cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/22423685
EDIT: For those who are too lazy to click the link, this is what it says
Hello,
Sad news for everyone. YouTube/Google has patched the latest workaround that we had in order to restore the video playback functionality.
Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won’t work anymore.
If you are interested to install Invidious at home, we remind you that we have a guide for that here: https://docs.invidious.io/installation/..
This is not the death of this project. We will still try to find new solutions, but this might take time, months probably.
I have updated the public instance list in order to reflect on the working public instances: https://instances.invidious.io. Please don’t abuse them since the number is really low.
many instances of piped and invidious still work though
So if Google can ban our IP if caught using this, could you now use some type of dynamic IP mechanism every time they ban the IP?
Probably would be a good idea, I’m guessing this type of thing could be problematic for google if the IP bans started stacking up, probably also if they can’t just look up what the site is using and banning it manually, which let’s be fair and not give them too much credit, is exactly what they’ve been doing. They look up that some invidious or downloader site is hosted on some IP address and block it manually, or blocking its whole range. Something that doesn’t cause many headaches for others outside of those services but would cause a lot of problems if those sites were run with reverse-proxying to dynamic IPs which caused YouTube blocks for legitimate users, including in public places.
For Android users, I highly recommend NewPipe as a YouTube client
I use newpipe and freetube for my Andriod and PC respectively.
Revanced is also very nice if you prefer the regular YouTube layout and experience
Or Tubular, which is an up to date fork with Sponsorblock support as well
I wonder if some kind of mesh might work. Maybe like a secret Santa type deal. By that I mean everyone who connects, gets a randomised, anonymous partner or partners. Everyone in the swarm streams for each other.
If you have the resources, host your own to help and spread the load across public instances.
They said:
You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won’t work anymore.
and I imagine that most people that host something like this do so using a VPS. Homelabs tend to be the minority use case.
Plus, some ISPs might frown upon the increase in traffic when hosting a public service.
I hate my ISP.
Plus, some ISPs might frown upon the increase in traffic when hosting a public service.
this shit is so stupid, i pay for the fucking bandwidth, give me the fucking bandwidth.
Exactly. I hate being punished for using what was advertised to me.
yeah, if you want to charge me on a per packet basis, fucking charge me on a per packet basis.
don’t play this bullshit of “unlimited bandwidth” but actually it’s 1gbs so it’s not unlimited but actually very specifically limited to one specific amount, and nothing more, because it’s physically impossible for it to be higher.
Most residential ISPs would frown upon a large amount of upload traffic for a public service, and request that you switch to a business plan with a much lower contention ratio. Contention ratio is essentially the number of people the bandwidth is shared with. For example, if you have a 1Gbps connection with a contention ratio of 50:1 (common for residential ISPs), 50 people share the same 1Gbps bandwidth. That’s designed with the idea that not every user is using all their bandwidth at the exact same time. Constant uploads all day (like with a public proxy) breaks that assumption. Business plans usually have a contention ratio of 10:1 to 20:1.
The CEO of my ISP (Sonic) explicitly mentioned that they don’t like people hosting servers on their forum:
We don’t want folks hosting publically accessible servers on Sonic fiber. Primarily because while household consumption can be estimated and averaged, and is roughly limited by your ability to consume (how many TVs will you stream to, plus downloads and other activities, during the peak bandwidth usage time of the day?), when you host the usage is instead limited only by the REST of the world’s interest in what you’re offering.
So while a family of six with five 4K TVs might see peak average usage under 100Mbps if absolutely every device is on and all consuming full-scale content – a single Raspberry PI web server with a single video hosted on it might swamp a gigabit port if that video file is something everyone in the world wants to see.
While we can provide the fastest residential connection in America, it’s pricing relies upon typical use cases. That pricing is not sustainable if someone is hosting a popular website, sharing with neighbors, feeding a wireless ISP, acting as a TOR exit node, etc etc. Servers belong in data-centers (aka “the cloud”), for practical network scale as well as economic reasons.
They don’t block it though, and they’re fine with low-bandwidth things like Home Assistant, VPNs, etc.
Didn’t Odysee recently removed ads? Anyway, I think I’ll start watching videos on Odysee and peertube, via RSS feeds. At least from youtubers that upload there.
