13 ms·

Piped: A privacy-friendly YouTube front end which is efficient by design

265 points by emanuelpina 5y ago

Reubend 5y ago
While I can easily understand people's aversion to tracking and advertisements, I think projects like this are really unsustainable. Storing videos, transcoding them, and then using large amounts of bandwidth to serve them isn't free; it's fair that YT is showing ads to make up for that. I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. I think that's a good compromise: either you use it for free with ads, or you pay to remove them.
- mario_lopez 5y ago
  This is my preferred option: Simply pay (in the worst case, a subscription, in the best case, a one-time fee) to get rid of the ads. If I spend more than 10 hours a week on a platform (e.g. YouTube, Reddit, Twitch), I will gladly pay to keep the ads away. I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this.
  - macintux 5y ago
    > I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this. That's why I pay Fastmail: no ads, and no data harvesting.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Also a FastMail user. I don’t want to give a single dollar or as impression to Google.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      Given the direction Google is heading, it is quite unlikely but not unthinkable that they'll start locking the accounts / blocking the emails of people who spread "misinformation". It is a good time to have a commercial relationship with an email service. Less likely for politics to get involved.
  - dudus 5y ago
    Apparently there's a new version called google workspace individual. You keep an @gmail account pay a fee for some extra features. https://workspace.google.com/individual/ https://workspace.google.com/individual/ Not sure if it's fully launched yet.
    - mkmk 5y ago
      Calendly replacement, designed email templates, and video call collaboration features for $8/mo… interesting! So accustomed to Google’s “everything is free” approach that I’m curious to see how this does.
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      Neat. How long until they abruptly shut it down, though?
    - cassonmars 5y ago
      Doesn’t fix the problem where when you make all the services you depend on use your gmail address for validation and Google arbitrarily decides to shut your account down with no recourse or contact to resolve it, you’re just screwed. Stop letting Google eat the web.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      My Gmail has been throwing up a “Workspace” splash screen when it launches. I think I’m paying a few dollars a year for Drive storage, so maybe they rolled me in to that.
      - dudus 5y ago
        I have that too but it's just google One. A different thing that only gives you extra storage, some photo editing features and some support. Google workspace individual seems like a different thing. Kinda confusing to be honest.
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      Do not buy any kind of gmail add on, subscription service, or anything. I did, and when Gmail turned off my billing (for my own protection), I lost the ability to send and receive emails, because I was exceeding my drive quota by 1,200%. I have to send them a passport photo (my ID is expired) and hope that they bless me with the ability to pay for additional storage again. But I realized it’s safer not to pay for anything.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    It just sucks to know that even premium paying subscribers still get surveilled as aggressively as the free users. It's the same with Spotify, major news outlets, financial institutions, etc.
  - pg5 5y ago
    I switched from Gmail to using a Microsoft O365 business subscription with my personal domain name. I don't like the UX or the fact I can't append +<any string> to my address to have infinite test emails, but at least I'm paying for a product instead of being the product.
  - Rd6n6 5y ago
    Just use fastmail or ProtonMail
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  The emphasis of the project seems to be privacy, rather than ad-blocking, although it does block ads. The two are often intertwined.
- spiderice 5y ago
  I don’t think many people argue it is unfair for YouTube to show ads. They argue it is wrong for them to be tracked aggressively across the web. So where is the front end I can use to still give YouTube ad views without being tracked? I’m saying this as a YT premium subscriber.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    That's just an issue with it being associate with Google, though - recommendations are based on your viewing habits and that's done server-side. Most people use recommendations at least somewhat, and don't find absolutely all of the videos via just the subscription and search features.
  - lancesells 5y ago
    Think of how different everything would be if YouTube wasn't a part of Google. They would no doubt have ads but the entire Google universe wouldn't have access to the viewing habits of 2 billion people.
