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No, it is only a proxy. For native content Peertube is a good option, I've been running it for a few years without any real problems, starting out on a machine

No, it is only a proxy. For native content Peertube is a good option, I've been running it for a few years without any real problems, starting out on a machine with a Pentium E2220 and 2GB of RAM (video transcoding was... slow... but once transcoded it worked fine), later moving to less anaemic hardware. Invidious is useful for more than just filtering out ads, it actually makes Youtube content useable on older hardware - like the Thinkpad T42p I'm using right now - where the "official" interface and player are close to useless. When configured correctly - i.e. when videos are proxied through the server - it keeps your video viewing habits out of Google's hands. It makes it possible to follow channels without Google knowing about it. It can not help against censorship, when Google removes content it can no longer be accessed through Invidious. I've used Peertube to mirror Youtube channels which have had videos removed which does help against censorship - run a cron job to monitor a channel for changes and mirror new videos to Peertube. All of this can be done anonymously - I do not even have a Google or Youtube account.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Thanks, that largely reflects my own experience. The now-largely-unusable (thanks to API key limitations) mps-youtube command-line utility still remains the most useful interface to YouTube I've ever used: - Runs without any browser at all. - From a console. - Without video, if you so specify. - Enables full search, can be limited to music, includes both content and account search. That is, you can search for content matching terms, or for a username / account matching a term. Also playlists IIRC. - Can play based on a given account's videos / postings. - Individual items can be saved to a queue. Those may be ephemeral (session-only), or saved to disk. - Content can be downloaded if preferred. - No YouTube account required, no play history on YouTube. YouTube apparently did all they could to kill this, and largely succeeded. I'd used it fairly extensively for my own preferred use of the site: finding lectures (and occasionally book-readings or similar content), and queuing up playlists or downloading archives of those. Works on absolutely minimal hardware.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Thanks, that largely reflects my own experience. The now-largely-unusable (thanks to API key limitations) mps-youtube command-line utility still remains the most useful interface to YouTube I've ever used: - Runs without any browser at all. - From a console. - Without video, if you so specify. - Enables full search, can be limited to music, includes both content and account search. That is, you can search for content matching terms, or for a username / account matching a term. Also playlists IIRC. - Can play based on a given account's videos / postings. - Individual items can be saved to a queue. Those may be ephemeral (session-only), or saved to disk. - Content can be downloaded if preferred. - No YouTube account required, no play history on YouTube. YouTube apparently did all they could to kill this, and largely succeeded. I'd used it fairly extensively for my own preferred use of the site: finding lectures (and occasionally book-readings or similar content), and queuing up playlists or downloading archives of those. Works on absolutely minimal hardware.