Youtube has fully blocked Invidious

captainkangaroo@discuss.tchncs.de to Technology@lemmy.world – 703 points – [Bug] "This helps protect our community." · Issue #4734 · iv-org/invidious
github.com

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/22423685

EDIT: For those who are too lazy to click the link, this is what it says

Hello,

Sad news for everyone. YouTube/Google has patched the latest workaround that we had in order to restore the video playback functionality.

Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won't work anymore.

If you are interested to install Invidious at home, we remind you that we have a guide for that here: https://docs.invidious.io/installation/..

This is not the death of this project. We will still try to find new solutions, but this might take time, months probably.

I have updated the public instance list in order to reflect on the working public instances: https://instances.invidious.io. Please don't abuse them since the number is really low.

Feel free to discuss this politely on Matrix or IRC.

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i absolutely despise youtube. these fuckers are putting ads on paused videos now, and then this.

they will never get better. only worse. we need regulations badly.

We need a competitor badly.

Peertube/Odysee exist, even if they are relatively niche.

Competitor with no content, users is not a competitor. Youtube should be forced to share content they do not own. Just for the sake of competition.

The content isn't the problem. It's the delivery system. No one else has the storage and network capacity that Youtube has. And as a result of that, no one else has the built-in audience Youtube has. Putting your videos on YT is simply the best way to get views.

I wish they'd nationalize stuff like YouTube, and online data storage, etc

I'd like to move to PeerTube, but I mostly just post stupid memes, and game clips on my YouTube. And as generic as that is I don't really know what instance to go with. Most instances seem to either focus on tech, or education. And that's good to have but I want a more general instance from a uploader pov.

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Whatever happened to dailymotion?

Does anyone really post anything to Dailymotion besides blatantly unauthorized TV stuff? I can't imagine it'd be very good vibes for anyone trying to make an honest living with original content over there.

Dailymotion does not allow for commenting anymore. That's why I stopped using it.

iirc they tried to become a tiktok clone, no idea how it went but considering i never see anyone talk about it i doubt it went very well

I used it a bit because its also on Grayjay but its pretty terrible and focuses a lot on big media than individual people

Paying Nebula subscriber here 🙋‍♂️

Pony up or your call for a competitor doesn’t mean anything. People don’t want ads? Fine. There has to be another revenue stream. Server capacity costs money, making a website and app cost money, and video creators need to eat.

Then isn't the obvious move to just pay for youtube?

I also do that. But Nebula is more thoroughly creator friendly. 50% of net profits go to creators and are divided by their share of watch time. That is a far more creator friendly policy than YT having a closed ad algorithm and you just get what you get. The YT display algorithm is also famously opaque and has some bullshit nanny filters on it such that you can’t actually make a faithful video about something like a historical massacre without being demonetized and hurting your channel in the algo.

There’s a lot I like about YT and being a premium subscriber does benefit creators there but I think Nebula is a next step in that evolution and it’s off to a decent start.

I pay for both.

Absolutely this. I pay for both my Proton and Notesnook accounts. No ads, no trafficing my data, and services I like and believe in.

I do pony up for other services (not YT Premium because I won't give Google any money) and support a significant number of creators via Patreon, giving them more money by far than they'd ever see from me from ads. And I've spent thousands of hours on my own dime making written content and giving it away for nothing with no ads or tracking. So yes, I agree.

Can you say more about the written content part? I’m not sure I understood. Are you giving YT creators scripts for videos?

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Not just invidious, they've just de facto blocked video embedding:

If you're wondering how a viable competitor could arise, other companies needing a video hosting solution that they can rely on to run their storefronts is a perfect use case. This is the Humble Bundle storefront, and they could pretty easily spin up a peertube instance. If that became commonplace, it could be one way for peertube to become ubiquitous.

EDIT: This is related to my VPN I believe, but storefronts still aren't going to be happy if they can't rely on their storefronts working for everyone.

yo rainworld i used to have a friend that was a fan of that game

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Professional hosting for business use is not hard, and fairly common even. But these make up a tiny fraction of YouTube videos, and they mostly post there to get organic growth and be suggested to people already watching YouTube.

Sure but it's really common to see embedded youtube videos on storefronts, and if storefronts en masse abandoned it that's one more piece of the market that youtube has lost.

