I’ve seen the effects on invidious these past days. 8 in 10 instances have been broken. Google is putting some serious work into shutting alternate frontends down. Shows you how much of a dent they’re putting in the bottom line.
Shows you how much of a dent they’re putting in the bottom line.
Or how desperate google execs are to get even the tiniest bump in revenue.
Invidious and YouTube piped (and LibreTube) by default load the videos server-side, as opposed to GrayJay, NewPipe or Smarttube.
It has advantages (mostly that your IP address is not shared with YouTube, and it allows users from countries where YouTube is blocked to still access it) and inconvenients (much harder to keep up when YouTube actively seeks to block them).
hopefully they come up with a workaround.
I remember Hooktube. That was when front ends were still trying to play nice by accessing youtube the “right way”.
They killed that one off pretty hastily.
Invidious was the hero successor, but I think we all knew that it would eventually come to this. Invidious’ most recent fixes for blocking involve passing identity tokens, making a concession that Google is then better able to track users behind Invidious.
I’m not sure how much farther there is left to go on the technical angle of this fight.
It’s about time we try to de-google.
YouTube and my existing Gmail is the only thing tying me back. And the occasional Google maps. I don’t even use the rest of their services anymore
THat sounds great! Gmail can be easily replaced, by like Proton mail or something… Youtube is also very hard… It’s a vicious circle, “Youtubers” try to host their content elsewhere but nobody is looking. While some users also want to get rid of the youtube platform, but since most people are still and keep watching on YouTube, the content creators keep uploading there…
Gmail can be easily replaced, by like Proton mail or something
Except for the fact that you’ll need to update your email address in so many places.
If you do move to a different provider, make sure you use your own domain. It’s way more professional, and it lets you move to a different provider in the future without having to change your email address again. I’ve had one of my email addresses for a bit over 20 years across a bunch of different providers.
The paid version of Protonmail lets you have up to 3 custom domains. MXRoute and FastMail let you use your own domain too. MXRoute supports unlimited domains and addresses; you’re just limited by total disk space.
If the email address is important to you, it’s better to use a paid service since it’ll usually give you proper support and an SLA.
highly reccomend Grayjay and Freetube. Futo claims to be foss but it is only source viewable (my apologies having a brain fart and cannot remember the actual term.) which to my knowledge means you can see the source code but not redistribute it. They ask for a one time $10 payment but the app functions the exact same with or without payment. Grayjay does not have a desktop application but they are looking for someone with experience to develop one. Freetube is open source and contains extra addons like de arrow and watching from invidious instances along with a desktop and mobile application. It’s UI is less appealing than Grayjay ( at least personally) but it’s the only way I watch youtube on PC now and I use Grayjay on mobile. Both of these contain sponsorblock too! ;)
If you watch YouTube on an android TV you can sideload smart tube TV, which is ad free as well. While I personally don’t reccomend it you can sign in with your yt account on both grayjay and smart tube to impket subscriptions.
If you are looking for a solution for YouTube TV… Well… You may need to sail the 7 seas and live with not watching live (unless others have a solution for this.
Fuck Google.
What I want is a platform on I2P which has a collection of residential proxies to connect and scrape YouTube. I guess that’ll work for Invidious too, but I just really like the idea of a huge community staying and interacting in I2P which will help its adoption (of course, the service must be P2P and not relay video directly like Invidious does now)
- gmail you can forward all mail to another account.
- Youtube, you could try following your subscriptions via RSS/ATOM feed reader. It’s honestly just like regular YT but without the recommendation engine.
I agree. But to be very honest, de-googling is very important but not always very easy. So I did personally move away already from Gmail. I also now host my own Nextcloud instance, which I use for my agenda as well as contacts. Meaning I also don’t sync or store contacts or anything in Google. I don’t use any cloud services for storage either, again Nextcloud (self hosted) solved that for me.
Then I was never using ChromeOS, so that helps, I’m only using Linux. However, I do have an Android device. It’s really hard to get rid of that, maybe a custom ROM, is that valid? Anyhow, and last but not least Google search, Google images, Google maps, etc. I don’t want to go from Google Search to another big Microsoft corp, so moving to Bing is a no go. That also means all those meta search engines is also not a good alternative, which includes: DuckDuckGo, ecosia and alike… Qitchain, presearch or Yacy isn’t working for me either. It’s just not good enough.
Thus finding a good search alternative is hard! I’m actually considering as a software engineer to build my own.
I’m a YouTube creator, part of the partner program, and I also manually upload to TILvids. The videos I make generate about $100-$300 a year through the partner program, so I’m not a professional by any means. It feels like they’re trying to keep creators from leaving by putting up small roadblocks that limit our reach beyond the platform. Given PeerTube’s non-profit model, I see it as a potential future for content sharing. Though there are a few rock stars on YouTube, most of the creators on that platform make little to no money from publishing videos. There are more people like me than Linus Media Group.
Yeah its really too bad how Youtube treats other video creators. Its a strange world. Hopefully peertube (given enough time) will have some viable options or at least an alternative. Is there any other platforms that work with video creators like yourself? I personally dont know of too many other than maybe twitch? I haven’t been keeping up.
We need to slowdown YouTube and get an alternative that is viable for people and creators. The problem in this case is creators and brands, almost no creators would continue doing videos if there’s no money at the end
The problem with money being involved is it’s an invitation to spam crap everywhere.
One of my relatives has recently taken up “AI travel videos” and “AI cute videos” as a “hobby”. No doubt based on the first thing that came up when I searched for those things, a video titled “make $10,000 a month spamming up YouTube with your AI slop”.
Oh, and it needs you to buy the AI slop generating tools that they happen to sell. How convenient!
I mean, this also happened with broadcast TV, where we suddenly went from like 4 channels filled with programs and things competing for space, to 200 channels, where the rush was on to fill the gaps between the adverts as cheaply as possible with reality show tat. And that’s all YouTube is now.
So now the problem is sharing your IP with every member of the P2P swarm.
VK Video is indeed probably close to it, being a quasi state company. Theoretically they can not maximize profit extraction in all spaces, and keep the videos without unlimited propaganda. But Rutube is a profit-seeking company that is just smaller scale youtube. Let’s see how the 1st will evolve over time.
The other day someone on lemmy kept trying to tell me that if google wanted to shut down ad blocking they would. But they don’t, so it’s ok.
Lol, spawn me that person plz.
AdBlocking is 100% OK, that part is correct for sure. Ad networks (including Google’s) routinely serve up scams and malware: It is foolish not to use a browser with a fully functional ad blocker at this point (i.e. avoid Chrome, use Firefox with uBlock origin).
As for whether Google approves: Fuck Google! They have been serving up malware and scams in their ads. Their opinion should be irrelevant if you have any interest in protecting yourself, they have repeatedly proven they cannot and should not be trusted.
If Google takes money to host an ad that’s malware, they should be able to be prosecuted for it.
This is different than simply hosting community content that they can’t reasonably moderate. They’re being given money to distribute these ads, so they can afford to moderate them.
Which should be easy anyway. Ads shouldn’t be able to install third-party shit from the advertisers on user computers. Google can easily restrict what can be included on an ad package.
