6 ms·

Watching youtube videos using Google's bandwidth, without watching any ads or paying for sub, I don't see how this could be legit in the long term.

ornornor 6y ago
It’s been around a while.
zeta0134 6y ago
To be fair, I do pay for subscriptions for a few YouTubers. Wintergatan in particular is excellent. Of course, many creatives are using Patreon and other external revenue sources and frankly that's wise, given YouTube's track record with unusual copyright strikes and other platform nonsense. Even if I were to pay for Youtube Red, this application has a feature that I cannot get with the official app: a lack of dependence on the Google Play store and services. Since I run a build of Android that does not include those services, this app is wonderful to bridge the gap, as it performs much better than playing the videos directly in Firefox. That it happens to include a bunch of extra features the official app does not is just a bonus really.
- izacus 6y ago
  Those "bunch of extra features" are paid features for the service though. For which you're not paying.
  - valvar 6y ago
    And which they are unable to use even if they were to pay for them, as they depend on Google Play Services.
    - gary-kim 6y ago
      This is actually the situation I'm in. Google Play Services are disabled on my device so I cannot use any YouTube premium features anyways. If there was a way to pay for YouTube premium and make the money go to the creators I watch while using a FOSS client like NewPipe, I'd be willing to pay several more times the current price of YouTube premium for that.
izacus 6y ago
I wonder why this is being downvoted - Google asks for subscription for features that this app hacks for free. In any other context this would be deemed unethical (or even piracy). E.g. think of an application that streams Apple Music without paying Apple or distributors of cracked apps with enabled in-app purchase features. And yet the HN community happily endorses such apps when it comes to Google. I also wonder why moderators think that this is acceptable in terms of YouTube.
- asfgianion 6y ago
  Piracy isn't unethical.
  - stjo 6y ago
    As a pirate myself - elaborate more on that please. Sounds like an interesting problem
    - jacoblambda 6y ago
      The big thing is that pirates would most likely not pay for the thing they are pirating if it was not available legally. This isn't by any means universal but take video games for example. Developers have long since abandoned the concept of providing demos to "try the game" before you buy it. If I am thinking about buying a game but can't be convinced that I'll get my money's worth, I'll pirate the game. If I end up liking the game, I might as well buy it so that I can use online features, receive updates, and not have to worry with the crack causing weird bugs. In these cases, piracy has filled in the roll of demo software and provides a net positive for companies because any converts to paying customers would likely have never purchased the game had they not pirated it. Alternatively, look at something like the anime fansub scene. Fansubs often have far better quality than anything you'll see coming from legitimate anime streaming services. I pay for anime streaming subscriptions but I can't count the number of times I've refused to watch something on the service due to how bad the subtitles were, torrented an actually good fansub, and then supported the series (not the streaming platform) through alternative means. You also have the digital preservation aspect. Piracy is the reason most early console games are playable nowadays. Emulators aren't really legal and all of the published ROMs are very much pirated content but if they didn't exist, how many games would be either extraordinarily rare or lost to time by now. Same goes for music. What.cd was an incredible archive of music and it preserved tonnes of tracks from small now defunct bands throughout the start of the millennium. This is all content that would otherwise be lost to time if pirates hadn't preserved them due to their own motivations. There's more on this out on the web. I read a really cool article about it a while back but I can't find it atm.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
The youtube-dl script has been available for what, a decade already? Has that not been long term enough for you? Newpipe is just an Android UI around the same functionality as youtube-dl.
toohotatopic 6y ago
From google's perspective, I would assume that it is much like MS allowing software pirating: It doesn't matter if you watch the ads as long as you don't watch the ads on youtube. Google needs your preferences more than they need to show you an ad immediately. They can also show you an ad on their search space or any of the sides that use the Google ad network. It actually might be cheaper for them to show you the ad elsewhere when they don't have to pay the youtube content creator as I would assume that the creators don't get any money if their audience doesn't watch the immediate ads in the video.

ornornor 6y ago

It’s been around a while.

zeta0134 6y ago

To be fair, I do pay for subscriptions for a few YouTubers. Wintergatan in particular is excellent. Of course, many creatives are using Patreon and other external revenue sources and frankly that's wise, given YouTube's track record with unusual copyright strikes and other platform nonsense. Even if I were to pay for Youtube Red, this application has a feature that I cannot get with the official app: a lack of dependence on the Google Play store and services. Since I run a build of Android that does not include those services, this app is wonderful to bridge the gap, as it performs much better than playing the videos directly in Firefox. That it happens to include a bunch of extra features the official app does not is just a bonus really.

izacus 6y ago
Those "bunch of extra features" are paid features for the service though. For which you're not paying.
- valvar 6y ago
  And which they are unable to use even if they were to pay for them, as they depend on Google Play Services.
  - gary-kim 6y ago
    This is actually the situation I'm in. Google Play Services are disabled on my device so I cannot use any YouTube premium features anyways. If there was a way to pay for YouTube premium and make the money go to the creators I watch while using a FOSS client like NewPipe, I'd be willing to pay several more times the current price of YouTube premium for that.

izacus 6y ago

I wonder why this is being downvoted - Google asks for subscription for features that this app hacks for free. In any other context this would be deemed unethical (or even piracy). E.g. think of an application that streams Apple Music without paying Apple or distributors of cracked apps with enabled in-app purchase features. And yet the HN community happily endorses such apps when it comes to Google. I also wonder why moderators think that this is acceptable in terms of YouTube.

asfgianion 6y ago
Piracy isn't unethical.
- stjo 6y ago
  As a pirate myself - elaborate more on that please. Sounds like an interesting problem
  - jacoblambda 6y ago
    The big thing is that pirates would most likely not pay for the thing they are pirating if it was not available legally. This isn't by any means universal but take video games for example. Developers have long since abandoned the concept of providing demos to "try the game" before you buy it. If I am thinking about buying a game but can't be convinced that I'll get my money's worth, I'll pirate the game. If I end up liking the game, I might as well buy it so that I can use online features, receive updates, and not have to worry with the crack causing weird bugs. In these cases, piracy has filled in the roll of demo software and provides a net positive for companies because any converts to paying customers would likely have never purchased the game had they not pirated it. Alternatively, look at something like the anime fansub scene. Fansubs often have far better quality than anything you'll see coming from legitimate anime streaming services. I pay for anime streaming subscriptions but I can't count the number of times I've refused to watch something on the service due to how bad the subtitles were, torrented an actually good fansub, and then supported the series (not the streaming platform) through alternative means. You also have the digital preservation aspect. Piracy is the reason most early console games are playable nowadays. Emulators aren't really legal and all of the published ROMs are very much pirated content but if they didn't exist, how many games would be either extraordinarily rare or lost to time by now. Same goes for music. What.cd was an incredible archive of music and it preserved tonnes of tracks from small now defunct bands throughout the start of the millennium. This is all content that would otherwise be lost to time if pirates hadn't preserved them due to their own motivations. There's more on this out on the web. I read a really cool article about it a while back but I can't find it atm.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

The youtube-dl script has been available for what, a decade already? Has that not been long term enough for you? Newpipe is just an Android UI around the same functionality as youtube-dl.

toohotatopic 6y ago

From google's perspective, I would assume that it is much like MS allowing software pirating: It doesn't matter if you watch the ads as long as you don't watch the ads on youtube. Google needs your preferences more than they need to show you an ad immediately. They can also show you an ad on their search space or any of the sides that use the Google ad network. It actually might be cheaper for them to show you the ad elsewhere when they don't have to pay the youtube content creator as I would assume that the creators don't get any money if their audience doesn't watch the immediate ads in the video.