They can't keep locking it down and not lose market share, is my point. They're enshittifying so much, so fast, and eventually there will be a tipping point.

They can't keep locking it down and not lose market share, is my point

They can very much afford to lose a tiny amount of marketshare in exchange for a massive increase in ad and subscription revenue, is my point.

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Seems it's fixed now?

Could be, maybe it's intermittent, but the more times they try to lock this shit down and it stops working for storefronts, the more unreliable it becomes.

What percentage of visits can they afford to have this error happen before they seek alternatives? If it were my business and I didn't know how many customers were closing the store page because the video didn't play and they lost interest, I would be immediately looking for an alternative.

EDIT: Still broken for me. I can fix it by turning off my VPN, but storefronts are going to want to sell to everyone, including the VPN users.

is that a possible workaround? Also, a tip from my school trying to block YouTube (idk if it applies here) is that you can 'add to queue' to where it plays in the corner then there's a button to make it bigger.

other companies needing a video hosting solution that they can rely on to run their storefronts is a perfect use case.

Many companies use Vimeo for this.

I watch embedded videos all the time. Literally hundreds this weekend. Embedded is not “de facto blocked”.

Well I now can't unless I disable my VPN. Storefronts would probably like VPN users to be able to use their stores, in which case they might be more interested in an alternative.

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Start asking your favourite content creators to post on PeerTube.

And how are they going to make a living to keep producing videos?

I’d say ask them to join Nebula.

That depends. If they only make a living with YT ads, then it’s going to be hard.

About half the ads I see on YouTube are already within the videos they post. I wonder what the overall ratio is of YouTube ad revenue versus in-video ad revenue.

Are you talking about sponsors? Because yes, that has nothing to do with YT ads.

I guess I forgot things like Patreon which could be a valid option. Although I’m neither a fan of subscribing to specific creators nor am I particularly fond of Patreon.

With Nebula my perception is that I pay a monthly fee and they can figure out who gets what depending on whose videos I watched. I don’t need to be particular in my action on who to support.

Nebula is a good option, but now you've created a paywall. Now only people who can afford it, can watch the content and what is to keep Nebula from upping the price of the subscription?

If ads is out of the question, then content creators need to use sponsors and patrons, if they want to make a living.

People want a fantasy world where all the main content is free and two or three rich sponsors support the creator by sponsoring little extras only available to Patreon supporters. The ends will never meet in the middle on that. It’s a fantasy where people get what they want for free because someone else pays for it. Won’t work. Get out your cash, kids. Cancel your Netflix and put the money into Nebula.

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An advantage of funding things via a collective like Nebula as opposed to each individual creator managing their own patrons is that new creators can start making bigger, more expensive projects quicker. Even established creators have this advantage, they can take bigger risks on bigger projects with the safety net of a share of the nebula pie.

I don't think a project like The Prince would exist without Nebula, for example.

a collective like Nebula

FYI, Nebula isn't a collective: https://scribe.rip/@cameron-paul/who-actually-owns-nebula-952a1c12d9c0

Thanks for the link, it was a very interesting read. While it is disappointing that it's not actually a collective (assuming this blog post is accurate), having a platform run and owned by 6 creators is still better than YouTube's governance structure, and still has the advantage in having both the capacity and desire to invest in creators.

Nebula is also priced for the masses. You get an entire video service for one reasonable price. Patreon finally has really low priced options like $1 a month but for the longest time it was like $25/month just for the entry level supporter package and I could never justify blowing all that on one creator. I also hated digging around the Patreon app for the sponsor content and dealing with its stupid push notifications.

I find Nebula is a much more sustainable thing. And I still discover new creators there. Because after all I’m not going to be set for life with one or two YT creators. I want to find new things too. Nebula gives you that.

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They also can use sponsors in the video, but that only works when you have enough views.

You could also send money via paypal or kofi if you don't like subscriptions, if the creator has it set up.