    - Pako 5y ago
      It also probably wouldn't exist anymore. last time I heard anything about it YouTube was in the red and only sustained with income from other Google services. (I might be wrong on that, if so please correct me)
      - ExtraE 5y ago
        Haven’t checked if this is a reputable source, but: https://www.tubics.com/blog/youtube-revenue/ https://www.tubics.com/blog/youtube-revenue/
      - IX-103 5y ago
        I heard that Google was able to get it to break even after a substantial investment to improve efficiency (custom ASICs for transcoding, machine learning models for prioritizing allocation of storage and computing resources). I think I agree that it probably wouldn't exist. Not very many companies would invest that much to just to break even.
- Terretta 5y ago
  The cost to subscriber is out of line with the expense to provider. Same is true of digital newspapers, magazines, etc., the subscription fees are way out of proportion to what they made from ads per reader in print or made in CPM online. While this might not matter for one publisher, it prevents users from accepting pay-for-use as an alternative model across the range of media they consume unless through an aggregate subscription like the one acquired by Apple. (While on the subject, the various ad-free streaming providers litter the offerings with more and more ads to the point you can’t trust your shows will indeed be ad free. It’s hard to say if this is on purpose to undermine and kill that model or not.)
- antonzabirko 5y ago
  I don't think fairness has anything to do with the endless push to drive profits higher. Which is what youtube must do.
- jraph 5y ago
  Well, I'm not fond of Google and I'm not willing to run it's proprietary code. I'd pay for the video hosting service but I'm actively avoiding Google in my life and would rather avoid giving it money. I also don't like ads and tracking. I'd normally boycott a Google service but YouTube is where the content is (network effect). These alternative frontends at least avoid part of the tracking (ads are already taken care of by uBlock Origin anyway) and the non-free Javascript code. With respect to the business model, I don't feel especially guilty, Google has way too much money and power and I'd rather have an unsustainable YouTube replaced by a federation of PeerTube instances with a power diluted across these instances. These alternative frontends could be seen as a temporary, partial solution while YouTube is up. On the technical side, they are way easier on underpowered devices than YouTube proper, including the PinePhone.
- gopiandcode 5y ago
  I'd argue that it's unfair for Google to use their market power in search to subsidise their video hosting products, thereby limiting the number of competitors, and then start forcing people to participate in their unethical privacy invasive ad network to consume video content online. Using services like this is a way to protest that injustice.
  - orhmeh09 5y ago
    How is it unfair that they invest their legitimately obtained profits into a new business? The people who are unsatisfied with this don’t know how hard it is to launch a search engine and plan wisely for the future they enjoy today. Just start a new search engine and then you can spend your money as you want, as you too are entitled to the sweat of your brow, just as Page and the other giants of our time are.
    - makeitdouble 5y ago
      Replacce “unfair” with “detrimental to the ecosystem” then. We’ll never get good alternatives if they have to compete with a player with infinite money. IRL dumping is illegal, arguably we are in a similar situation.
    - mst 5y ago
      The term for this is "predatory pricing" and was a big part of e.g. legal cases against Standard Oil who used it to crush competitors.
      - root_axis 5y ago
        The distinguishing quality of predatory pricing is that it's an unsustainable tactic used to push competitors out of the market before raising prices at a later time. It's not predatory pricing if the price never changes and in the case of YouTube the price to consumers has always been free, even before it was owned by Google.
        Aissen 5y ago
- netr0ute 5y ago
  If you can't afford to keep videos with ads, then your business is junk to begin with.
- bogwog 5y ago
  > I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. I think that's a good compromise: either you use it for free with ads, or you pay to remove them. The problem with that logic is that people don't just hate ads, they hate and/or distrust Google. People are not going to give money to a company they hate and/or distrust if they can avoid it. That's why it's important for businesses to not engage in unethical behavior/things their customers hate. Of course, in Google's case (and peers), they're largely immune to market forces thanks to years of anti-competitive behavior. So the consequences of being evil/unethical/shitty/etc are usually minor or non-existent. That's exactly why projects like this are good. Because it's the only way (a tiny subset of) consumers have (a negligible amount of) power to have an impact on bad business practices, since the usual "vote with your wallet" tactic doesn't work. And if creators lose ad revenue because people use a project like this, well, tough luck. In the short term, some of those might make less money or go out of business, but if this ends up changing (or bankrupting!) youtube, it will ultimately help creators in the long run if it means new business opportunities once the monopoly is gone and/or some of that bargaining power goes back to the consumers.
