A privacy-respecting recommendation engine for video, so people can quit YouTube/Google without losing good 'what to watch next' discovery

android app venture scale •• multiple requests

People degoogling are stuck keeping a Google account purely because YouTube's recommendations are good and nothing private replicates them. Private front-ends (NewPipe, Grayjay, FreeTube, Invidious) faithfully handle playback and subscriptions but offer only reverse-chronological subscription feeds plus a global 'trending' list — no personalized discovery. The opportunity is a recommendation/discovery layer that builds taste locally (on-device, or from a self-hosted feed) instead of profiling you in the cloud, so 'private' stops meaning 'worse at finding new things to watch'.

builder note

Trying to out-recommend YouTube globally is the venture-scale trap. The winnable indie version is a local, on-device taste model that re-ranks content surfaced by existing front-ends (NewPipe/Grayjay) using your own watch history — turning 'private' into the feature rather than the downgrade.

landscape (3 existing solutions)

Privacy YouTube front-ends solved playback and subscriptions but treat recommendations as out of scope. The hard, unbuilt part is generating good 'what next' suggestions without server-side profiling — which is exactly the one thing keeping privacy-minded users tethered to a Google account.

Grayjay Its subscription feed is a reverse-chronological list of videos from creators you already follow; there is no personalized recommendation or discovery of new content you don't already subscribe to.

NewPipe / FreeTube / Invidious Offer search, subscriptions and a global trending/popular feed, but no taste-based recommendations — and the whole point of staying logged-out is that you give up the personalized 'home' feed entirely.

YouTube (signed in) Best-in-class recommendations, but requires a Google account and full watch-history profiling — precisely what these users are trying to leave, which is why they keep an account 'just for recommendations'.

sources (1)

other https://feddit.nu/post/20815724 "Alternative for YouTube recommendations?" 2026-06-21

youtuberecommendationsprivacydegooglediscovery