Yes if a creator’s main living can be shifted into Patreon or their own independent subscription service, THEN you will see them move off of YT because it actually works against them at that point. Mark Spagnuolo aka The Wood Whisperer has made this transition. He’s been around years (decades?) with awesome quality woodworking content. He’s found independent sponsorships. He’s created his own subscription service and takes direct payments but also uses platforms like Patreon. He plays the social media game very well. He travels to trade shows and keeps up with a podcast. He is the gold standard for what it takes a creator to move off of YT and still make a living IMO. His wife is a driving force behind making the business work and I think it’s a full time job for her too and probably a staff of employees. Mark used YT in the early years to build an audience but he does very little at all on YT nowadays.

He also has very little out there now that is free 🤷‍♂️

You can’t have it both ways

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Remember when people posted on YouTube for fun? It's only when it became a viable business that the platform turned to shit.

Ah yes, youtube now is just one big ad and sponsorship cesspool flooded with clickbait and misinformation and with highly privacy invasive protocol. Its a souless capitalisic corporate machine. I dont know why people would still use it. Just let youtube die.

I dont know why people would still use it.

Third-party clients, ad-block and sponsorblock are the only way I can still use it LOL

Also there simply aren't any alternatives that aren't alt-right cesspools or just awful to use...

All the people I watch on youtube make the majority of their money on patreon or twitch. Youtube is way too heavy handed with demonitization and copyright strikes to be a trutsworthy income source.

Nebula is cool and all, but at the end of the day, it's still a commercial platform, and those do tend to enshittify and depend a lot on externalities.

As creators grow more dependent on Nebula, Sam and the team of original Nebula creators can wield more power and change the rules.

They already dictate the kind of content that is allowed - for example, Second Thought, one of the original creators behind Nebula, was asked to leave as he doesn't agree to change public stance on Israeli-Palestinian conflict (he is pro-Palestine). This has suddenly left him without a source of revenue necessary for the production to expand, and has put him into debt.

Solution? Probably independent sponsorships that would go both on YouTube and PeerTube videos. Or a creator reward system like in Lbry/Odysee. Something that would allow to reward creators without going full commercial.

They can still post on YouTube.

It might take a tiny bit of their revenue away but I doubt it would make much of a dent, especially for creators that run mostly on patreon anyway.

Patreon and all the other services creators have at their disposal already.

Don't think most Youtubers can make a living these days solely on YT as revenue, and are already exploring other avenues.

Direct payment to creators seems like the most simple and efficient method.

Same way they do on YT. Viewer contributions + sponsor spots + merch. They only miss out on ad revenue (which I concede is not insignificant).

Nebula is ok but I took 1 look at their privacy policy and passed.

So you want them to take a huge pay cut? To what benefit, just YoUTubE bAd?

To literally everyone's benefit except YouTube.

Viewer don't have to submit themselves to Google's horrific practices and policies, and creators get the freedom to post what they want without some 3rd party determining it's illegal when it's not and taking it down or giving all of their income to someone else.

I'm not telling anyone what to do, I'm just pointing out that it's not impossible.

Paying Nebula subscriber here 🙋‍♂️

I can’t stand hearing people whine about wanting everything for free and how DARE people try to make a living so they can eat in between making videos!!!

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or odysee ig but i cannot find a good peertube instance i can post in

What are your criteria for a good instance? I host one myself, so genuinely curious.

The age limit yeah I think the peertube instances on their site follow the gdpr

Yea, a minimum of 13 years old is pretty common. Also something I agree with, as I don’t think kids under 13 should be on social media.

talking about most of them have a minimum of 16 but 13 is fair honestly its everywhere but i am 14

It's 13 years on mine, if interested: peertube.wtf

Yeah i already signed up but my videos require approval i registered before this reply

Civvie 11 is a old head. How do I convince him?

on which instance?

Tilvids.com is a good start. Fx The Linux Experiment is there.

Otherwise, I host peertube.wtf.

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yt-dlp still works.

A spark of hope in a dim world.

My god, what if its on google's chopping block next?

I often consider the scenario.

What would I do if Google straight sniped and headshot every single method of piracy, even embedding the ads into the video?

"He'll pay now!*

Nah, never. People are more momentary, at least I am. I don't care if I'm being entertained by "X". If "X" isn't worth the trouble, there's "Y". The days of everyone even caring to digest the same media as anyone else is over unless your main drugs are pop music, Asmongold reacting to politics and influencers.

I've seen it go down in some cases on VPNs, so it could be a matter of time (or they'll find a solution again and the back and forth will just continue).

