Youtube just recently started giving me issues on Librewolf. I actually paid for Youtube Premium for quite a while, let it lapse a couple of months ago, and I’ve been just watching with the ad blocker on. Having to go back to running stuff through Google Chrome and watching ads made me want to research “how can I watch videos without Youtube being involved” for the first time.
It might be a little surprising given what I literally just said, but I am not unreservedly in favor of just grabbing someone else’s content from someone else’s server and then playing it without the ads that pay for the hosting bills for the origin server.
I realize I’m probably in the minority in that, but I feel like a fully off-Youtube video hosting solution might be a better way.
being a yt-dlp user myself, who runs a media server for mostly YT content.
I can say that google deserves it. They store like 2-3x the amount of data that they need to be storing per video. 11 files for a single video 1080p to 4k. All different bitrates, some barely different than any others. (i realize it’s for codec support, but like, seriously?)
especially when they run predatory ads, force services into youtube premium that you don’t want, just generally do not respect the creator base and certainly not the viewer base. Honestly i think google deserves to lose money right now.
I get what you’re saying, but the simple fact is that most of the content is on YouTube. An alternative would be better (and PeerTube might get there one day), but you’d be very limited in your choices if you avoided YT entirely. Also, I can’t personally feel too bad about “stealing” from YouTube.
In this case, the someone else is Alphabet megacorp. I wouldn’t waste any concern on them. The content is still hosted by YouTube, just played through the invidious instance.
To do away with all those concerns, you could self-host invidious, or donate to the instance you choose to use if self-hosting is outside of your technical prowess. If you want to support certain creators, donate to them directly instead.
Yeah, I was gonna say something about Nebula / Curiositystream. I actually think that that + somewhere to play music would take care of 95% of what I use Youtube for.
Yeah, it seems like it’s intermittent. Like there’s either an arms race going on between uBlock and Youtube system, or else maybe they’re slowly experimenting with the noose to see at what point and with what effectiveness the consumer parts of the equation will start choking up money again.
Youtube just recently started giving me issues on Librewolf. I actually paid for Youtube Premium for quite a while, let it lapse a couple of months ago, and I’ve been just watching with the ad blocker on. Having to go back to running stuff through Google Chrome and watching ads made me want to research “how can I watch videos without Youtube being involved” for the first time.
Piped: piped.video Invidious: yewtu.be
Those would be good places to start, if you still want YouTube content without the YouTube front-end.
It might be a little surprising given what I literally just said, but I am not unreservedly in favor of just grabbing someone else’s content from someone else’s server and then playing it without the ads that pay for the hosting bills for the origin server.
I realize I’m probably in the minority in that, but I feel like a fully off-Youtube video hosting solution might be a better way.
Google is the 4th richest company in the world… Besides they don’t deserve a dime from you, fuck them.
It’s not about them; it’s about me. They’ll be fine whatever any of us does, yes.
being a yt-dlp user myself, who runs a media server for mostly YT content.
I can say that google deserves it. They store like 2-3x the amount of data that they need to be storing per video. 11 files for a single video 1080p to 4k. All different bitrates, some barely different than any others. (i realize it’s for codec support, but like, seriously?)
especially when they run predatory ads, force services into youtube premium that you don’t want, just generally do not respect the creator base and certainly not the viewer base. Honestly i think google deserves to lose money right now.
I get what you’re saying, but the simple fact is that most of the content is on YouTube. An alternative would be better (and PeerTube might get there one day), but you’d be very limited in your choices if you avoided YT entirely. Also, I can’t personally feel too bad about “stealing” from YouTube.
In this case, the someone else is Alphabet megacorp. I wouldn’t waste any concern on them. The content is still hosted by YouTube, just played through the invidious instance.
To do away with all those concerns, you could self-host invidious, or donate to the instance you choose to use if self-hosting is outside of your technical prowess. If you want to support certain creators, donate to them directly instead.
I just bought a Nebula subscription. I can’t say they’re a replacement for YT, but they have good content.
Yeah, I was gonna say something about Nebula / Curiositystream. I actually think that that + somewhere to play music would take care of 95% of what I use Youtube for.
is it just me or 3rd party instances really so slow thats unwatchable?
A super lightweight option for viewing videos that I don’t see mentioned often is drag and dropping the link into MPV.
Freetube
no issue with firefox and ublock origin just yet over here
Yeah, it seems like it’s intermittent. Like there’s either an arms race going on between uBlock and Youtube system, or else maybe they’re slowly experimenting with the noose to see at what point and with what effectiveness the consumer parts of the equation will start choking up money again.