- 908087 5y ago
  You can pay for "ad-free" Youtube, but that still doesn't stop them from tracking your behavior/usage.
- mkroman 5y ago
  Unfortunately YouTube Premium is an extremely expensive solution just to remove ads :(
  - npteljes 5y ago
    Under which economy could it be considered expensive?
- zouhair 5y ago
  Beside ads the main problem I have with Youtube on my Desktop is I hate watching videos on a browser. I prefer using a dedicated video player like MPV.
- Beldin 5y ago
  Given previous incidents where renowned sites spread malware via ads (eg. bbc), accepting ads on your system is simply unacceptable from a security point of view. I've never heard of anyone being reimbursed by a website that unwittingly infected them. Websites that take responsibility for their ads, that's different. But those are very few and very far between. Right now, surfing without an adblocker is like going to a swinger party vowing not to use condoms. (Actually, I think your browser is already intimite with more domains upon one average visit to one average website than that...) So: block ads. It's basic Internet hygiene.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  > I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. This only removes the ads inserted by YouTube. Nowadays even moderately successful you tubers are inserting their own ads into their videos. This will not be skipped using youtube red.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
I can appreciate this, but isn't one of YouTube's biggest selling points its recommendations? I really don't want to see what is trending for YouTube's primary demographic, because I'm certainly not in it.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  No, their recommendations to me are their worst selling point. The recommendations I get must be paid promotions cause they are nothing like the things I watch, and seem to be clickbait.
  - andrewmcwatters 5y ago
    Not sure what you're doing then, because my recommendations are great and never clickbait. My only problem is they're too much like what I've already been watching, rather than a little deviation from it. Another part of it is that clickbait YouTubers continue to push clickbait and are associated with other clickbait. Just don't watch anything from them, and you tend to get less clickbait overall, because your recommendations are more likely to come from less trashy sources.
  - drusepth 5y ago
    Whenever I aggressively clear search/watch history, delete YouTube browsing data, watch incognito, and/or try to protect my "privacy" from YouTube, the recommendations unsurprisingly turn into complete drivel. Unsurprisingly, if I just watch what I like watching from the official UI, with history turned on, without removing searches, etc, the algorithm invariably just shows me more like what I've watched and works very well.
- korla 5y ago
  For me the biggest selling point is that the content I like is on YouTube. Everything else I can do without. I consume it through their RSS, which is nice, I suppose.
  - cobertos 5y ago
encryptluks2 5y ago
Minitube is open source and uses Qt, so it is extremely fast.
notafraudster 5y ago
I can't tell based on the GitHub description whether this is a website or some code you run locally. Like, I don't really know what a replacement front-end is. Is it a Chrome extension? I clicked the documentation and that didn't really answer anything for me. It's a Java backend, a Golang proxy, and a JS frontend? How do I actually use it? I tried Googling "piped" and "piped youtube" and couldn't find any reference so I assume it's not a website. I could imagine using this, but not if I have to run it myself.
- cyounkins 5y ago
  I think it is what is running at https://piped.kavin.rocks/ https://piped.kavin.rocks/
- andrewzah 5y ago
  Essentially you self-host it and it operates, I assume, via YouTube’s API or scraping. Invidious is another alternative frontend to youtube. I use it because it loads much faster than YT and it has an API that makes it easy for me to batch download my playlists. However it occasionally gets authentication errors and I have to restart the service manually.
  - hi5eyes 5y ago
    invidio.us is a much cleaner experience compared to default youtube/cancer youtube search too
- emanuelpina 5y ago
  There're two instances at the moment: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances Here's the documentation, including how to self-host an instance: https://piped-docs.kavin.rocks/ https://piped-docs.kavin.rocks/
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Ah, Docker. Looks like you have to run a minimum of TWO servers (or containers). You need a Java 11 server, and at least one golang proxy. Looks like "self-hosting" means, in practice, cloud hosting.
sebmellen 5y ago
How is this different from Invidious [0]? [0]: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
- 0-_-0 5y ago
  better resolutions
- alexmcc81 5y ago
  No Invidious official release since 2019 and it had huge memory leak issues that was unresolved for months last time I checked. Public instances were constantly restarting docker instances to work around it.