You can still watch YouTube without ads using grayjay.app including sponsor block.

Thanks to Louis Rossman

Or just use Firefox with ublock?

Sure, that works too, however with grayjay you can follow creaters across platforms. So in case someone's account gets banned by YouTube due to whatever bullshit reason, you can continue following them on other platforms. Next to that you won't get spammed with Shorts junk. If you want to download a video to watch it offline, you can actually watch it offline (you don't require a connection like with YouTube to watch something offline)

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grayjay doesnt have return youtube dislike

It does, you can turn it on in the YouTube plugin settings.

alr i might redownload that app later

We can't complain about everything, here, considering the circumstances.

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YouTube will not change until people stop using it. And people do not want to put up with the inconvenience of not having a YouTube type service again for the amount of time it would take for YouTube to change or a viable competitor to take their place, it really is that simple.

Are YouTube and Google terrible? For sure, but it only got this way because the only backstop to holding them accountable, the consumer, has proven that they will choose putting up with shitty products and services in the name of convenience 9 times out of 10.

Same reasons that ad tiers are gaining a foothold in streaming services like Netflix. The consumer has shown they are fine with it.

Same reasons that ad tiers are gaining a foothold in streaming services like Netflix. The consumer has shown they are fine with it.

Yep, I remember when Netlfix first put it out there that they would start with the ads, and everyone on reddit was like, "Canceling my Netflix right now!!"

Netflix is doing just fine without the 5 redditors who actually did cancel it. lmao

the problem is so many people are willing to say they'll take a stand.

but when the time comes, the mindnumbingly overwhelming majority suck it up, because they must have their precious shiny and can not suffer even the mildest of inconvenience.

Its my biggest gripe in gaming, but its a enormous gripe just in general, with everything. because it doesnt matter if you are talking about appliances, creative software, video games, streaming services, stores, etc.

To summarize what I was telling another person. The number of people who care are far outnumbered by the number of people who don't. It doesn't matter if you or I or all 10,000 (just a random number for the sake of argument) of the people subscribed to a sub like this were to cancel when r/justworks or r/normie (made up subreddits for the sake of argument) has 100,000,000 who don't give a damn about computers, privacy, or anything else beyond the service working or not.

I agree. Tech communities have a habit of drastically over estimating how much everyone else cares about the details of tech.

Even something as simple as PC gaming scares off a lot of people because of the perception that you need to be some kind of tech wizard in order to cobble everything together to make a game run. Actual cobbling together of software to pirate (no matter how simple it seems to people in the know) is just a bunch of technobabble.

I have people whom I still need to explain copy and paste to on a regular basis. Trust me, I understand.

I'm a millennial and sometimes I feel like we're the only generation that learnt how to use computers properly. Boomers / Gen X often aren't great with computers, and neither are Gen Z / Alpha since they use phones and tablets far more. There's outliers of course.

this is the primary reason i advocate for more piracy, and even legal protections for piracy, in some capacity.

It's one of the few spaces i consider to be a "truly free market" when it comes to economics.

I'm more and more inclined towards the idea of piracy myself as time goes on and media continues to shave itself down into more and more ridiculous, unrelated shards, that you have to subscribe to just to be able to SEE if they have what you want.

I don't actively do it actively since I dont really know where to begin, and things I have found have been to sketch for me, or requiring memberships or even payments to join.

if you're looking for the babies first torrenting introduction, dbzer0 has a pretty comprehensive guide on it.

Might be worth looking into i2p as well, if you don't want to spend any money on it at least. Usenets and closed trackers are a weird one, usually based on memberships, but with good quality control of members and content so.

there's also the *arr stack but im sure there's a write of that one up on github or something.

I poked around dbzer0 and found a few streaming sites, Nothing which carried anything i was particularly interested in.

Navigating this stuff without my ISP getting pissy is another hurdle, too.

