The goal of many of them is to reach ordinary people. And they watch videos on YouTube. The end justifies the means, I believe.
This only makes sense if you think Google is the one who puts up all videos on YouTube, and it's not a platform where basically anyone can put up a video about anything.
Because Amazon is the only one selling on Amazon? Ever heard of Amazon marketplace?
Luke + MO
🤟
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Not providing any channels (the ones I know the most about are listed by OP and commenters), but more about non-YT versions of channels about privacy being on YT. For people that use YT but are open to LBRY/Odysee/PeerTube. I have found these extensions to be great for quickly seeing if a channel is also on those services. If anyone knows of others like these, I would like to know about them. And for anything that isn't also on them of course Invidious instances are great for at least having some amount of privacy while dealing with YT (at least until Google finds some way to stop them from working).
Disclaimer: I am not a dev (or these or anything) or an auditor of security, so I can't say how good or bad these are outside of personally finding them useful. I also am not affiliated with them and again just find them good for seeing if non-YT versions of channels exist.
For LBRY:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/watch-on-lbry/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/watch-on-lbry/jjmbbhopnjdjnpceiecihldbhibchgek?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US
For Odysee:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/watch-on-odysee/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/watch-on-odysee/kofmhmemalhemmpkfjhjfkkhifonoann?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US
For PeerTube:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/peertubeify/
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/peertubeify/gegmikcnabpilimgelhabaledkcikdab?utm_source=ext_sidebar&hl=en-US
Invidious or Piped 😀
Outlaw and hated one, sometimes rossman.
I like Luke, but watched for his opinions in things honestly.
🤟
Mainly mental outlaw
The Hated One is my favorite. I also like Mental Outlaw.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
The Hated One
Mental Outlaw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I've only seen NBTV but interested to check out the others
NBTV is awesome. Really like the way thoughts are presented. And strong stand on privacy.
i'd probably say naomi brockwell's nbtv. idk why but she explains things so easily and makes some okay recommendations. i wouldn't say she gives the best recommendations but her channel is the one i always come back to.
She looks like she's definitely dedicated to her mission.
"Privacy-focused YouTube channels" - sounds like a contradiction...
Meh, I just use piped/invidious. I don't know these channels, but I imagine they're on LBRY or peertube, too
I use Piped, too. But recently it became really slow and unreliable for me. I am using it through Yattee with the default API.
Yeah, I don't know what's happening, but Invidious was always more reliable, at least for me. Which is very ironic, since Piped was created to fix many issues with Invidious.
I think part of this issue is the use of shiny new Javascript frameworks™️ and while I'm not on the "javascript framework bad" hype train, it's not normal for parts of the UI to simply not load after 3 refreshes of the webpage, while the rest loads fine.
Corrected the title 😀
What kind of life do you live that you're watching privacy YouTube channels? Peer tube maybe I guess makes sense but you might be barking up the wrong tree.
Also... idk how you legit watch Luke Smith after listening to him idolize the Unabomber and bitch about roads.
What's so surprising about this? This is just the kind of content I like on YouTube. Someone is watching cats, someone is watching videos about privacy :)
I watched several videos from Luke Smith about privacy and custom ROMs on the phone. I didn't see the rest. Perhaps it should be removed from the list, because... i don't watch it all the time.
I think the issue is being privacy-minded but being on YouTube. But I guess there are different levels of privacy, one doesn't have to be at hermit-like levels. xD
Unfortunately, I can’t escape YouTube/it's recommendations. But! I watch content about privacy through LibreTube, which proxies everything through Piped, which means that Google doesn’t know what I’m watching. So it's not a big problem.
Doesn't the recommendations require some history?
Though I feel that has peaked too, I think the recommendation engine was best around 2011 to 2015. It's kinda gone downhill since.
Of course they do. There are no videos about privacy in my recommendations. I look at privacy through LibreTube purely based on the list of subscriptions.
You can request a csv file of your subscriptioms from Google which you can import into Libretube and then cut ties with Youtube entirely, at least on mobile. There are other methods on desktop.
Subscriptions are good, but YouTube recommendations introduce new channels that you didn’t know about before, so recommendations are still needed for me.
I feel the same way. I switched to NewPipe recently, while degoogling my phone for privacy reasons, but I'm still using YouTube when I'm at my desktop. The recommendations are just better at finding new content for me.
I can respect that. I'll admit my finding new creators has slowed considerably since I stopped using Youtube directly. Now I just use word of mouth from podcasts and YT creators I already follow. For me, as of right now, that's fine.
But if I had just joined the platform, I'll admit there's just no way I'd discover as much, and would probably just use the platform directly.