Self hosted option is a docker image. Probably not difficult to set up.
People can always just stop using YouTube. It’s getting laughable the level of Stockholm syndrome people have for that shit service.
As someone who does a lot of DIY what are my options? I can’t learn from reading and have nobody to show me how in person. Other platforms are so incredibly limited I can’t ever find any content helping me learn something. What other platform is seeking to ACTUALLY compete with YouTube by offering fair compensation and exposure to the masses? It’s so incredibly expensive to try that nobody is.
Pay tor youtube or watch the ads.
Or, if you’re not a moron, you can Firefox, and ublock that shit.
Or use freetube/new pipe
Don’t know what to tell you. I’m Simply saying that I personally refuse to support any product that I would actively complain about online in social media posts. And if I’m willing to yell at people online about how shitty something is- yet continue to not only use it- but contribute to the financial success of said company-
I’d have to admit that I was a hypocrite.
Because “there is no other option for me to watch a video” isn’t a good reason to support a platform that treats its content creators like utter garbage, and alienates its user base seemingly daily.
I don’t really think Stockholm syndrome applies here. I don’t watch YouTube out of some irrational bond with the platform. I watch YouTube because it’s literally the only place the creators I watch upload. I would absolutely follow the creators I watch to whatever platform the content is available on. Until then, I’m stuck with YouTube and ad blocking extensions.
I’m not saying it’s exactly the same. But there are definitely people that whine all day and night about it, and then go pacify themselves by watching even more YouTube videos.
If I hate something as much as people seem to hate YouTube, I can easily stop using it. But then again, I have enough strength of conviction to do so. I’m certainly not going to financially support them by patronizing their service. And this futile attempt to circumvent their add service was is only making them more clever about blocking people from doing so.
YouTube will always win this.
Period. End of story.
The only way to beat them is to not play. I guarantee you if the lose 50% of their viewers. They’ll change their tune.
That’s a fair point. There’s a million things you could do, and watching videos on YT is just one of them. Watching videos online has become a large part of peoples lives. Surely it has a lot to offer, but we should probably not forget it also replaces a lot of things, things we would spent are time on otherwise, if we didn’t have YT as an easy time-drain, and those other things are presumably equally rewarding or more so.
Youtube isn’t just a thing people use to waste time, but a source of educational content. That actually matters, and there isn’t a good alternative to much of it.
That being said, I agree that people could at least drop it (or reduce their usage) if they are just using it as a time waster.
The problem is, there’s just no (good) direct competition. The audience will follow creators once enough of them switch to the same alternative platform. But as long as there’s no platform with a comparable amount of money behind it, most people will continue to use Youtube.
There doesn’t need to be direct competition. Just stop watching YouTube. If someone cannot do that- they have an addiction, and ads are not their biggest problem.
Youtube is my main source of entertainment. I don’t watch regular TV, and I barely watch any movies or series. Doesn’t have anything to do with an addiction, it’s personal preference lmao
Oh look! Here’s one of them now!
Lol, ya dickhead
Many people don’t understand that youtube has a lot of use cases. But it is the new cable teevee… Got to have it.
Because there’s absolutely no valuable information that exists on YouTube, right?
Nice straw man, but I never said that.
Eh, there are some competitors:
- Nebula - costs $5/month; can get a discount if you find a creator’s discount code (I used NotJustBikes, can check out LegalEagle, HalfAsinteresting, or any of the others if you want; I got 50% off a year sub)
- Odyssee - pretty much the OG alternative to YT - I follow a few there
- Rumble - much better funded, but caters to conservatives and far-right, but there are some more moderate videos there (I like Glenn Greenwald, except for anything related to Russia); I think it’s funny that it has been blocked by some countries for allowing pro-Russian content, while also being blocked by Russia (this year) for not removing content
I sub to some channels from each (as well as Twitch and YT) though Grayjay, which seems to work pretty well. I’d say about 50% of my video watch time is on YouTube, 15-20% on Odyssee, 20-30% on Nebula, and a little on Rumble. I try to watch Nebula videos on the Nebula app so creators get credited with watch time, but I honestly prefer Grayjay.