It was much easier 20+ years ago when you just searched KaZaA or Limewire, or back when piratebay was the site (and before it got drowned in virus traps)

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/c/piracy

check out the megathread for generic info and recommendations.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/30062 specific thread for i2p, there's plenty more information out there, you can also ask me about a few things as well.

the TL;DR for doing it without ur isp bonking u is to use a VPN, or a seedbox, which are options. Though you'll ideally want to use anonymous payment services like monero instead of something else, if you really want to be secure.

from what i understand, private trackers are generally fine and secure, aside from the fact that ur isp might not like the traffic, but that's a fault of the ISP, not the law. torrenting is perfectly legal. Though using a VPN is probably still recommended anyway.

navigating malicious software is kind of hit or miss now, but it's more likely you'll find them on bigger reaching platforms, and in actual software, rather than like, mp3s or movies. That's just basic opsec though. (again private trackers are beneficial for this reason, they have better QA and vetting)

🏴‍☠️ 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

I know you weren't using the number 5 as a hard example, but a thing that people still don't seem to realize is that the people in threads like this are the people that actually care. Even if the few thousand redditors who subscribe to a subreddit where they discussed that topic were to all (and I mean 100% of them) cancel there subscriptions. That is still only a drop in the bucket for Netflix. Losing a few thousand subscribers is still nothing if they made more money with the addition of ads.

It is interesting to me that the chorus always talking about "switching" to piracy after every incident is also intimately familiar with piracy already. Almost as if it's just people who already pirate talking to each other about how hard they are going to pirate. Meanwhile general audiences don't care.

Almost as if it’s just people who already pirate talking to each other about how hard they are going to pirate. Meanwhile general audiences don’t care.

this isn't quite true, we have seen an uptick in piracy over the last few years from the streaming service hyper diversion thats been happening for some time now.

It's probably not a lot of people, but it is still happening.

these are also the people who would pay more for quality service if it was available.

Losing a few thousand subscribers is still nothing if they made more money with the addition of ads.

It's the same with increasing the price of a service. Usually, the extra revenue from the price increase is far greater than the revenue loss from people that unsubscribe. If a business has a choice between a large number of customers with a small amount of profit per customer, and a small number of customers with a larger amount of profit per customer, they'll always pick the latter. Fewer customers reduces other costs, for example less support load, less bandwidth usage, etc.

Time to pirate YT content and upload to usenet to be automatically downloaded using sonarr

Yes but literally throwing together a script to download the days subscription videos to a jellyfin media drive would be stupidly simple.

Sure, but not as convenient 🤷🏻

It already exists, even as a Docker. Not as simple as an *arr style interface, but it works great one you set it up.

ytdl-sub

Well you know what they say “Great minds think quicker than mine and probably have already had that thought.”

"Stupidly simple" might be overselling it when it comes to the masses adopting it. Not everyone is adept at "throwing together a script."

That being said, I'm all for helping the masses adapt.

“Give me a Python script using yt-dlp that I can run on a cronjob that will download the videos from any of my subscribed channels since the last time the script was run”

You can use the following Python script to download videos from your subscribed channels since the last run. This script uses yt-dlp and stores the last download timestamp to track new videos.

First, ensure you have yt-dlp installed:

pip install yt-dlp

Then, create a script called download_videos.py:

import os
import json
import subprocess
from datetime import datetime

# Configuration
last_run_file = 'last_run.json'
download_directory = 'downloads'

# Ensure the download directory exists
os.makedirs(download_directory, exist_ok=True)

# Load the last run time
if os.path.exists(last_run_file):
    with open(last_run_file, 'r') as f:
        last_run = json.load(f)['last_run']
else:
    last_run = datetime.now().isoformat()

# Update the last run time to now
current_run = datetime.now().isoformat()

# Command to get videos from subscribed channels since the last run
command = [
    'yt-dlp',
    '--download-archive', 'archive.txt',
    '--output', f'{download_directory}/%(title)s.%(ext)s',
    '--date-after', last_run,
    '--no-post-overwrites',
    '--merge-output-format', 'mp4',
    'https://www.youtube.com/channel/CHANNEL_ID',  # Replace with your channel URL
]

# Run the command
subprocess.run(command)

# Save the current run time
with open(last_run_file, 'w') as f:
    json.dump({'last_run': current_run}, f)

print("Download complete. Next run will check for videos since:", current_run)

Setting Up the Cron Job

  1. Make the script executable:

    chmod +x download_videos.py

  2. Open your crontab:

    crontab -e

  3. Add a line to run the script at your desired interval (e.g., daily at 2 AM):

    0 2 * * * /path/to/python /path/to/download_videos.py

Notes

  • Replace CHANNEL_ID in the script with your actual channel IDs or use a playlist URL if preferred.
  • The archive.txt file keeps track of already downloaded videos to avoid duplicates.
  • Adjust the paths to Python and your script as needed.

