Blog

I’ve had a bit of an aha-experience over the last month. As part of my effort to phase out the use of American tech companies’ products, or at least reduce the amount of data I share with them, I have been using FreeTube (and later Pipeline) as my YouTube clients on my PC, and NewPipe on my mobile phone, and I’ve discovered something interesting.

I subscribe to 33 different YouTube channels, covering everything from news and politics to music and cooking. Normally YouTube’s algorithm will suggest videos along the way, and there is a clear tendency for me to fall down a rabbit hole of American news or music and entertainment if I’m not very conscious about what I click on.

With clients that do NOT have an algorithm (Pipeline and NewPipe), and that only show me videos from the subscriptions I have chosen myself, I’ve landed in a place where Euronews, DW News and France 24 English suddenly appear at the top of my list of watched videos, simply because they provide a lot of content.

I have always subscribed to them, but YouTube clearly prioritises American news channels much higher than European ones, even though I see the videos from Europe. FreeTube offers suggestions in line with YouTube itself, but it’s a much more balanced mix between, for example, American and European news.

This has given me a much deeper insight into, for example, how the whole situation around Greenland has been viewed in other parts of Europe, and especially France 24 English provides some perspectives on the relationship with North African countries across the Mediterranean, which I did not have before.

I don’t know if any of the mentioned channels have a specific political affiliation, but if they do, it is something I don’t feel has been reflected in their news coverage – they are much more “Danish” in balancing viewpoints, and far from the very polarised coverage often seen with American news channels.

The result is that in just one month I have gained a markedly better understanding of how many things in the EU and the rest of Europe happen (for better and worse), and I really needed a break from “breaking news” and the focus on highlighting conflicts, which I find in many of the American news channels, regardless of their political alignment.

If you haven’t tried FreeTube or Pipeline (or NewPipe on your Android phone) it is really recommended – and I would also suggest you find another way to support your favourite YouTubers, because all three clients remove all ads from the videos.

Make direct payments where possible, or use their partners and remember to tell where you heard about them – that way you give far more support to the YouTuber than by watching endless ads.

Pipeline (Linux only):
https://flathub.org/en/apps/de.schmidhuberj.tubefeeder

FreeTube (Windows, macOS, Linux):
https://freetubeapp.io

NewPipe (Android):
https://newpipe.net/

NewPipe is currently experiencing some DNS problems, but it can be downloaded via the F‑Droid repository:
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.schabi.newpipe/

– scroll down until you see “Download APK” and download and install the file, then you’re set.

*Addition*

After using NewPipe for a while, I have come to the realization that it is not the most stable app in the world, but luckily I found that FreeTube also has an Android version:

https://github.com/MarmadileManteater/FreeTubeAndroid/releases

Download the APK for your Android phone and install it—then you’re set. You can export your subscriptions from your PC to a file (Settings – Data Settings – Export Subscriptions), transfer it to your phone, and import them into FreeTube. You cannot sync subscriptions automatically—doing so would require an account with some cloud service.

SearXNG is a meta‑search engine that lets you keep your searches private while avoiding ads alongside your internet queries.

Another benefit of SearXNG is its somewhat more “compact” layout compared to Google – actual results look a lot like a Google search from 15 years ago, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

A search for “recipe for pancakes” on Google in Microsoft Edge without an AdBlocker:

A corresponding search for “recipe for pancakes” on SearXNG in Microsoft Edge without an AdBlocker:

Step 1 is to find a publicly available SearXNG instance that you can use for searches. It’s not like Google or Bing, where there’s only one site to search on; these engines are typically run by enthusiasts, web‑hosting firms, or the like.

You can find a reasonably up‑to‑date list here:
https://searx.space

In this tutorial I’m using a version provided by OVH, a large French web‑hosting company—this should offer a degree of stability for reliable operation:

https://opnxng.com

The search engine can be used as‑is, simply by bookmarking it in your browser, but the smartest way is to make it work like the address‑bar search in Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or other engines that can be turned on/off by default in many browsers.

I use the Vivaldi browser, which is partly built in Norway (outside U.S. influence, even though it uses the Chromium engine, a Google‑controlled open‑source project) and has strong built‑in tracking protection alongside an integrated ad‑blocker.

See the end of this post for a quick guide for Microsoft Edge, the default browser in Windows 11.

In Vivaldi, choose Tools → Settings → Search, then scroll down to the search‑engine editor and press + under the list of engines.

In the Name field, give your engine a name—here I’ll call it “SearXNG – OVH.”

The Nickname field is a shortcut you can use directly in the browser’s address bar to call a specific engine – here “xng” is a good choice.

In the URL field you must keep the syntax exactly right. Vivaldi suggests this line by default:

https://example.com/search?q=%s

And it’s important that we ONLY replace “example.com” with “opnxng.com,” and do NOT delete the rest of the line.

Finally, tick Set as default search and Set as private search.

That’s it – now you can type a query into Vivaldi’s address bar and see the results exactly as if you’d navigated to the search page and performed the query there.

I chose OVH’s server because it’s a fairly large hosting company, but, frankly, it’s not the world’s fastest engine. If you search for “recipe for pancakes” and then click Images just under the search field on the results page, it takes a moment before matching images appear.

Feel free to experiment—perhaps you’ll find another address on the list that’s faster, or it might not matter to you.

In Microsoft Edge you can add your own search engine by clicking the three dots in the upper‑right corner and selecting Settings → Privacy, search, and services → Search and related services → Address bar and search → Search engines → Add search engine.

The URL must be the same we set up in Vivaldi:

https://example.com/search?q=%s

Replace “example.com” with “opnxng.com” for this instance.