I’ve been trying to cut down on how much I watch anyway, so hopefully I’ll be able to slowly eliminate YT from my life.
I know about Nebula, but you have to admit, the barrier to entrance is a lot higher for most people because of the subscription fee, so it’s not necessarily a direct comparison. Some of my favourite content creators are on there.
Didn’t know about Odysee. As far as I can see, that platform uses crypto for payments, which could also act as a deterrent to some people.
As for Rumble: Personally, I wouldn’t touch anything related to JD Vance with a ten foot pole (he’s a pretty big investor). And one of their biggest channels seems to be by Andrew Tate (ew). To be fair, I couldn’t tell you for sure that Youtube doesn’t take money from any of them in some form. But they seem to be more of an equal opportunity offender lol.
As far as I can see, that platform uses crypto for payments, which could also act as a deterrent to some people.
I’m confused, what I’m hearing is:
- YouTube - don’t want because of ads and ownership by Google
- Nebula - don’t want because of required subscription
- Odysee - don’t want because of optional crypto payments
- Rumble - undesirables use/invest in the platform?
- PeerTube (not mentioned) - not enough content
That seems unreasonable to me. All three of those alternatives have no ads and have content that you would probably enjoy. You don’t need to use crypto to use Odysee. You don’t need to watch Andrew Tate or support JD Vance to use Rumble. You do need to pay for Nebula, but you can pay for a single month if you just want to try it out.
But at the end of the day, these alternatives need to get paid to survive. None of them are perfect, which is a big part of why I use Grayjay, which lets me sub to creators from all of them without having to see those services’ front pages. I pay for Nebula and I donate to creators I like at Odysee outside the built-in crypto system. I don’t like JD Vance, but I also don’t particularly care if we invests in Rumble, that really doesn’t affect me in any way. My goal is to reduce my YT use, and I’m not going to get there by continually moving the goalposts, so I decided to just pull the trigger and try them all out, and they’re fine.
Rumble - […] I think it’s funny that it has been blocked by some countries
Rumble is blocked here in Brazil, not because Brazil blocked it (although there was once a strife between Rumble and Brazilian Supreme Court due to a half dozen far-right influencers) , but because Rumble themselves blocked us.
Yeah, my understanding is that they blocked Brazil due to some stuff they disagreed with. They’re certainly a mixed bag.
I pay for Nebula and, although there’s a lot to watch there, skimming through the boring stuff is horrible.
Same. I mostly watch a handful of channels:
- various TLDR channels
- Morning Brew - not a fan of the hosts, so I’ll catch maybe one/week
- LegalEagle - anything not about celebs
- the Friday Checkout
- NotJustBikes and other city infra-related channels - they don’t post often though
- RealLifeLore
- Wendover/HalfAsInteresting - the host annoys me a bit, but the content is usually pretty good
There’s a ton of nonsense there that I don’t like, but now that I found a set of channels I do like, I mostly just look in the “library” tab so I don’t have to see the other crap.
I also hate the UI tbh. I want the front page to be my subscriptions. Instead you get a weird horizontal scrolling panel on a secondary tab. I wish I could get an inbox, RSS style, so I could either watch them or skip/mark as watched.
Nebula also suffers from the homepage being cluttered with old videos that are no longer relevant. For example I don’t care to watch news and tech videos from 2022.
Knowing better and Philosophy Tube are both rather good as well. I do miss Casual Criminalist from YouTube, otherwise Nebula has my bases covered.
It’s good to see alternatives. I am not at the point where I need to see online videos badly enough that I’d pay for it- but it’s good to know that it exists.
I’ve also ran into some issues simply accessing youtube through my vpn, but that’s been going on for a while.
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Wow all this bullying is really convincing me to go back to their shitty platform.
If i can’t access my fav creators anymore itl just motivate me to do sm productive, like building web3
Haven’t you heard? web3 is going great so far!
Oh no, the execution and information thus far has been horrible. You are alluding to blockchain are you? When i look at the website you post i see absolutely nothing that i even recognize as web3 its all cryptostuff.
I don’t get why everybody is so hell-bend on blockchain based internet (sure its decentralized but come on, we’re creative enough to do better). Its like people don’t get the point of “user owned” and are expecting companies to build a better internet for them without serving their own interests.