Another example, which i can personally verify has been working fine for months. It works a bit different to the above, it downloads the latests 2* vids that are not already downloaded and runs once every hour with cron. I also attempted to filter out live vids and shorts.

Channels i am "subscribed" too are stored in a single text file, it also uses the avc1 codec because i found p9 and p10 had issues with the jellyfin client on my tv.

looks like this, i added categories but i don't actually use them in the script besides putting them in a variable, lol. Vid-limit is how many of the latests vids it should look at to download. The original reason i implemented that is so i could selectively download a bulk of latests vids if i wanted to.

Cat=Science
Name=Vertitasium
VidLimit=2
URL=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA

Cat=Minecraft
Name=EthosLab
VidLimit=2
URL=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFKDEp9si4RmHFWJW1vYsMA

#!/bin/bash


# Define the directory to store channel lists and scripts
script_dir="/.../YTDL"

# Define the base directory to store downloaded videos
base_download_dir="/.../youtubevids"

# Change to the script directory
cd "$script_dir"

# Parse the Channels.txt file and process each channel
awk -F'=' '
  /^Cat/ {Cat=$2}
  /^Name/ {Name=$2}
  /^VidLimit/ {VidLimit=$2}
  /^URL/ {URL=$2; print Cat, Name, VidLimit, URL}
' "$script_dir/Channels.txt" | while read -r Cat Name VidLimit URL; do
    # Define the download directory for this channel
    download_dir="$base_download_dir"
    
    # Define the download archive file for this channel
    archive_file="$script_dir/DLarchive$Name.txt"
    
    # Create the download directory if it does not exist
    mkdir -p "$download_dir"
    
    # If VidLimit is "ALL", set playlist_end option to empty, otherwise set it to --playlist-end 
    playlist_end_option=""
    if [[ $VidLimit != "ALL" ]]; then
        playlist_end_option="--playlist-end $VidLimit"
    fi
yt-dlp \
        --download-archive "$archive_file" \
        $playlist_end_option \
        --write-description \
        --write-thumbnail \
        --convert-thumbnails jpg \
        --add-metadata \
        --embed-thumbnail \
        --match-filter "!is_live & !was_live & original_url!*=/shorts/" \
        --merge-output-format mp4 \
        --format "bestvideo[vcodec^=avc1]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best" \
        --output "$download_dir/${Name} - %(title)s.%(ext)s" \
        "$URL"
        
done

Yeah this is more elegant and closer to what I’d actually want to implement. I was more just showing what could be done in literally thirty seconds on the can with ChatGPT.

I knew i recognized that output.

Mine is actually also made with the help of Chatgpt but manually refined and tested.

Honestly, it would probably be easier to just build a *arr program specifically for downloading YouTube videos directly. Tie it into the rest of the *arr suite, with naming conventions for Plex/Jellyfin.

I would install that, but I fear scraping youtube will be a arms race, soon, similar to other streaming services

While I agree, I have a hard time seeing how people will stop using it until the field changes. Maybe in 10 years it will the the MySpace of the sitcom era, but right now it's still growing. That growth is giving it carte blanche to manipulate the users as it sees fit. Regulation might impact it, but it's still a bit of a Goliath.

  • Compared to 2023, YouTube’s user base has grown by 20 million this year, representing a 0.74% increase. From Global media insights

Also the active user base is 2.7 billion people in 2024 from the same source above.

The alternatives are out there, but just not in the same league.

Regulation might impact it

I'm having a hard time seeing any bill get passed that supports the rights of users to watch videos without the ads that support the creators and the platform that they're watching.

I don't think this requires an act of congress. I think you might see more consumer advocation on the part of FTC (although it doesn't currently regulate online broadcast), or potentially the CFPB.

Admittedly it's more likely to see the EU do some regulations, but it all depends on the election.

I think it needs regulation, the whole streaming industry needs to be regulated! It can’t be that the competition is made using exclusive content and you have to live with privacy infringement tech to consume cultural art legally.

