When people started calling my personal mobile number with questions about a voluntary organisation I'm involved with, I was confused: we weren't sharing that number. It turns out that Google had decided to take the number I used to verify my identity for Google Business some years prior and start putting it in Google Search results. WTF, Google?
  • Glitchvid@lemmy.worldEnglish
    104·
    7 days ago

    Sort of hard to exist without interacting with Google at all (lots of the material I’m given in courses is hosted on YouTube).

    Your best bet is to use separate isolated/siloed accounts for their different services, never let your GCS account be attached to Gmail or one of their consumer facing products for example, lest it get nuked because some automated system went haywire and now you’re scrambling to get the account back.

    • A_norny_mousse@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      Sort of hard to exist without interacting with Google at all

      I explicitely did not claim that.

      And as the other guy said, you don’t need a G account to watch youtube.

    • pulsewidth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      7 days ago

      You can use YouTube without an account. And without even using their website, bypassing their ads and their tracking.

      Android has Grayjay, Newpipe, Pipepipe, Vanced. Windows has Grayjay, Newpipe, Freetube, yt-dl and others. Linux has Red, Utube, Freetube… You get the point.

      You do still need a login for age-locked videos, but those are a small subset of YouTube.

      • Glitchvid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        71·
        7 days ago

        For now. Google is clearly experimenting with baking ads into the delivered video streams, YT Premium members get served different endpoints already in preparation.

        • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          31·
          7 days ago

          that’s a problem too, but the discussion was about interacting with google. fuck them for showing ads down our throats, but at least they don’t know who watches the video (when using a proxy like invidious), and so they can’t build a profile of you, and they can’t bombard you with tailored manipulative ads either, just something possibly totally irrelevant.

        • sunzu2@thebrainbin.orgBanned from community
          21·
          7 days ago

          also. if you want to watch youtube on teevee on normal hardware, you are pretty much paying for premium…

        • A_norny_mousse@feddit.orgEnglish
          14·
          7 days ago

          Google is clearly experimenting with baking ads into the delivered video streams, YT Premium members get served different endpoints already in preparation.

          Enshittification is guaranteed even for the paid tier.

          Maybe there’ll be silver, gold and platinum memberships next. How long til you realize you’ve been had?