Submitted 6 months 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.
The world needs a p2p alternative, what are our current options? I wouldn’t mind alocating 500GB or more of my storage space just to get rid of these fuckers. These fascist gangsters are taking millions of people hostage who depend on YT for their livelihood…
You got PeerTube for that, but anyone who kills their YT account and moves to PT full time will need to secure alt funding somehow either through Nebula, merch sales, getting a W-2 job, or a combination of the three, though, even if they host on a physical server they own and not on a VPS; buying the parts to build a decent PT server is going to be a pretty heavy up-front cost in itself.
Outside of PeerTube, you mean?
I am so glad I had the foresight to use yt-dlp to back up most of my favorite videos. Not all of them, but I just thought we’d get more time.
But yeah, I knew this would happen. The age verification thing was really controversial, so Google would have had to expect that people would try to find other ways to access YouTube.
I’m pretty much done with YouTube. It’s just not what it used to be. All my favorite YouTubers are either gone or changed. It’s mostly just slop, and I won’t miss it.
I wish there was a place that had agdq and speedrunning clips. Then I could leave.
Twitch is atrocious for archived content.
Sadly there’s so much good music from the 2000s on their that I can’t find elsewhere. Small bands that never really broke through.
Inaccesible because of autocratic morons.
Nebula is just a better experience most cases too. It just shows you what you’re subscribed to in chronological order, which is how YouTube used to work when it was less annoying.
It also shares more revenue with creators and doesn’t force feed you ads. I really hope it continues to grow and never betrays its roots.
The day smart tube next stops working is the day i stop using youtube. I will NEVER watch a shitty youtube ad and I’m sure as shit not paying google any money whatsoever.
I’m gonna start listening to podcasts, they’re more informative and less bandwidth heavy anyway.
What I don’t understand. Like, they know people hate shitty ads.
If they had like, literally any level of vetting on the ads, people might actually watch them. But its all fucking scams or podcasts of lies pretending to be ads etc.
They have a bank of companies that are paying to have their ads shown.
The companies dictate who they want to market to.
Google originally pitched scanning your things for relvant ads and delivered on it, but that’s not where the money is at.
It’s so weird hearing about YouTube ads. I can’t recall ever seeing one. I know one day they’re going to finally ruin it and I won’t be able to consume it any more, an event I try to prepare for, but I haven’t really done anything special to avoid ads except all the stuff you have to do just to be secure on the web in the first place. Like just using librewolf out of the box works fine?
As someone who is listening to a video on NewPipe as I type this very comment, no they did not
Came here to say this after giving it 24 hours in case it was just lucky timing
However, now if I try to watch a YT vid in Firefox, I get the “Oops something went wrong” right when the Ad should have popped up
I’ve gotten that occasionally, it usually fixes with a refresh. Was it persistent for you?
about +12 hours ago spotdl (which uses yt-dlp) was broken. But I keep go on watching videos on newpipe
Currently Freetube hasn’t worked the last couple days. Wonder if this is why. Usually its fixed in a few days, so no worries
Yt-dlp worked for me 3 hours ago
They’re going to keep enshitifying it until they kill it completely. Them blackholes, I mean shareholders, will never have enough money.
Overheard at the last shareholders conference. Until everyone empties all their ecoin & change jars and the only the left to eat are those Budding’s Mysterious sandwich meats with some shit ass processed excuse for a loaf of bread. I understand that may be high livin’ according to some standards. It ain’t but that is another topic altogether.
The Dude abides.
They won’t kill it, just like it hasn’t died so far. The content, viewer demographics, and algorithm continue to shift. There’s too much money with all the ads and subscription fees. Most people view some content on it by default.
Its gonna be the new cable TV in a way. Kinda sucks, some good stuff on it, but mostly slop filled with ads. And everyone will still use it. Even if they block all 3rd party access, people like me are still going to use it to some limited degree. There will be a video about how to fix a random plumbing fitting that is leaking in my house, or how to fix some random thing on my 15 year old car.
The market that accesses YouTube from a PC or Mac is shrinking rapidly.
They would prefer you use one of the apps and at some point that will be the majority, if it isn’t already
That is by design.
With an actual computer, you have a lot more options in terms of how you can handle the content. They don’t own your PC (yet) but they do own the mobile market and the operating system entirely.
You don’t have any form of root/admin access on a mobile device of any type nor any other device (tv box, game console, tablet, etc). For the handful that have jailbroken or rooted their phones, many apps don’t work (by design of course). You can do it, but you’ll break a ton of stuff in the process. That’s enough to keep causals from doing it and leaves the tiny group of hardcore dorks that are willing to live with the complexities that are required.
I’m going to put on my tinfoil hat and say this is what keeps any real attempt at a Linux phone in the gutter. If people had a choice for their mobile operating system and the freedom to do what they want with it, the big tech companies would shit a brick. They’ve already removed the ability to block ads on mobile devices for the vast majority, they’re finally getting what they wanted (save the handful of Firefox users left).
Linux phones won’t be a thing until there is hardware for them. With apple/google phones, the manufacturers will not release the necessary software so that is needed for a 3rd party OS. Google and Apple will make sure that anyone who makes hardware for them are legally tied to keeping that software tightly closed. Even if someone did manage to reverse engineer it, it would be a herculean effort and would break as soon as a new release is out (or if one of the manufacturers “accidentally” released some exploit code for the reverse engineered drivers).
