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.
Ehhhh they didn’t break GrayJay.
Google just broke *all* third-party web clients, including yt-dlp; a full JS implementation is now required.
Submitted 6 months ago by DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/14404
Comments
artyom@piefed.social 6 months ago
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Seems pretty broken to me. Nothing is loading now.
AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 6 months ago
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.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
The alternative clients really should allow alternative sources.
Move away from relying on the evil that is google.
Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Grayjay allows many alternative sources, and PeerTube
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
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.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 6 months ago
Yay for Deno!
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 6 months ago
IS THIS WHY SEAL ISN’T WORKING OH NOOO
oxysis@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
uYouPlus is working just fine
Superorbit@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Newpipe is working for me. For now…
affenlehrer@feddit.org 6 months ago
GrayJay still seems to work
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 months ago
Not on my end.
affenlehrer@feddit.org 6 months ago
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.
HowRu68@lemmy.world 6 months ago
using smarttube. works fine 4 me
kratoz29@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I honestly don’t think I would be using YT without Smart Tube and YT Revanced, but again, that is what Google wants 🤣
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Revanced is working just fine.
SereneSadie@lemmy.myserv.one 6 months ago
It has never worked for me. Always within minutes of an update or install, videos stop buffering and the whole thing is bricked.
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
I regularly forget to update it for 8 months and it has never broken for me
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 6 months ago
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.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 months ago
For now.
Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Revanced actually is the official YouTube client, just modified on the users device before installation.
suff@piefed.social 6 months ago
Tubular for Android of which I thought it uses yt_dlp, still works well.
tisktisk@piefed.social 6 months ago
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
lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Same as usual: the mouse loses unless it assembles and unionizes with other mouses and they bring in a guillotine.
FE80@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The internet gets turned into packetized cable tv with bonus panopticon features.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
They turn it into an app-only platform just like with many PRC-based apps. Literally, some of those platforms doesn’t even have a web or desktop mode.
I tried using Baidu Maps web to look at my old neighborhood (I was born in mainland China) for nostalgia, and the site repeatedly automatically attempts to download the .apk like every tap I make on the site. Wtf lol. The site probably detected the useragent and keeps nagging me about their app.
I tried browsing a random popular online store to see what it’s like for curiosity (天猫), but it asked for a sign in. Like wut? Even Amazon, Ebay, Bestbuy doesn’t do that. PRC is actually just late stage cyberpunk capitalism.
This is gonna be the future for every big-corp stuff. App only, real ID and phone number verification required. Probably even scan your face.
We need a Meshtastic-based “internet” to actually decouple from big corps have control our infrastructure to have real freedom.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 months ago
Good luck blocking alt OSes on PC if Windows goes the route you’re describing though, unless MS pulls some strings to force Pluton platform-wide on PC and stamp out alt OSes altogether.
Also, good luck blocking decentralized and self-hostable platforms, at least easily.
fodor@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
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.
eleitl@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Technically you don’t need a smartphone. A tethered mobile device would do. For just cellular calls, there are dumbphones. That Youtube does or doesn’t work doesn’t concern me. They always ask to login on VPN which is always on for me. Thanks, just no.
reksas@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
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.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 months ago
You got Linux phones but those are rough to be nice about it.
Dyskolos@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Probably like every other victim of enshittification:
You pay or you don’t consume.
sk1nnym1ke@piefed.social 6 months ago
A mandatory account with paid subscription.
CallMeAnAI@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The fucking horror!
REDACTED@infosec.pub 6 months ago
Your new monitor likely has DRM features built in that are already being utilized by Netflix and others. Youtube is next on the line
melfie@lemy.lol 6 months ago
Yeah, I think Netflix has like a few thousand movies and a couple thousand TV shows, and some of us here have similarly sized Jellyfin libraries. On the other hand, YouTube has billions of videos. It seems DRM would be a significantly more difficult and costly problem for YouTube.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
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.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 months ago
Whatever the latest version of HDCP is, sure.
jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Maybe total DRM enforcement, and clients without widevine only get garbage quality. That’d end yt-dlp for youtube
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 months ago
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.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
That would be their poison pill. Youtube’s advantage is in it’s ubiquity. Lose that, you lose countless users.
Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
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.
morrowind@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Staying in windows 10 sure, but I’ve yet to see much evidence people have been switching much to Linux.
Chozo@fedia.io 6 months ago
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.
DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 months ago
Not-so-fun fact, this is exactly what ATSC 3 is trying to do for OTA broadcast TV.