No, we are going to need to do this ourselves, self host our own data and services, open source everything.
Lemmy and the fediverse are the closest i have seen to being proto web 3 in spirit and there are also still far from perfect.
I have read the “What is web3” from that site and could not disagree on the definition more. I would not be suprised if both the blockchain cults and this website are part of the propaganda machine that is stopping a free internet from happening.
My web3 is aligned much more with this: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video
If i can’t access my fav creators anymore itl just motivate me to do sm productive
YT literally does not care. You may not, but I suspect MANY more people will go back to watching ads or signing up for Premium. Just like when Netflix canceled password sharing and everyone complained but their revenue went up by 15%.
I don’t judge people who give in to the oppressor. Life is hard and you have to pick your battles, more important stuff then blocking ads for “normal” people.
For me its largely a disability/accessibility thing. The whole site is not usable.
Its not that i want to die on this hill its that corporate bullshit is measurably detrimental to my health. My hill is the only one i can exist on.
YouTube will not change until people stop using it. And people do not want to put up with the inconvenience of not having a YouTube type service again for the amount of time it would take for YouTube to change or a viable competitor to take their place, it really is that simple.
Are YouTube and Google terrible? For sure, but it only got this way because the only backstop to holding them accountable, the consumer, has proven that they will choose putting up with shitty products and services in the name of convenience 9 times out of 10.
Same reasons that ad tiers are gaining a foothold in streaming services like Netflix. The consumer has shown they are fine with it.
I see we’re pretending the government doesn’t have regulatory power today
Time to pirate YT content and upload to usenet to be automatically downloaded using sonarr
Honestly, it would probably be easier to just build a *arr program specifically for downloading YouTube videos directly. Tie it into the rest of the *arr suite, with naming conventions for Plex/Jellyfin.
Yes but literally throwing together a script to download the days subscription videos to a jellyfin media drive would be stupidly simple.
It already exists, even as a Docker. Not as simple as an *arr style interface, but it works great one you set it up.
Well you know what they say “Great minds think quicker than mine and probably have already had that thought.”
“Stupidly simple” might be overselling it when it comes to the masses adopting it. Not everyone is adept at “throwing together a script.”
That being said, I’m all for helping the masses adapt.
“Give me a Python script using yt-dlp that I can run on a cronjob that will download the videos from any of my subscribed channels since the last time the script was run”
You can use the following Python script to download videos from your subscribed channels since the last run. This script uses
yt-dlpand stores the last download timestamp to track new videos.First, ensure you have
yt-dlpinstalled:pip install yt-dlpThen, create a script called
download_videos.py:import os import json import subprocess from datetime import datetime # Configuration last_run_file = 'last_run.json' download_directory = 'downloads' # Ensure the download directory exists os.makedirs(download_directory, exist_ok=True) # Load the last run time if os.path.exists(last_run_file): with open(last_run_file, 'r') as f: last_run = json.load(f)['last_run'] else: last_run = datetime.now().isoformat() # Update the last run time to now current_run = datetime.now().isoformat() # Command to get videos from subscribed channels since the last run command = [ 'yt-dlp', '--download-archive', 'archive.txt', '--output', f'{download_directory}/%(title)s.%(ext)s', '--date-after', last_run, '--no-post-overwrites', '--merge-output-format', 'mp4', 'https://www.youtube.com/channel/CHANNEL_ID', # Replace with your channel URL ] # Run the command subprocess.run(command) # Save the current run time with open(last_run_file, 'w') as f: json.dump({'last_run': current_run}, f) print("Download complete. Next run will check for videos since:", current_run)Setting Up the Cron Job
-
Make the script executable:
chmod +x download_videos.py -
Open your crontab:
crontab -e -
Add a line to run the script at your desired interval (e.g., daily at 2 AM):
0 2 * * * /path/to/python /path/to/download_videos.py
Notes
- Replace
CHANNEL_IDin the script with your actual channel IDs or use a playlist URL if preferred. - The
archive.txtfile keeps track of already downloaded videos to avoid duplicates. - Adjust the paths to Python and your script as needed.
