Comment on How do we quit YouTube?
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Quit youtube because you don’t want to support google or quit youtube because you use it problematically
The latter is just stop using it of course. Raise the bar to entry; delete the apps, redirect the website in hosts, delete your account, etc. all of these are easily defeated of course but a big part of changing bad habits like this is introducing a response delay so you have a better shot at controlling impulsivity.
Find replacements for it. Youtube in a problematic sense is often a function of escape so look at that and find alternatives. Eg if you’re browsing because you’re anxious and doing mindless scrolling feels like it blocks some of the uglier thoughts find more activating behaviors that are probably less immediately rewarding and engaging, but potentially more activating in the long run. Eg practicing a hobby may not feel as activating in terms of mood, especially initially, because youtube is a dopamine machine, but practicing guitar can become activating if you’re interested in it and stick to it. And if you focus on the sense of accomplishment part it may become more activating; where youtube for 4+ hours might make you feel like “what the fuck am I doing with my life” practicing piano for 4+ hours might get you to achievable and noticeable progress at a skill (“now I can play [x], cool”
If it’s to just get away from google look at what some have said already like peertube. If you self host you can get tubearchivist going; it’s a bit of a headache but then you can add channels and playlists there, let it monitor and download additions to them, and watch them locally. Take googles bandwidth and give them nothing in return (at least until they finally figure out a way to permanently break yt-dlp)
I have deleted the YouTube apps from my devices though I haven’t learned how to get past the cookie barrier on yt-dlp with the account settings.
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
It’s been ages since I just used yt-dlp so I’m not sure
Tubearchivist has a chrome/firefox plugin for this that makes it a lot easier. You visit youtube while logged in and configure the extension to be able to see your instance of TA, then it just copies your cookie at a set interval.
It’s handy because depending on things your cookie can become stale very quickly. Google does a ton of a/b testing so there’s no “definite” info, I’ve had cookies work for months then all of a sudden need a new one for each download. Others appear to have had similar experiences. Depends on if you’re in the “testing” group ig. Some also suggest that heavy usage can create problems but i have like 8,400 videos in my TA instance and problems seem random
A cookie is generally only required if the video requires you to be logged in though, like a video marked as sensitive or whatever
Another fun issue is proof of origin tokens. These rotate far more often than cookies. Luckily as of now you can generally download videos without them but there are certain things that youtube has already locked behind this. Like if you try to download a video that has subtitles (especially fancy vtt ones with positioning, colors, etc) you’ll often find English doesn’t appear as an option for download unless you supply a pot. If you really get into it there are dockers that can supply pot tokens regularly when a download is initiated.
Google will continue to take steps to lock out people that don’t engage in their ad tracking bullshit. Just means it gets a bit more confusing
anewfox@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
just in case you haven’t, or someone else needs the tip, you can try both
--cookies-from-browser <browser>and--impersonate <browser>i.e.
--cookies-from-browser firefox --impersonate firefox:linuximpersonate requires python-curl_cffi to be installed.