  - JeremyNT 5y ago
    The invidious repo is very active though, does an official release actually matter?
- lapinot 5y ago
  Related: https://sr.ht/~cadence/tube/ https://sr.ht/~cadence/tube/ A reimplementation of the invidious api based on a youtube-dl backend, together with a js-light frontend. I'm working on something similar, but leveraging youtube-dl to actually be platform-agnostic.
ipaddr 5y ago
It is missing the date filter.
smolder 5y ago
Can we fix the "An" in the title?
- emanuelpina 5y ago
  Done! Thanks for the heads up.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
alexmcc81 5y ago
I tried to set this up in docker. It fails with an exception that I think is related to the Captcha solver. There is no explanation I can see about how I can turn this feature off or why/if the Captcha solver (which is a paid service) is required.
- emanuelpina 5y ago
  I haven't tried it yet. Maybe the author can help you. Here's how you can reach him: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped#contact https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped#contact
- hyperdunc 5y ago
  I'm wondering if captcha is going to be a problem on any YT front end that hammers the site to fetch updates for a bunch of channels/subscriptions. It's a problem I've encountered using NewPipe on Android.
mcrittenden 5y ago
For what it's worth, I built something very similar to this and it ran for 7 years until Google shut it down for violating the terms of service. Here's a blog post I wrote with specifics, I case it also applies to your service. https://critter.blog/2020/08/04/a-farewell-to-toogles/ https://critter.blog/2020/08/04/a-farewell-to-toogles/
- Jgrubb 5y ago
  My very first thought was "wonder how long before YouTube shuts this down somehow".. Also, old drupal crew represent
  - mcrittenden 5y ago
    Represent! I only stopped working with Drupal about 6 months ago.
- gopiandcode 5y ago
  I think the difference here is that Piped is using a custom backend server (piped-backend) which scrapes youtube html to obtain the video content/metadata (a-la invidious), while your app was using the youtube API. Google is allowed to shut your app down, but AFAIK can't police who can and can't consume their publicly available HTML.
  - zibzab 5y ago
    Oh, they definitely try to shut down these products by constantly changing the page structure or using javascript to obfuscate things: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/3951 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/3951
- animesh 5y ago
  I remember your project. It was written in AngularJS then to showcase its power. It was a very refreshing demo. Good luck.
everyone 5y ago
I'm in the EU and many youtube videos show up as age restricted for me. The existing normal workarounds for this (nsfwtube, vlc, mpv, send google random id image) dont seem to work for me anymore here. I was left with 2 options. 1. Give google my real id (which I will never do in a million years) 2. Download each video in its entirety using youtube downloader site, then watch it, which is inconvenient. I ended up building a simple desktop program that can stream youtube videos while also bypassing the age thing.
- moneywoes 5y ago
  How did you go about building that?
  - everyone 5y ago
    Sorry, I dont wanna say in public in case youtube also close off this loophole.
- gundmc 5y ago
  Normally using the embedded video URL bypasses age restrictions. Did the new EU law change that?
  - everyone 5y ago
    apparently yes. Age restricted videos cant be embedded. you just get a black box saying to watch on youtube.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  My Google account will be 18 in about six months. I have a crazy dream that they'll remove my age restriction then. Never mind that I've got things like paid GCP on that account. It's bizzare though, that it could be required (legally) for me to send some company a copy of my idea to see e.g. acrime documentary.