-
Sure, but not as convenient 🤷🏻
Same reasons that ad tiers are gaining a foothold in streaming services like Netflix. The consumer has shown they are fine with it.
Yep, I remember when Netlfix first put it out there that they would start with the ads, and everyone on reddit was like, “Canceling my Netflix right now!!”
Netflix is doing just fine without the 5 redditors who actually did cancel it. lmao
I know you weren’t using the number 5 as a hard example, but a thing that people still don’t seem to realize is that the people in threads like this are the people that actually care. Even if the few thousand redditors who subscribe to a subreddit where they discussed that topic were to all (and I mean 100% of them) cancel there subscriptions. That is still only a drop in the bucket for Netflix. Losing a few thousand subscribers is still nothing if they made more money with the addition of ads.
Losing a few thousand subscribers is still nothing if they made more money with the addition of ads.
It’s the same with increasing the price of a service. Usually, the extra revenue from the price increase is far greater than the revenue loss from people that unsubscribe. If a business has a choice between a large number of customers with a small amount of profit per customer, and a small number of customers with a larger amount of profit per customer, they’ll always pick the latter. Fewer customers reduces other costs, for example less support load, less bandwidth usage, etc.
It is interesting to me that the chorus always talking about “switching” to piracy after every incident is also intimately familiar with piracy already. Almost as if it’s just people who already pirate talking to each other about how hard they are going to pirate. Meanwhile general audiences don’t care.
these are also the people who would pay more for quality service if it was available.
“Socialist Chaos Trow” lol
the problem is so many people are willing to say they’ll take a stand.
but when the time comes, the mindnumbingly overwhelming majority suck it up, because they must have their precious shiny and can not suffer even the mildest of inconvenience.
Its my biggest gripe in gaming, but its a enormous gripe just in general, with everything. because it doesnt matter if you are talking about appliances, creative software, video games, streaming services, stores, etc.
this is the primary reason i advocate for more piracy, and even legal protections for piracy, in some capacity.
It’s one of the few spaces i consider to be a “truly free market” when it comes to economics.
I’m more and more inclined towards the idea of piracy myself as time goes on and media continues to shave itself down into more and more ridiculous, unrelated shards, that you have to subscribe to just to be able to SEE if they have what you want.
I don’t actively do it actively since I dont really know where to begin, and things I have found have been to sketch for me, or requiring memberships or even payments to join.
if you’re looking for the babies first torrenting introduction, dbzer0 has a pretty comprehensive guide on it.
Might be worth looking into i2p as well, if you don’t want to spend any money on it at least. Usenets and closed trackers are a weird one, usually based on memberships, but with good quality control of members and content so.
there’s also the *arr stack but im sure there’s a write of that one up on github or something.
I poked around dbzer0 and found a few streaming sites, Nothing which carried anything i was particularly interested in.
Navigating this stuff without my ISP getting pissy is another hurdle, too.
It was much easier 20+ years ago when you just searched KaZaA or Limewire, or back when piratebay was the site (and before it got drowned in virus traps)
To summarize what I was telling another person. The number of people who care are far outnumbered by the number of people who don’t. It doesn’t matter if you or I or all 10,000 (just a random number for the sake of argument) of the people subscribed to a sub like this were to cancel when r/justworks or r/normie (made up subreddits for the sake of argument) has 100,000,000 who don’t give a damn about computers, privacy, or anything else beyond the service working or not.
I agree. Tech communities have a habit of drastically over estimating how much everyone else cares about the details of tech.
Even something as simple as PC gaming scares off a lot of people because of the perception that you need to be some kind of tech wizard in order to cobble everything together to make a game run. Actual cobbling together of software to pirate (no matter how simple it seems to people in the know) is just a bunch of technobabble.
I have people whom I still need to explain copy and paste to on a regular basis. Trust me, I understand.
While I agree, I have a hard time seeing how people will stop using it until the field changes. Maybe in 10 years it will the the MySpace of the sitcom era, but right now it’s still growing. That growth is giving it carte blanche to manipulate the users as it sees fit. Regulation might impact it, but it’s still a bit of a Goliath.
- Compared to 2023, YouTube’s user base has grown by 20 million this year, representing a 0.74% increase. From Global media insights
Also the active user base is 2.7 billion people in 2024 from the same source above.
