Same here without vpn. Getting by using embedded yt player, but not optimal. Seems that freetube users could win if we had a common cache like ipfs where watched videos are stored. If one user gets the whole video, everyone have access to it via ipfs. There would still be trouble with rare videos/first view, but YT would probably not block an ip if most of the yt videos where loaded from ipfs instead ?
Just a quick thought.
Yes, you are leaking data, but don’t panik. First of all, your mental health here and now is important - without it you won’t have energy for other things. Next, It takes a lot of energy to de-google or de-corp and you don’t wan’t to ‘leak’ now, but in 6 months, you’ll have your own private/foss talking AI assistant, and it will help you cut the ties to the last corporation then.
So, soon you’ll be more ‘invisible’ for the corps, and maybe you can live with the spying/manipulation for a moment longer ? Not sure how long it takes for their AI to find you anyway, but at least the removed have to work for it…
Alternatively, get a free account at Groq (also have ‘whisper’ stt), or sambanova and install/use open-webui for talking. These new hardware corps don’t train AI on free user interactions, and they probably don’t sell your information - yet. There are other methods for p2p sharing of AI resources, but they may not provide quality high enough or with all modalities.