mgraczyk 5y ago
> YouTube has an extremely invasive privacy policy which relies on using user data in unethical ways I just want to weigh in a counterpoint to make sure that this isn't the only voice people ever hear. I think that Google using data to personalize ads and recommend videos is ethically ok. I think this is a case of straw-manning potentially legitimate complaints about Google's service by using the word "ethics" to skip the work of making an actual argument. Further I think products like this are actually unethical. They are an unethical use of the data produced by Youtube creators, who miss out on ad revenue which they worked hard to earn. And btw, you can opt out of ads personalization on https://adssettings.google.com/ https://adssettings.google.com/ EDIT: I work at Google (not on ads or Youtube) and have worked at other large ads companies in the past. I work at these companies _because_ I think ads are ok, not the other way around. My views are my own.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > who miss out on ad revenue which they worked hard to earn What? Who cares? They can have multiple revenue streams and they often do with Patreon and sponsored messages inside videos. That nonsense that they rely only on youtube ad money has to stop. EDIT; oh you work for Google! That explains everything. Nice of you to mention that explicitly, by the way.
  - nohr 5y ago
    No one said it's their only revenue. You're making up words no one said. It is unethical to consume content without accepting that ad revenue is how its covered. That's it.
    - ekianjo 5y ago
      You can make the case it's also "unethical" to track everything users are doing across the whole web with Google Analytics, and then using that data to sell ads to third parties. "Being ethical" cuts both ways.
    - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
      > It is unethical to consume content without accepting [ads] Well in my belief, ads are unethical. These two views don't reconcile. And since I'm in control of my computer, I get to decide if the ads play or not.
manigandham 5y ago
The feature I miss the most is Collections where I could group my subscriptions into folders. I have too many now to easily browse them (although adding them to an RSS reader helps somewhat).
owlbynight 5y ago
Not really cool to steal YouTube's bandwidth in my opinion. The only ethical high ground that really exists here is to stop using the service altogether.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
What is the hosting charges for the demo instance? Says it has CDN also. Is the cdn for actual YouTube video files or just the ui of piped? How do you handle a barrage of accounts ? What is the specs for self hosting this ? Minimum? Can this be made a private instance so that it doesn't attract attention? What is this different from say invidious ? A cool projeft nonetheless. I like it.
machinehermiter 5y ago
Awesome. If someone wants to post a version with just the search bar and nothing trending that would be even better. I would literally use that everyday and never go to youtube.com I am just tired having to see moronic content and a start page of 20 random stupid faces for extra clicks. Bookmarked the live version and will use this as is. I just think it needs a result count for the search. I think that is a useful feature. I love the grid of 6 videos across in the search. Can really sift through things much better.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
The site claims > No connections to Google's servers How does that work? Proxying the video would be prohibitively expensive.
Jamie9912 5y ago
With all video being streamed through Cloudflare? I hope you're on the $200 paid plan because Cloudflare ain't gonna be happy with the bandwidth and will likely warn you very soon if they haven't already
ivrrimum 5y ago
I set this up on my personal server as a replacement for youtube in my life. Really cool project. needs an independant api tho.
dredmorbius 5y ago
A nice alternative to add to the arsenal, along with Invidious (https://redirect.invidious.io/ https://redirect.invidious.io/) and federated hosting alternatives such as PeerTube (https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/). 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. https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube - Runs without any browser at all. - From a console. - Without video, if you so specify. - Enables full search, can be limited to music posts only, 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. The only feature missing that I can recall is the ability to blacklist specific accounts. A chief problem with clickbait, propaganda, baiting, and radicalisation channel proliferation is that the activities carry little risk. Yes, YouTube itself occasionally removes high-profile cases, but people themselves cannot say "never show me anything from this source again", at least last I checked. Curation of sources, and killing high-noise sources, continues to be my most effective techique for boosting S/N. That said, mps-youtube was and remains the best interface I've found for searching for, curating, and managing online video access to my interests and without any tracking or ads, both of which have massive negative social externalities. 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. YouTube apparently did all they could to kill this, and have largely succeeded.