In my opinion, in a capitalist system, the market competition should be about delivering the content the best way, not about what content they deliver.

Right now, they can made the delivery as shitty as they want, because what takes them apart from competition is the exclusive content, not the tech.

Agreed, now the fun part of coming up with a legal basis to do so and convincing regulators.

I think in the EU one could achieve something like this a la appstore opening rule, where streaming services are demanded to give other streaming services access to the library, lime some sort of roaming 🤔

Or you split the distribution from the company producing stuff

So many possibilities 😂

Luckily I am in a pirate friendly country 🏴‍☠️

I’m having a hard time seeing any bill get passed that supports the rights of users to watch videos without the ads that support the creators and the platform that they’re watching.

We should reach a compromise of having skippable ads in the beginning only, for example. In other pages it could be that ads cannot be bigger than 10% of the content being delivered on the page.

It's not always all or nothing, good regulation listens to both sides and reaches a compromise in the middle, but good regulation is getting harder and harder to come by.

The elites don't want you to know but "[y]ou may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home)"

Following their guide gives a local Invidious client, don't forget to 1) copy their production compose file instead of using the one on git and 2) change "hmac_key"... from my experience setting up cron (crontab -e) to restart the docker container once per day keeps the Invidious docker healthy

Edit: here are some alternatives for popular Google services. Not in anyway related to the above (smirk

  • Google itself: SearXNG (try searx.be first), one of the easiest services to self-host
  • Gmail/calendar: a lot of people seem to swear by one of Proton Mail, Tutanota or Mailbox.org. Self-hosting is possible but challenging
  • Google Drive: You mean Nextcloud?
  • Google maps: Organic Maps is actually getting pretty good now
  • Google Chrome: at the very least there is Chromium... obviously there is Firefox and Firefox forks (such as Librewolf), as well as other smaller browsers
  • Google Play: F-Droid hosts a lot of FOSS stuff, and there are alternative ways to access Play (such as Aurora Store)
  • Android: a bit more difficult... but there is LineageOS, GrapheneOS, and similar stuff

If you do this, I would be fully prepared to lose access to all your Google services along with anyone else who may use Google services on the same IP. Gmail, Play store, Chrome, etc, etc can easily be wiped out with a ban from Google and this can seriously fuck people's day up if they've used Gmail and have 2FA setup on any external account.

I guess I forgot to take that into consideration... I'm not worried about Google banning my IP since I essentially don't use any Google services at all and my home IP is hidden behind a wireguard tunnel, but yes that is a valid concern

But I mean someone can just spin it up on their home network so... No way 192.168.0.1:3000 can get someone into trouble right

Like any other web services, Google can see the public ip your personal invidious instance is using to access youtube servers. The local 192.168.x.x ip are for internal access.

google probably can detect how invidious accesses their site

Cory wrote about this in his essay, "Unpersoned". I've been using gmail as a spam catcher for all the sleazy sites you need to register with, but didn't realize how I've made a trap for myself when, for example, my prescriptions need 2 factor authorization via my gmail. This is going to be a hard one to detangle.

You can block YouTube ads simply by connecting to an Albanian VPN server.

Why does that work?

Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won't work anymore.

This might explain why mine has been reliable even though it hasn't been updated in months. I guess add me to the list of confirmations that it works on residential connections.

newpiped and freetube will continue to work but piped is also blocked as well

Doesn’t freetube use invidious api?

I can use invidious, but also works without it. Unless Google decides to mess with that too. Was broken for a few days like a month ago or smth

It directly pulls Videos from Google servers unlike Invidious U can use Invidious on it but I doubt it works so well

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For those who are want something similar to invidious, you can try youtube-local (not my project, I am just a user). It is a minimal python youtube client, and functions similar to other frontends, but runs locally. You lose some amount of privacy (youtube still has a general idea of who is watching with IPs), but it is not very exact, and there is an option to use tor to get the content. You can also enable sponsorblock, or hide yt-shorts.

Sad to hear. Newpipe is still working fine (as of a couple minutes ago) if that helps. That's through a residential IP. I will try yt-dlp from a data center IP when I get a chance. I hope they haven't blocked that.

