Maybe I‘m completely stuck but can somebody please explain the usecase of self hosting TubeArchivist?
https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist
Why would I rather download the content and watch it locally instead of watching it directly on YT?
Google knows exactly what you’re watching and when you’re watching it. Not so much if you just archive everything.
Imagine your favorite youtuber decide to just delete their channel… how would you re-watch their content or watch the content you never watched originally…
Essentially it’s the same use case as DVD’s and Blurays… they exist so you can watch the content when you want to regardless of whether they are still available on the original platform.
What if that content isn’t there tomorrow?
Why self host? So you can have an independent instance that can’t be paywalled, deleted, or modified by a third party company like Google…
YouTube is absolute garbage at deciding if something was “watched” or not. Sure, you can watch a playlist, but if you want to watch content in order, or if a YouTuber has a bunch of content and you want to watch all of it, often the only option is to download it and track it yourself.
That, and I’m a big fan of archiving important data. If YouTube removes a channel, or it gets hacked, or the YouTuber deletes their own content, it’s just gone. I might not feel like archiving someone’s game stream or a Minecraft tutorial, but an entertaining video I can see myself watching again? Yep, that gets downloaded.
Finally, I’m a bit of a completionist. Many TV shows have special clips they only show on YouTube, or that eventually make it to YouTube, things that don’t make it to DVDs, that nonetheless are part of the TV show; by downloading those clips, I can add it to the media I already own.