Submitted 8 hours ago by DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/14404
cross-posted from: lemmy.org/post/1872634
So, starting now, Google started mandating full JS for YT, effectively breaking all third-party clients and locking the site to their official client.
This reeks of DRM.
huh will seems like i should go on a yt-dlp binge on the wcw vault just in case for archival and historical purposes of course
Not that I’m trying to criticize you for it, but we all should have been on that a long time ago
oh i mean i have been doing it just sporadically whenever i get a moment :)
Just ran am update for ytdlp and it’s working again.
Beginning very soon, you’ll need to have the JavaScript runtime Deno installed to keep YouTube downloads working as normal.
if only you could read 😔
Well the title claims that Youtube just broke third party clients, so you sorta expect the clients to be broken. Shit title
Lies. Both YT ReVanced and SmartTubeNext have been working perfectly all day today.
Not lies, because Youtube on android uses something called DroidGuard, while on browser and other platforms, uses something called BotGuard. Their implementation differ, but NewPipe uses DroidGuard and programs like FreeTube and Invidious use BotGuard. So that’s probably the reason why NewPipe still works fine.
Don’t quote me on that tho. But that’s what I know
NewPipe as well, without any update either.
Yep FreeTube is the only one I found not working, which is what I use on the desktop.
Yeah have been using inv.nadeko.net as FreeTube broke for me. Unfortunately there seems to be some kind of bandwidth throttling as I’m getting 720p videos only (my internet is fine for 1080p and I was getting 1080p on FreeTube).
The limit is 1080p, because there is just a lot of traffic. Allowing more than that, will lower the capacity of people that can watch at the same time
Someone give it to me straight, what is the endgame of this cat and mouse game? I know yt-dlp and invidious have been quite crafty at adapting to these changes, but the scales seem to be tipping.
It feels like Google will dominate the game into submission the same way it did with AOSP and Chrome. I know I’m being dramatic but it’s really starting to feel like we’re being cornered into a hopeless situation
Well the problem for google is that Youtube MUST be accessible to almost any internet user in the world - that’s a key reason why it’s so ubiquitous.
The reason this cat and mouse game has lasted as long as it has in the first place is because any method that is currently being quashed has a solution lying in another user agent that youtube can’t kill.
If one day YT sets a “minimum requirements” page on their website to access their content, they’ve immediately ceded market share to the next upstart. Imagine if they broke viewing for all of the countless cheap (and e-waste) phones, tablets, low end IOT devices, “smart TVs”, and so on because they place a requirement that the device cannot meet. Those users will not throw away their hardware - they’ll migrate to the first available alternative way to watch content.
As long as YT caters to the lowest common denominator (Their business model essentially binds them to do so), there will always be a software/hardware environment that these tools can spoof. The moment that stops being the case, people look for other options.
A similar analogy would be how Microsoft handled the windows 11 requirements - the strict requirements locking out years upon years of hardware has resulted in a substantial amount of users finding workarounds for their machines (like windows 10 IOT LTSC), or to even jump to linux entirely. They abandoned the entry level users, so entry level users are abandoning them.
If one day YT sets a "minimum requirements" page on their website to access their content, they've immediately ceded market share to the next upstart. Imagine if they broke viewing for all of the countless cheap (and e-waste) phones, tablets, low end IOT devices, "smart TVs", and so on because they place a requirement that the device cannot meet. Those users will not throw away their hardware - they'll migrate to the first available alternative way to watch content.
This all incorrectly assumes that there exists any viable competition to switch to. YouTube ran at a net loss for over a decade to get the reach they currently have, only because Google was one of the very few companies who could feasibly afford to do so. And most of the content people access YouTube for is only found on YouTube, so those hypothetical users aren't going to switch to a new platform, they're going to either just flat-out stop watching or will replace their devices.
Imagine if they broke viewing for all of the countless cheap (and e-waste) phones, tablets, low end IOT devices, “smart TVs”, and so on because they place a requirement that the device cannot meet. Those users will not throw away their hardware - they’ll migrate to the first available alternative way to watch content.
Not-so-fun fact, this is exactly what ATSC 3 is trying to do for OTA broadcast TV.
Android is different because there are no alternatives to cellphones except Apple. On the web, there are other ways to share video. So Google can maybe lock YouTube down, but it can’t lock you down.
Many of us use 3rd party browsers a stop-gap measure. We’d like to leave the platform entirely, but we are still interested in some of the content there, so we’re OK with the cat-and-mouse game for now, knowing that if Google goes hardcore blocking mode that we will walk away and be better human beings for it.
i heard there is something called murena
murena.com/products/smartphones/
no idea how these are, but i have previous generation fairphone and it has been decent, even if that one has android. I’ll propably get one at some point since i dont want to use android. the price of fairphones is a bit high, but that is how it is when you dont use slavery to produce them.