For Android users, I highly recommend NewPipe as a YouTube client

Revanced is also very nice if you prefer the regular YouTube layout and experience

Self hosted option is a docker image. Probably not difficult to set up.

Didn't Odysee recently removed ads? Anyway, I think I'll start watching videos on Odysee and peertube, via RSS feeds. At least from youtubers that upload there.

If you have the resources, host your own to help and spread the load across public instances.

They said:

You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won’t work anymore.

and I imagine that most people that host something like this do so using a VPS. Homelabs tend to be the minority use case.

Plus, some ISPs might frown upon the increase in traffic when hosting a public service.

I hate my ISP.

Plus, some ISPs might frown upon the increase in traffic when hosting a public service.

this shit is so stupid, i pay for the fucking bandwidth, give me the fucking bandwidth.

Exactly. I hate being punished for using what was advertised to me.

yeah, if you want to charge me on a per packet basis, fucking charge me on a per packet basis.

don't play this bullshit of "unlimited bandwidth" but actually it's 1gbs so it's not unlimited but actually very specifically limited to one specific amount, and nothing more, because it's physically impossible for it to be higher.

Most residential ISPs would frown upon a large amount of upload traffic for a public service, and request that you switch to a business plan with a much lower contention ratio. Contention ratio is essentially the number of people the bandwidth is shared with. For example, if you have a 1Gbps connection with a contention ratio of 50:1 (common for residential ISPs), 50 people share the same 1Gbps bandwidth. That's designed with the idea that not every user is using all their bandwidth at the exact same time. Constant uploads all day (like with a public proxy) breaks that assumption. Business plans usually have a contention ratio of 10:1 to 20:1.

The CEO of my ISP (Sonic) explicitly mentioned that they don't like people hosting servers on their forum:

We don't want folks hosting publically accessible servers on Sonic fiber. Primarily because while household consumption can be estimated and averaged, and is roughly limited by your ability to consume (how many TVs will you stream to, plus downloads and other activities, during the peak bandwidth usage time of the day?), when you host the usage is instead limited only by the REST of the world's interest in what you're offering.

So while a family of six with five 4K TVs might see peak average usage under 100Mbps if absolutely every device is on and all consuming full-scale content -- a single Raspberry PI web server with a single video hosted on it might swamp a gigabit port if that video file is something everyone in the world wants to see.

While we can provide the fastest residential connection in America, it's pricing relies upon typical use cases. That pricing is not sustainable if someone is hosting a popular website, sharing with neighbors, feeding a wireless ISP, acting as a TOR exit node, etc etc. Servers belong in data-centers (aka "the cloud"), for practical network scale as well as economic reasons.

They don't block it though, and they're fine with low-bandwidth things like Home Assistant, VPNs, etc.

a single Raspberry PI web server with a single video hosted on it might swamp a gigabit port if that video file is something everyone in the world wants to see

genuine question, do ISPs and networking infra people actually use the "global world" as a bandwidth heuristic consideration? Like i can see it being a potential problem, but i feel like the answer is fucking obvious here.

So if Google can ban our IP if caught using this, could you not use some type of dynamic IP mechanism every time they ban the IP?

Probably would be a good idea, I'm guessing this type of thing could be problematic for google if the IP bans started stacking up, probably also if they can't just look up what the site is using and banning it manually, which let's be fair and not give them too much credit, is exactly what they've been doing. They look up that some invidious or downloader site is hosted on some IP address and block it manually, or blocking its whole range. Something that doesn't cause many headaches for others outside of those services but would cause a lot of problems if those sites were run with reverse-proxying to dynamic IPs which caused YouTube blocks for legitimate users, including in public places.

I would suggest the devs to be able to create instances from within tor. It would be slow, but impossible to block. Or from any other network that don’t rely on single IP access to YouTube . Or, make a mesh of collaborative home instances. Google can’t block millions of home IPs. Or use any mesh collaborative network capable of it.

TOR exit node IP addresses are well-known. If YouTube wants to, they can just block the TOR network.

Good question why they didn’t already or if they did it already

I wonder if some kind of mesh might work. Maybe like a secret Santa type deal. By that I mean everyone who connects, gets a randomised, anonymous partner or partners. Everyone in the swarm streams for each other.