As a journalist working in a country at war, my privacy and security are essential to my safety. At the same time, my job requires me to upload videos to YouTube. I therefore have two questions about the privacy implications of using Qubes OS.
First question: browser fingerprinting and virtualization in Qubes OS
How identifiable are Qubes OS Whonix qubes and regular qubes from a browser-fingerprinting perspective? For example, wouldn’t the absence of a dedicated GPU potentially be unusual or detectable? Could WebGL and WebGPU expose characteristics of the virtualized GPU, particularly when combined with timing measurements and hardware-performance characteristics that may reveal that a browser is running inside a virtual machine?
How do browsers such as Firefox and Tor Browser mitigate these types of virtualization and hardware-fingerprinting techniques? More broadly, what would you consider the biggest privacy risks when using Qubes OS?
Second question: YouTube and virtualization detection
Can YouTube detect that a user is accessing the service from a virtualized environment and potentially treat the account or traffic differently because its systems suspect the user is a bot or automated account?
As a journalist, this could have a significant impact on my work. If YouTube’s algorithms were to reduce the visibility or distribution of my videos because they were uploaded from a virtualized environment, that would have real professional consequences. Is this a realistic concern, and if so, what aspects of using Qubes OS or virtualization would be most likely to trigger such systems?