You got Linux phones but those are rough to be nice about it.
Someone give it to me straight, what is the endgame of this cat and mouse game?
A mandatory account with paid subscription.
Probably like every other victim of enshittification:
You pay or you don’t consume.
The end game is to take full control. If Google implements Widevine on YT, and especially Widevine L1, that’ll be Google’s Hiroshima bomb for both third-party front-ends and downloaders, and even non-Android, ChromeOS, Apple, or Windows platforms as far as OS goes and non-Chrome or Edge browsers.
That would be their poison pill. Youtube’s advantage is in it’s ubiquity. Lose that, you lose countless users.
Your new monitor likely has DRM features built in that are already being utilized by Netflix and others. Youtube is next on the line
DRM is expensive. Very expensive in fact because it is basically non-trivial encryption.
A website with as much traffic as YouTube cannot afford to DRM every single video stream. There just isn’t enough processing power and electricity available.
Netflix et al. have a tiny fraction of YouTube’s traffic with more income per user due to subscriptions.
Plus YouTube’s storage demands are many orders of magnitude larger. A maximum upper bound for Netflix is 1 PB I’d imagine. Archiveteam alone has selectively downloaded more than 3 PB. YouTube has, I’d imagine, a double digit exabyte amount of data stored + backups.
Whatever the latest version of HDCP is, sure.
Maybe total DRM enforcement, and clients without widevine only get garbage quality. That’d end yt-dlp for youtube
Revanced is working just fine.
For now.
Revanced actually is the official YouTube client, just modified on the users device before installation.
It has never worked for me. Always within minutes of an update or install, videos stop buffering and the whole thing is bricked.
I regularly forget to update it for 8 months and it has never broken for me
Well I watched a couple videos, went to pick up some meds, and watched a few shorts in the drive thru.
But I am on Android and followed the instructions closely just a few days ago.
Newpipe is working for me. For now…
The alternative clients really should allow alternative sources.
Move away from relying on the evil that is google.
Grayjay allows many alternative sources, and PeerTube
Grayjay is not open source though.
Never heard of it but absolutely checking this one out.
I am still hoping invidious will also take this route as i love the ability to self self host to retain my user data.
Or like, pay for the service you are so desperately addicted to.
using smarttube. works fine 4 me
I honestly don’t think I would be using YT without Smart Tube and YT Revanced, but again, that is what Google wants 🤣
IS THIS WHY SEAL ISN’T WORKING OH NOOO
Well, I sure hope this doesn’t come to be. I don’t wanna use their official website, the 3rd party tools are great! But YouTube has become an essential part of my everyday life…
And yes, I have looked into alternatives. They lack what YouTube got, which is the creators I already like (pretty much all of them exclusive to YouTube). Best I could get is copycats. You might be able to find something similar, but not the same (unless you like tech, I guess. If all you consume is tech, you won’t lack options (especially if you don’t care for specific creators))
it’s just annoying having to constantly update my greasemonkey scripts to try to find the ONE that actually works.
like the ad skipping script I had just stopped working the other day. While it WAS skipping ads google decided that “oh you’re skipping ads? cool, we’ll just keep throwing them at you endlessly”
So they’ve FINALLY figured out the add skipping thing and now if you’re speeding through/skipping ads they’ll just serve them endlessly to you.
Tubular for Android of which I thought it uses yt_dlp, still works well.
Ehhhh they didn’t break GrayJay.
Seems pretty broken to me. Nothing is loading now.
I’m able to use it at the moment, could be either my fallback settings or they’re doing a staged rollout of what breaks things.
Video Lite on iOS works fine.
GrayJay still seems to work
Not on my end.
I got an update for the YT Plugin yesterday evening. Also; I’m in Europe, maybe it’s a regional change?
I just tested it again, it still works here.
Yay for Deno!
uYouPlus is working just fine
I’d love to know the stats of how many people are using the official mobile apps vs third party clients. Surely you’re gonna break third party at some point that people just give up on YT.
People using 3rd party clients or even adblockers are a tiny percentage of their total users. Which is why it was fairly surprising they went to such lengths for just that tiny bit of viewership. But for monopolists, having 99% is just not enough, they NEED that last percent somehow.
Most people are probably just using the official app without a second thought, or even the official web client on Chrome or Edge, or vanilla FF without an ad blocker or any other protections, whatsoever.
This JS thing still isn’t a good sign of things to come should Google crack down even harder.
blunderworld@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
Grayjay still seems to work.
AceTKen@lemmy.ca 13 minutes ago
I’ve had it fail to load a lot of stuff today. Something’s definitely up.
WereCat@lemmy.world 55 minutes ago
Was about to mention that. I’ve had no issues with it today
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works 48 minutes ago
Smart tube also looks like it’s working this morning.