The alternatives are out there, but just not in the same league.
Regulation might impact it
I’m having a hard time seeing any bill get passed that supports the rights of users to watch videos without the ads that support the creators and the platform that they’re watching.
regulations for ad quality, and privacy, are almost certainly what they mean by that.
I’m having a hard time seeing any bill get passed that supports the rights of users to watch videos without the ads that support the creators and the platform that they’re watching.
We should reach a compromise of having skippable ads in the beginning only, for example. In other pages it could be that ads cannot be bigger than 10% of the content being delivered on the page.
It’s not always all or nothing, good regulation listens to both sides and reaches a compromise in the middle, but good regulation is getting harder and harder to come by.
I don’t think this requires an act of congress. I think you might see more consumer advocation on the part of FTC (although it doesn’t currently regulate online broadcast), or potentially the CFPB.
Admittedly it’s more likely to see the EU do some regulations, but it all depends on the election.
I think it needs regulation, the whole streaming industry needs to be regulated! It can’t be that the competition is made using exclusive content and you have to live with privacy infringement tech to consume cultural art legally.
In my opinion, in a capitalist system, the market competition should be about delivering the content the best way, not about what content they deliver.
Right now, they can made the delivery as shitty as they want, because what takes them apart from competition is the exclusive content, not the tech.
Agreed, now the fun part of coming up with a legal basis to do so and convincing regulators.
I think in the EU one could achieve something like this a la appstore opening rule, where streaming services are demanded to give other streaming services access to the library, lime some sort of roaming 🤔
Or you split the distribution from the company producing stuff
So many possibilities 😂
Luckily I am in a pirate friendly country 🏴☠️
The elites don’t want you to know but “[y]ou may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home)”
Following their guide gives a local Invidious client, don’t forget to 1) copy their production compose file instead of using the one on git and 2) change “hmac_key”… from my experience setting up cron (
crontab -e) to restart the docker container once per day keeps the Invidious docker healthyAt least until they start blacklisting IPs using Invidious.
One of the positives of nat
If you do this, I would be fully prepared to lose access to all your Google services along with anyone else who may use Google services on the same IP. Gmail, Play store, Chrome, etc, etc can easily be wiped out with a ban from Google and this can seriously fuck people’s day up if they’ve used Gmail and have 2FA setup on any external account.
Cory wrote about this in his essay, "Unpersoned". I’ve been using gmail as a spam catcher for all the sleazy sites you need to register with, but didn’t realize how I’ve made a trap for myself when, for example, my prescriptions need 2 factor authorization via my gmail. This is going to be a hard one to detangle.
I guess I forgot to take that into consideration… I’m not worried about Google banning my IP since I essentially don’t use any Google services at all and my home IP is hidden behind a wireguard tunnel, but yes that is a valid concern
But I mean someone can just spin it up on their home network so… No way 192.168.0.1:3000 can get someone into trouble right
Like any other web services, Google can see the public ip your personal invidious instance is using to access youtube servers. The local
192.168.x.xip are for internal access.
Oh that’s why no videos would load.
Damn it
yt-dlp still works.
A spark of hope in a dim world.
I’ve seen it go down in some cases on VPNs, so it could be a matter of time (or they’ll find a solution again and the back and forth will just continue).
My god, what if its on google’s chopping block next?
I often consider the scenario.
What would I do if Google straight sniped and headshot every single method of piracy, even embedding the ads into the video?
"He’ll pay now!*
Nah, never. People are more momentary, at least I am. I don’t care if I’m being entertained by “X”. If “X” isn’t worth the trouble, there’s “Y”. The days of everyone even caring to digest the same media as anyone else is over unless your main drugs are pop music, Asmongold reacting to politics and influencers.
Donate to the EFF for fighting that fight in court already.
For those who are want something similar to invidious, you can try youtube-local (not my project, I am just a user). It is a minimal python youtube client, and functions similar to other frontends, but runs locally. You lose some amount of privacy (youtube still has a general idea of who is watching with IPs), but it is not very exact, and there is an option to use tor to get the content. You can also enable sponsorblock, or hide yt-shorts.
