With Reddit shutting down its API setting a precedent in the corporate tech world (and Reddit was a major outlier in that a ton of their users are technical minded and support third party clients, YouTube does not have that kind of userbase and will not get backlash for it), Twitter doing whatever the fuck they’re doing, and Google already hellbent on destroying ad blockers, the days of Newpipe, Invidious, and Freetube are numbered. Wouldn’t be surprised if they implement Netflix level DRM tomorrow that makes alt clients impossible. I say savour your alt clients while you can guys, you won’t be able to soon.
Author of Piped here.
I think it is quite unlikely for YouTube to implement a DRM for watching videos. In anyways, we will keep fighting collaboratively as long as we can.
The most likely way YouTube probably will affect us currently is if they decide to log in wall their platform like how Twitter did.
In anyways, we will keep fighting collaboratively as long as we can.
You’re doing god’s work!
Readily available content for everybody is the whole reason YouTube got so big.
So either the world would riot because YT is so popular, or the world would accept its fate, because YT is so popular.
Which one is it going to be? You decide
But then again, the overwhelming majority of people don’t even know that there’s other ways to watch YT
The vast majority of their userbase already puts up with it, so I doubt they will see any significant backlash. Even if all the FLOSS creators leave, they’re still a tiny minority because it’s “”“influencer”“” channels like the Pauls and content farms like Bright Side that are the real cash cows on the platform.
Also, a huge part of their userbase is children. Probably more than any other mainstream social media platform. They won’t even understand the concept of DRM or corporate bullshittery and will only use the YouTube app or browser anyway. Kids are also less likely to be bothered by ads, might not even understand what the purpose of an ad is, in fact they will just see them as more content which is why advertising to kids is so unreasonably effective.
Oh yeah, right after sending it I realized that my hopes with this comment are exclusive to our little FOSS bubble
I guess I’m going to start looking for content I like on Peertube. Barely anyone I watch is on alternative platforms, with the exception of HardwareUnboxed on Odysee, so we’ll see what I can find.
I wish you the best of luck! I’m on a similar journey to replace YouTube.
You think YouTube will stop Tor users? That’s blocking them from hundreds of millions of users whose internet blocks YouTube without TorBrowseer.
Don’t worry, big evil corporations wouldn’t shut out such huge market segments.
It WILL break legacy and underpowered devices, so its likely they won’t at least not too soon. Those apps rely on the files hosted on the googlevideo servers, and most that are used are meant for legacy browsers.
I’ve never pegged Google as particularly giving a shit about legacy support though. They kill things out of the blue without warning or explanation.
For the most used services, legacy support is actually respected by Google.
Google Search still works on Internet Explorer 6 for Windows 98 and XP.
Wonder if that will finally change with web integrity.
What I sent was an old screenshot from the web, but I confirmed it now. Google Search still works on Windows 2000 and IE5 in the middle of 2023
Newpipe doesn’t use YouTube’s api to play videos, and it plays videos from pretty much any service that uses embedded video like YouTube does. I dont think its going anywhere anytime soon.
I’m pretty sure the “trusted web” that Google is implementing in Chrome is exactly for that purpose: distinguish apps doing HTML scraping from users using a regular browser.
If Google wants to break Newpipe, they’ll find a way.
my current guess is: this problem will mostly fix itself
youtube-ads are ridiculous. I wouldn’t consume these as they are now. If I’m forced to use that site without sponsorblock and adblock, I’m tending to just never watching anything there.
So if NewPipe/Sponsorblock (and of course NewPipe+Sponsorblock) are gone, then I won’t use that shit anymore and don’t feel any pain.
Same as with reddit. The last weeks I visited when pointed to reddit by some search enigne, but not out of “I could browse it for fun”. I didn’t miss anything. Twitter? Not even trying to visit that shithole anymore, since most links are unreadable anyways.
If platforms are closing down, they will lose my interactions. More free time for me!
The problem is that the content creators that I like are all on YouTube and nowhere else. There is no alternative.
You will find new ones you like or you will watch less.
Both is fine and you will survive.
And if less people consume content on YouTube, less creators will upload their stuff ONLY there.
I wish that this risk encouraged people to migrate out of YouTube. Specially content creators. PeerTube could get a bit more people.
I’m going to seriously consider completely discontinuing watching YouTube if NewPipe stops working. I still like plenty of non-FLOSS oriented channels that will never even consider a FLOSS or open web solution, but I think I owe it to myself to not accept Google’s bullshit, not even use it from the browser, with or without the adblock ban. Not to protest Google’s actions because I don’t care, but to uphold my own values and interests. I need to heed my own advice and extended rants about big tech.
I do not think NewPipe Extractor or yt-dlp are stopping anytime soon. See how YouTube-DL still works today, even if throttled. This is someone from a maniac like me who monitors the whole tech scenario like a data archivist watchdog. YouTube is far too huge a service and its video content format makes it a lot more different than other gatekept services like text based social media or the Snapchat kinds (Snapchat is dead).
The only non-downloadable video streaming mechanism I have encountered to date is that of Netu/Hqq.tv, and that gets circumvented by screen recording.
What about yt-dlp I wonder? Can we still scrap videos after this?
Probably not. There’s no netflix-dl for a reason.
And yet it’s still ripped and on torrent sites. Not sure how they do it.
DRM code was leaked and decoded few years ago. I have the DRM files of Netflix, Disney+ and all these services. OP is being too doomer.
Yeah that’s on me. I never really looked for netflix downloader type software because everything I’d possibly want to watch on Netflix (not a lot all things considered) is available on torrent. Guess I never really wondered how they rip the videos for torrenting, which in hindsight is kind of obvious.
While it lasts, what is a good adfree foss yt player on ios?
I don’t think there are any that don’t require jailbreak/sideloading, but you can always use the browser versions like Invidious or Piped!
