PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services • Hacker News Board

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#101

Post by novaleaf » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 3:21 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #2

This is a nice idea, but the one thing I haven't been able to divorce myself from is YouTube. I really hate how Google has allowed such a wealth of constant information that completely dwarfs alternative video hosting sites. As censorious as Google can be(now "up next" is always some video from CNN or Fox), blocking YouTube from my network would mean cutting myself off from a large portion of the world.

What I do, and all the sites I visit (techie) are surprisingly not broken (aside from recaptcha spam):

1) use Firefox with multi-account containers, and disable 3rd party cookies.

2) put youtube in it's own "youtube" container. do not login to that container

3) put all other google stuff in it's own "google" container

If you do that, and don't login to google except in the "google" container it makes it more difficult for google to know who you are on youtube or other non-google sites.

But to make it so they REALLY don't know who you are, you need to do the above plus use a VPN. In my own usage I've discovered that youtube will recommend you videos based on your IP address's recent views if your not logged in.

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#102

Post by inetknght » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

Remed wrote: post #60

geokon wrote: post #50

The problem is that JS Fonts and other CDNed stuff won't load and websites will hang or work weird - particularly Stackoverflow. Bc it's all over https you can't MITM it and inject your own with OpenWRT/piholes. Decentraleyes (a Firefox browser extension) fixes some of this, but not all. If anyone has any additional suggestions, please let me know (it makes life bearable in China without a VPN)

You can create a self-signed certificate for Google domains and trust it on your machines. Then you can MITM. This won't work well if you want to do it at a scale, with a number of 3rd party users, but if the only user is you or your family, it should do the trick.

> You can create a self-signed certificate for Google domains and trust it on your machines. Then you can MITM.

Can you point to or write up a blog post with a proof of concept?

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#103

Post by mikeash » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #99

ravenstine wrote: post #2

This is a nice idea, but the one thing I haven't been able to divorce myself from is YouTube. I really hate how Google has allowed such a wealth of constant information that completely dwarfs alternative video hosting sites. As censorious as Google can be(now "up next" is always some video from CNN or Fox), blocking YouTube from my network would mean cutting myself off from a large portion of the world.

My experience is if you watch videos on a given topic, they try to show you more of the same topic. So they probably decided you like American cable news. It can get frustrating when it only recommends a single topic. I might go through a phase where I want to see videos about something specific. The recommendation algorithm will re-enforce that and prevent me from moving on to something else. I found that if I make…

The trouble is that they often take viewing a video as a sign that you’re obsessed with that topic. You click one Flat Earth video to see what the crazy sounds like, and for the next three months half of your recommendations are “Scientists don’t want you to know this!”

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#104

Post by ravenstine » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 4:28 PM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #99

ravenstine wrote: post #2

This is a nice idea, but the one thing I haven't been able to divorce myself from is YouTube. I really hate how Google has allowed such a wealth of constant information that completely dwarfs alternative video hosting sites. As censorious as Google can be(now "up next" is always some video from CNN or Fox), blocking YouTube from my network would mean cutting myself off from a large portion of the world.

My experience is if you watch videos on a given topic, they try to show you more of the same topic. So they probably decided you like American cable news. It can get frustrating when it only recommends a single topic. I might go through a phase where I want to see videos about something specific. The recommendation algorithm will re-enforce that and prevent me from moving on to something else. I found that if I make…

I would rather that it would just play the next video by the current channel in reverse chron. Maybe if a channel made multiple videos in the last 24 hours, play that and then play other stuff. Instead, it immediately moves me to cable news if I am watching anything political, even though I never watch cable news voluntarily.

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#105

Post by csydas » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

user17843 wrote: post #79

csydas wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually not feasible as a solution because of shadow profiles. Google et. al. track you even when you are not logged in. Simply landing on a page is enough to capture your use habit and infer browsing/purchasing patterns from it. Look at Google Purchases revealed to many just a bit a go. It was retroactive for sure just scanning our inboxes which Google does have access to, but it can use known information t…

You contradict yourself. Google Purchase history requires a google account, they can't connect it to you if you are not logged in. The reason google pushes the log-in in their browser is exactly because they want to be able to tie this all to your account.

No, that was an example, not a requirement. Google has this history they associate whether or not you have a Google account. The account just solidifies it. You're still being tracked and identified without the account.

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#106

Post by user17843 » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

csydas wrote: post #105

user17843 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You contradict yourself. Google Purchase history requires a google account, they can't connect it to you if you are not logged in. The reason google pushes the log-in in their browser is exactly because they want to be able to tie this all to your account.

No, that was an example, not a requirement. Google has this history they associate whether or not you have a Google account. The account just solidifies it. You're still being tracked and identified without the account.

and that's an assumption you make that requires evidence. Your claim is that there is not only this kind of identification happening, but that it happens even if I have the common tracking blockers. Otherwise the blocklist in this thread would be completely overkill, just as I said.

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#107

Post by idlewords » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

I like that this site punts on reCAPTCHA. The web is not usable without Google services, which fact is useful in talking about the impossibility of consent as a model for regulating Google.

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#108

Post by CreatedForThis » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #107

I like that this site punts on reCAPTCHA. The web is not usable without Google services, which fact is useful in talking about the impossibility of consent as a model for regulating Google.

Alternative exists. It might not be usable entirely without them, but it can on a certain point. We’ve separated the list into multiple categories, so that way, this could be easier to block some majors parts of their services only. And well, We´ve indicated the domain to whitelist in case you have issues with reCaptcha´s.

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#109

Post by m463 » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

geokon wrote: post #50

The problem is that JS Fonts and other CDNed stuff won't load and websites will hang or work weird - particularly Stackoverflow. Bc it's all over https you can't MITM it and inject your own with OpenWRT/piholes. Decentraleyes (a Firefox browser extension) fixes some of this, but not all. If anyone has any additional suggestions, please let me know (it makes life bearable in China without a VPN)

You should look at the firefox decentraleyes plugin. Would be nice if pihole implemented something like this.

Re: PiHole-Google: Completely Block Google and Its Services

#110

Post by CreatedForThis » Sun, Jun 30, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #2

This is a nice idea, but the one thing I haven't been able to divorce myself from is YouTube. I really hate how Google has allowed such a wealth of constant information that completely dwarfs alternative video hosting sites. As censorious as Google can be(now "up next" is always some video from CNN or Fox), blocking YouTube from my network would mean cutting myself off from a large portion of the world.

Video-hosting website alternatives as YouTube are indeed, pretty difficult to use in hope to replace entirely that service. I’ll say that peertube is going into a great way, but if it actually continues to gain success, it will surely take too many longs. You can however, if its mainly for telemetry purposes, use something else like invidio.us which i’ve been using alongside it, since i’ve deleted my Google account.