It’s an ugly world these greedy fucks have made for us.
Yeah last I’ve seen even smartphones and tablets are decreasing quickly relative to smart TVs.
New pipe and smart tube both working for me.
My self hosted downloader similarly didn’t skip a beat.
Holy shit I did not realize how complex of a project yt-dlp has to be to do something as simple as download a video… Kudos to the devs
You should remember to send all YT videos that you watch to archive.org
There are browser extensions to do this conveniently
Which extension are you referring to? Is it the standard Wayback Machine extension or a youtube specific one?
Didnt want to name specifics because they might not exist for certain browsers, but you can search “archive” and there will be many
!remember 8 hour
smartube, rvx, tubular works like before.
It says upcoming, this didn’t roll out yet
This post title is just completely incorrect and it looks like 700+ people didn’t even read the comments or the actual issue for one minute.
Good job guys!
I mean sure, OP’s title is somewhat clickbaity but it’s kind of true though. YouTube have broken compatibility with all existing unofficial clients. It’s good that yt-dlp are managing to work around it. I expect many other clients will follow suit but some of them may be unable to install additional dependencies and remain broken.
Ultimately, what is the last straw that will break the camel’s back? Every client/consumer will have their breaking point.
I mean sure, OP’s title is somewhat clickbaity but it’s kind of true though.
Somewhat? Did you read the issue? Here’s a recap: yt-dlp will introduce a proper JS runtime in the future to better cope with YT’s JS. That’s it that’s the issue.
YouTube have broken compatibility with all existing unofficial clients.
Newpipe still working for me now?
Not with a VPN…
Sometimes you have to change your VPN location to get newpipe to work.
Get this: YT will not be working on any known/popular VPN without signing in because it will always display: “Sign in to confirm that you’re not a bot”
This behavior is also completely unrelated to the above mentioned issue and is unchanged for a very long time.
PipePipe works fine when logged out.
I used NewPipe last night and Grayjay this morning, and both worked fine.
Invidious still works!
Upcoming. This change didn’t even roll out yet. Invidious is just being shit as always
Several instances were down when this was first posted.
My favorite on is back up.
Google doing everything they can to anger everyone.
I cancelled YT Premium after paying pretty much since Google Music was a thing. The price keeps going up, and Lite is meh even for the discounted price (e.g. no background play I think?).
They just keep building the wall higher and higher, while they survive only because creators keep filling it with content. Nobody is watching “YouTube Originals” or their first party content. YouTube exists solely because of third party creators.
If you’re using your phone, definitely check out YouTube revanced. Or if on a tv check out Smart tube next. No ads, sponsor block baked in. It’s all the perks of premium (plus more) without the cons of supporting an evil company
You can either revance your yt music app, or use Firefox with an extension that keeps videos playing while your phone is locked.
It’s annoying but I guess they’re just evolving their anti spam mechanisms, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.
JS is one of the most popular scripting languages anyway so having it as a requirement shouldn’t hinder anyone.
And not to throw shade at the people who designed yt-dlp, but designing a tool to “scrap” the content of an evolving platform in a different language (with different tooling etc) than the one which it’s expecting to be consumed by might have been a mistake
anti spam? on the video player? you cannot think is seriously.
JS is one of the most popular scripting languages anyway so having it as a requirement shouldn’t hinder anyone.
except any of the clients that care about not running whatever untrusted google code in an unrestricted environment.
This reeks of same shit different day or at least different month. Last time if I recall you had to include a valid cookie with yt-dlp.
I use Seal. It works fine. It has trouble downloading from “official” pages though (e.g. Vevo or Universal or whatever). It’s like those pages, since they’re owned by corporate entities, have some extra protection on them or something. It’s been like this for years, across Android, Windows, Mac, etc – doesn’t matter what I try to use to download, it’ll fail on those pages/accounts.
I’ve never had to “include a valid cookie”, though there’s been various problems and they can vary from video to video.
You don’t need to afaik.
The only time i’ve had to include cookies is if i was trying to download something that was a premium feature like enhanced bitrate.
Any IP on the local ISP requires a google login to work. Very few work without the cookie generated from it.
Someone please find the Steins;Gate Wordline, I’m not really enjoying the worldline convergence, everything is turning to shit.
Do you mind to elaborate?
My friend, you need to watch Steins;Gate 😅
Grayjay still seems to work.
upcoming.
What about upcoming and not yet implemented do u not understand?
Oh but my “shit client x” still works Really steeeve? 🤷♂️
Seems like a needlessly condescending reaction to a simple statement, but go off I guess.
I’ve had it fail to load a lot of stuff today. Something’s definitely up.
Smart tube also looks like it’s working this morning.
Was about to mention that. I’ve had no issues with it today
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).
Can’t you just set inv.nadeko.net as the default instance? I thought Freetube was an invidious client, no?
No, FreeTube is its own thing, but it can fall back to an invidious instance. Idk why it fails for me with inv.nadeko.net as my default instance though.
Have you made an account? I think doing so makes a new “watch-id” that gets around the throttling.
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
Or like, pay for the service you are so desperately addicted to.
Lies. Both YT ReVanced and SmartTubeNext have been working perfectly all day today.
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))
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.
Video Lite on iOS works fine.
Just ran am update for ytdlp and it’s working again.
herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
my yt-dlp is on a daily auto-update loop, so I missed this. It’s working still. My thanks go to the amazing yt-dlp devs.