this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2026
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DeGoogle Yourself

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how do you get google to stop tracking you even after you tried everything? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 days ago by lemmingsareawesome@sh.itjust.works to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml
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(this isnt a question about how to make invidious more secure/private i just want google to stop knowing everything i do and every device i have) I like watching youtube videos. I hate google. I try invidious. It's pretty cool.

I watch the videos I like on it. But I get suspicous. The channels I wacth even after I change my Ip, clear my cookies, change my tor circuts, even change my entire os to something real private like tails or qubes with whonix , ARE STILL RECOMMENDED TO ME. So I do a test. I watch channels I don't like. There it is. I feel like google is laughing in my face

Whats worse, I went on a different device and the same videos are there :(.

ive tried vpns, tor, tails, whonix in qubes, quad9, and nothing works. what do i do now?

(im not concerned about youtube synching reccomendations im concerned about google knowing what i like, and what devices i have no matter what tools i use)

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I mean Google can identify you with stuff like your resolution, cpu and gpu, measured execution speed, extensions, APIs, software versions. Browsers expose all that.

Check this site out. Its a great explainer: https://amiunique.org/

Now, if you run amiunique in Cromite, the results are interesting.

It may identify some stuff, but if you actually look at the readouts, you can see Cromite is spoofing data. It intenionally lies about your hardware and configurations to throw off fingerprinting, amongst other things.

This means it can actually mess up some sites that rely on the data: thats what I mean by "draconian." Tons of features are disabled or stripped out. Cromite is a very extreme browser to daily drive, because its purpose built to defeat fingerprinting at any cost.

[–] lemmingsareawesome@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

dumb question: can you get firefox extentsions on it?

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Nope.

I think many Chrome extensions don't work either, because of disabled APIs.

FYI extensions are another thing that can be used to fingerprint you. There's a discussion on this somewhere on the Cromite GitHub, hence they don't recommend extensions.

[–] lemmingsareawesome@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

aw man thanks for the recommendation though.

one more question, does it have ad blocking?

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Yep, built in, with customizable lists.

[–] lemmingsareawesome@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

thanks 👍

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just FYI, it might not be sophisticated enough to beat YouTube ads. Not sure about that.

[–] lemmingsareawesome@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

thanks for the honesty i could just go blind and deaf thatll do it

[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

If you are just looking to anonymize YouTube, I'd browse with Cromite,download longer videos with yt-dlp, and watch them in mpv. Or use something that automates that.

You get better video quality that way, anyway.