If you want privacy try njalla. A bit more expensive but they do try hide as much data as possible and I've never had any downtime with them.
I think this is a sound way of doing it. Rather than trying to force people to switch and potentially alienating them from using an app like signal and moving away from their usual apps. The people who really want to continue chatting with you will come along for the ride.
Yes it's been like that forever. Before it used to outright block the entire domain.
When I search for this it has a WordPress icon. I wouldn't trust it.
I use a beelink nuc, put on Linux and just connect it via HDMI to my tv, this way I have no real restrictions and I can keep it up to date easily.
Yep, after you realize the majority of the stuff you can buy of Amazon is mass produced trash with zero quality. It was easy to remove.
If you know how to use docker look up gluetun, it basically allows you to tunnel everything through the VPN and still access everything locally.
I do this exact thing and after a year or so of running my invidious instance locally I'm not banned and never had any issues and I use it about 5 hours per day give or take. Hope this helps.
Go to ipleak.net and activate the torrent check, paste the magnet link into your torrent app while on VPN and it will tell you what IP address it detects, if it's not the same as your regular ISP then you can verify that it's using your VPN and not your standard internet connection.
If it were up to me, the first boot I would make sure theres no internet access either via Ethernet or wifi that ensures the computer cannot phone home to its mothership. From there either reinstall windows fresh or straight to Linux if you want to avoid spyware.
Weak active directory password auditing. Going to be great fun for service desk once the forced password change occurs.
This is how we do it here as well but I find the lack of sleep even if I went home an hour or two earlier impacts the entirety of the workday.