- crazypython 5y ago
  I use mpv. You can paste a YouTube link directly into mpv and it will start streaming.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    As do I. The key difference is that with mpv, content discovery is external. With mps-youtube, you're using the console tool itself to discover, curate, archive, generate playlists, and play back media. With mpv, you have to have the URL to hand it first. To mpv's advantage: - It works on a wide range of sources, unlike mps-youtube which is specific to YouTube - You can often throw the URL of a page containing the media in question and have mpv automatically detect and extract the correct media entry. (This works less often than I'd like, and I have some curl | sed one-liners which I throw at numerous cases, often starting from: curl -s <URL> | grep '\.mp3' | tr [,<>] '\n' | grep '\.mp3' That will at least provide a candidate list of media. (There may well be better queries, this works in a sufficient number of cases and is reasonably easily adapted in the shell.)
raspyberr 5y ago
I wish mpv/youtube-dl worked with this. I often like watching videos from the terminal and piped URLs don't work through mpv/youtube-dl

265 points by emanuelpina 5y ago

While I can easily understand people's aversion to tracking and advertisements, I think projects like this are really unsustainable. Storing videos, transcoding them, and then using large amounts of bandwidth to serve them isn't free; it's fair that YT is showing ads to make up for that. I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. I think that's a good compromise: either you use it for free with ads, or you pay to remove them.

mario_lopez 5y ago
This is my preferred option: Simply pay (in the worst case, a subscription, in the best case, a one-time fee) to get rid of the ads. If I spend more than 10 hours a week on a platform (e.g. YouTube, Reddit, Twitch), I will gladly pay to keep the ads away. I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this.
- macintux 5y ago
  > I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this. That's why I pay Fastmail: no ads, and no data harvesting.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Also a FastMail user. I don’t want to give a single dollar or as impression to Google.
  - roenxi 5y ago
    Given the direction Google is heading, it is quite unlikely but not unthinkable that they'll start locking the accounts / blocking the emails of people who spread "misinformation". It is a good time to have a commercial relationship with an email service. Less likely for politics to get involved.
- dudus 5y ago
  Apparently there's a new version called google workspace individual. You keep an @gmail account pay a fee for some extra features. https://workspace.google.com/individual/ https://workspace.google.com/individual/ Not sure if it's fully launched yet.
  - mkmk 5y ago
    Calendly replacement, designed email templates, and video call collaboration features for $8/mo… interesting! So accustomed to Google’s “everything is free” approach that I’m curious to see how this does.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    Neat. How long until they abruptly shut it down, though?
  - cassonmars 5y ago
    Doesn’t fix the problem where when you make all the services you depend on use your gmail address for validation and Google arbitrarily decides to shut your account down with no recourse or contact to resolve it, you’re just screwed. Stop letting Google eat the web.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    My Gmail has been throwing up a “Workspace” splash screen when it launches. I think I’m paying a few dollars a year for Drive storage, so maybe they rolled me in to that.
    - dudus 5y ago
      I have that too but it's just google One. A different thing that only gives you extra storage, some photo editing features and some support. Google workspace individual seems like a different thing. Kinda confusing to be honest.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Do not buy any kind of gmail add on, subscription service, or anything. I did, and when Gmail turned off my billing (for my own protection), I lost the ability to send and receive emails, because I was exceeding my drive quota by 1,200%. I have to send them a passport photo (my ID is expired) and hope that they bless me with the ability to pay for additional storage again. But I realized it’s safer not to pay for anything.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  It just sucks to know that even premium paying subscribers still get surveilled as aggressively as the free users. It's the same with Spotify, major news outlets, financial institutions, etc.
- pg5 5y ago
  I switched from Gmail to using a Microsoft O365 business subscription with my personal domain name. I don't like the UX or the fact I can't append +<any string> to my address to have infinite test emails, but at least I'm paying for a product instead of being the product.
- Rd6n6 5y ago
  Just use fastmail or ProtonMail
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
The emphasis of the project seems to be privacy, rather than ad-blocking, although it does block ads. The two are often intertwined.
spiderice 5y ago
I don’t think many people argue it is unfair for YouTube to show ads. They argue it is wrong for them to be tracked aggressively across the web. So where is the front end I can use to still give YouTube ad views without being tracked? I’m saying this as a YT premium subscriber.
