Does Piped.video actually work for anyone?

TootSweet@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 77 points –

I love the idea of a privacy-focused fronend for YouTube, but every time I visit a piped link, it just spins forever. Both on my Linux desktop and my Android phone.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Here is the latest one I tried and failed to load.

42

Yeah it literally never works. Cool idea but it’s so bad when I see one of those links I just ignore it because they literally never work

That one loaded fine for me.

Temporary outages are likely the result of the server being unable to handle the load. If youtube changed their system it would take a while for a fix.

Piped is web software anyone can host. Like Lemmy, everyone piles into the biggest instance with most memorable / searchale name, thus overloading it.

https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances

Try another instance and see if it solves the issue.

Yeah, try to pendle between instances, especially ones close to you

It's a cat and mouse game with Google. Sometimes Piped works, other times it loads only the first minute of the video before hanging forever, and sometimes it doesn't load at all. Often YouTube makes an updates that breaks it altogether until someone fixes it.

I've had the most luck with NewPipe but unfortunately it's only a mobile app, not a website. Works great though.

Yeah, I use NewPipe a lot.

I used to use NewPipe, but there's a new mobile app on the block from FUTO called Grayjay. You really should check it out, it's even more flexible and also loads and runs faster than NewPipe.

https://futo.org/

https://grayjay.app/

I'm afraid if it's not a) FOSS and b) on F-Droid, I'm not interested. Grayjay appears not to qualify on either front.

Edit: Oh damn. Louis Rossmann made Grayjay. Now I'm a little disappointed in Louis Rossmann.

Also, check the FUTO About page

https://futo.org/what-is-futo/

Check their 'Our Three Pledges', particularly the third one regarding open source...

Quoted from their site, pledge #3

"We will always be transparently devoted to making delightful software. All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so. No effort will ever be taken to hide from the people what their computers are doing, to limit how they use them, or to modify their behavior through their software."

All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so.

Huh. Well, if it even lands in F-Droid, maybe I'll give it a try.

The app is so relatively new that initially it wasn't even on any of the app stores, only straight from their site. But now it's also on Google Play and APKPure, possibly other alternative app stores as well. Give it some time, I'm pretty sure F-Droid is on their radar as well sooner or later.

The app is still labeled as being Under Construction, but so far I'm rather pleased with it and would recommend giving it a try.

https://gitlab.futo.org/videostreaming/grayjay

I saw that. It's not FOSS, though if that's what you're implying.

Just reading over the license, it allows neither making modifications to the source nor commercial use. Allowing both of those would be necessary for it to qualify as either Free Software or Open Source. (And I'm not sure those are the only things in the license preventing it from qualifying as FOSS.)

Source available ≠ FOSS. And Grayjay isn't FOSS even if its source can be perused.

TBH I don't really care that much as long as the source is available. Some talented dev can fork it if the project goes sideways. I'd like a webapp/desktop app too

Some talented dev can fork it

Not without infringing copyright. At least not the way the license is written now.

They don't give a flying crap if you modify the source and compile it privately for yourself, they just don't want people or companies making profit from their works or distributing said modifications without their approval.

They don’t give a flying crap if you modify the source and compile it privately for yourself

Then why do they leave permission to do so out of their license? (So far, at least.)

they just don’t want people or companies making profit from their works or distributing said modifications without their approval.

That's called "proprietary."

They're not worried about individuals like ourselves making our own private modifications if we so care to. They know 95%+ of individuals out there aren't even coders anyways, they just expect the few that do happen to go out of their way to modify their apps don't distribute their mods without authorization.

The main infrastructure of their license is to make sure the big companies out there can't legally rip off their code, alter it and sell it under their own branding or such.

They’re not worried about individuals like ourselves making our own private modifications if we so care to.

Apparently they are, because they don't allow it in their license and the way the license is written makes its absence seem rather conspicuous and intentional.

If they do eventually make good on their promise (from "pledge #3") to make it Open Source, then maybe I'll be interested. Until then, I'm not taking the word of a random Lemmy user what they are "worried about individuals like ourselves" doing. I'm taking their own (legal department's) word.

they just expect the few that do happen to go out of their way to modify their apps don’t distribute their mods without authorization.

The main infrastructure of their license is to make sure the big companies out there can’t legally rip off their code, alter it and sell it under their own branding or such.

You have to understand that every piece of FOSS software out there allows anyone to "legally rip off their code, alter it and sell it under their own branding or such." Any piece of software out there that doesn't allow that does not qualify as Open Source or Free Software.

(It rustles my jimmies to use the term "rip off" in this context, but I hoped quoting your exact words directly would make it clearer)

If Grayjay's license doesn't allow that and if they see doing that as "ripping off", then I have no interest in supporting or using that software unless/until that changes.

When I say "I won't use it unless it's FOSS," I mean among other things that I won't use it unless its license allows anyone to redistribute it and/or any derivative works of it either for profit or not and under a different brand. That's how FOSS works.

(Ok. One caveat to the above that applies to some FOSS licenses (but probably not all.) I believe if someone violates the terms of, for instance, the GPL, then the permission to continue redistributing is revoked until they're back in compliance with the terms of the license.)

That sounds like a you problem. I respect the terms of their license, and have no intent or desire to distribute any modified versions of their software, should I ever even care to try modifying anything in the first place.

If you do happen to find ways to improve their software, maybe consider applying with FUTO...

I run my own Piped server, works great and have a few friends that use it exclusively now because the YT algo was getting too be too much for them, besides the ads.

I think the public ones are just hammered too hard.

No, I gave up on linking via Piped. At this point I figure people willing to go to the trouble of using alternative frontends already have a favorite (that's probably not piped) and the Privacy Redirect extension and are good to just get the yt link.

Gotta swap instances pretty frequently with piped in my experience. Or just find a good invidious instance, is what i ended up doing.

Pretty much my experience when using piped on my desktop, quick to resolve so not too much of an issue.

On the other side of things, my partner got tired of that and now uses FreeTube (which falls back to Invidious on failure IIRC)

Working fine. Loading right away.

Worked on my end. I also regularly use Yattee on my iPhone without issue.

These services will get better, just give them some time.

That video loaded fine for me just now. I have had similar issues though when I need to refresh a page once or twice to get it to load/play the video. It’s either hit and miss or maybe an issue when I load the page initially.

Have you tried invidious?

I'm not looking to self host anything or switch frontends. I just wish I could watch videos when people post Piped links without the extra hassle of navigating Piped's interface enough to get the raw Youtube url. I suppose if there's a public Invidious instance that actually works and everybody on Lemmy posting links to Piped switches to that public Invidious instance, that would wolve my issue, but I suspect Invidioue may not actually be any more reliable.

I tried the posted link, but it just sat there for a few minutes. I'd love for it to work though.

Yes, but I have noticed you have to wait for that spin for quite some time. I have not looked at its architecture at all, but it made me assume it was doing some intermediary caching or some such. I wonder if this is the same for videos that have been watched already at your local CDN assuming it is doing something interesting with edge delivery.

Have just started to check it out, so I’m clueless but it has worked pretty well so far.

Works fine for me. To do what all you Linux people do when someone asks a question about Windows -

It'S bECaUsE yOU'rE sTILL uSinG LinUX 😂