- judge2020 5y ago
  That's just an issue with it being associate with Google, though - recommendations are based on your viewing habits and that's done server-side. Most people use recommendations at least somewhat, and don't find absolutely all of the videos via just the subscription and search features.
- lancesells 5y ago
  Think of how different everything would be if YouTube wasn't a part of Google. They would no doubt have ads but the entire Google universe wouldn't have access to the viewing habits of 2 billion people.
  - Pako 5y ago
    It also probably wouldn't exist anymore. last time I heard anything about it YouTube was in the red and only sustained with income from other Google services. (I might be wrong on that, if so please correct me)
    - ExtraE 5y ago
      Haven’t checked if this is a reputable source, but: https://www.tubics.com/blog/youtube-revenue/ https://www.tubics.com/blog/youtube-revenue/
    - IX-103 5y ago
      I heard that Google was able to get it to break even after a substantial investment to improve efficiency (custom ASICs for transcoding, machine learning models for prioritizing allocation of storage and computing resources). I think I agree that it probably wouldn't exist. Not very many companies would invest that much to just to break even.
Terretta 5y ago
The cost to subscriber is out of line with the expense to provider. Same is true of digital newspapers, magazines, etc., the subscription fees are way out of proportion to what they made from ads per reader in print or made in CPM online. While this might not matter for one publisher, it prevents users from accepting pay-for-use as an alternative model across the range of media they consume unless through an aggregate subscription like the one acquired by Apple. (While on the subject, the various ad-free streaming providers litter the offerings with more and more ads to the point you can’t trust your shows will indeed be ad free. It’s hard to say if this is on purpose to undermine and kill that model or not.)
antonzabirko 5y ago
I don't think fairness has anything to do with the endless push to drive profits higher. Which is what youtube must do.
jraph 5y ago
Well, I'm not fond of Google and I'm not willing to run it's proprietary code. I'd pay for the video hosting service but I'm actively avoiding Google in my life and would rather avoid giving it money. I also don't like ads and tracking. I'd normally boycott a Google service but YouTube is where the content is (network effect). These alternative frontends at least avoid part of the tracking (ads are already taken care of by uBlock Origin anyway) and the non-free Javascript code. With respect to the business model, I don't feel especially guilty, Google has way too much money and power and I'd rather have an unsustainable YouTube replaced by a federation of PeerTube instances with a power diluted across these instances. These alternative frontends could be seen as a temporary, partial solution while YouTube is up. On the technical side, they are way easier on underpowered devices than YouTube proper, including the PinePhone.
gopiandcode 5y ago
I'd argue that it's unfair for Google to use their market power in search to subsidise their video hosting products, thereby limiting the number of competitors, and then start forcing people to participate in their unethical privacy invasive ad network to consume video content online. Using services like this is a way to protest that injustice.
- orhmeh09 5y ago
  How is it unfair that they invest their legitimately obtained profits into a new business? The people who are unsatisfied with this don’t know how hard it is to launch a search engine and plan wisely for the future they enjoy today. Just start a new search engine and then you can spend your money as you want, as you too are entitled to the sweat of your brow, just as Page and the other giants of our time are.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    Replacce “unfair” with “detrimental to the ecosystem” then. We’ll never get good alternatives if they have to compete with a player with infinite money. IRL dumping is illegal, arguably we are in a similar situation.
  - mst 5y ago
    The term for this is "predatory pricing" and was a big part of e.g. legal cases against Standard Oil who used it to crush competitors.
    - root_axis 5y ago
      The distinguishing quality of predatory pricing is that it's an unsustainable tactic used to push competitors out of the market before raising prices at a later time. It's not predatory pricing if the price never changes and in the case of YouTube the price to consumers has always been free, even before it was owned by Google.
      - Aissen 5y ago
netr0ute 5y ago
If you can't afford to keep videos with ads, then your business is junk to begin with.
bogwog 5y ago
> I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. I think that's a good compromise: either you use it for free with ads, or you pay to remove them. The problem with that logic is that people don't just hate ads, they hate and/or distrust Google. People are not going to give money to a company they hate and/or distrust if they can avoid it. That's why it's important for businesses to not engage in unethical behavior/things their customers hate. Of course, in Google's case (and peers), they're largely immune to market forces thanks to years of anti-competitive behavior. So the consequences of being evil/unethical/shitty/etc are usually minor or non-existent. That's exactly why projects like this are good. Because it's the only way (a tiny subset of) consumers have (a negligible amount of) power to have an impact on bad business practices, since the usual "vote with your wallet" tactic doesn't work. And if creators lose ad revenue because people use a project like this, well, tough luck. In the short term, some of those might make less money or go out of business, but if this ends up changing (or bankrupting!) youtube, it will ultimately help creators in the long run if it means new business opportunities once the monopoly is gone and/or some of that bargaining power goes back to the consumers.
908087 5y ago
You can pay for "ad-free" Youtube, but that still doesn't stop them from tracking your behavior/usage.
mkroman 5y ago
Unfortunately YouTube Premium is an extremely expensive solution just to remove ads :(
- npteljes 5y ago
  Under which economy could it be considered expensive?
zouhair 5y ago
Beside ads the main problem I have with Youtube on my Desktop is I hate watching videos on a browser. I prefer using a dedicated video player like MPV.
Beldin 5y ago
Given previous incidents where renowned sites spread malware via ads (eg. bbc), accepting ads on your system is simply unacceptable from a security point of view. I've never heard of anyone being reimbursed by a website that unwittingly infected them. Websites that take responsibility for their ads, that's different. But those are very few and very far between. Right now, surfing without an adblocker is like going to a swinger party vowing not to use condoms. (Actually, I think your browser is already intimite with more domains upon one average visit to one average website than that...) So: block ads. It's basic Internet hygiene.
perryizgr8 5y ago
> I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. This only removes the ads inserted by YouTube. Nowadays even moderately successful you tubers are inserting their own ads into their videos. This will not be skipped using youtube red.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

I can appreciate this, but isn't one of YouTube's biggest selling points its recommendations? I really don't want to see what is trending for YouTube's primary demographic, because I'm certainly not in it.

encryptluks2 5y ago
No, their recommendations to me are their worst selling point. The recommendations I get must be paid promotions cause they are nothing like the things I watch, and seem to be clickbait.
- andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  Not sure what you're doing then, because my recommendations are great and never clickbait. My only problem is they're too much like what I've already been watching, rather than a little deviation from it. Another part of it is that clickbait YouTubers continue to push clickbait and are associated with other clickbait. Just don't watch anything from them, and you tend to get less clickbait overall, because your recommendations are more likely to come from less trashy sources.
- drusepth 5y ago
  Whenever I aggressively clear search/watch history, delete YouTube browsing data, watch incognito, and/or try to protect my "privacy" from YouTube, the recommendations unsurprisingly turn into complete drivel. Unsurprisingly, if I just watch what I like watching from the official UI, with history turned on, without removing searches, etc, the algorithm invariably just shows me more like what I've watched and works very well.
korla 5y ago
For me the biggest selling point is that the content I like is on YouTube. Everything else I can do without. I consume it through their RSS, which is nice, I suppose.
- cobertos 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago

Minitube is open source and uses Qt, so it is extremely fast.

notafraudster 5y ago

I can't tell based on the GitHub description whether this is a website or some code you run locally. Like, I don't really know what a replacement front-end is. Is it a Chrome extension? I clicked the documentation and that didn't really answer anything for me. It's a Java backend, a Golang proxy, and a JS frontend? How do I actually use it? I tried Googling "piped" and "piped youtube" and couldn't find any reference so I assume it's not a website. I could imagine using this, but not if I have to run it myself.

cyounkins 5y ago
I think it is what is running at https://piped.kavin.rocks/ https://piped.kavin.rocks/
andrewzah 5y ago
Essentially you self-host it and it operates, I assume, via YouTube’s API or scraping. Invidious is another alternative frontend to youtube. I use it because it loads much faster than YT and it has an API that makes it easy for me to batch download my playlists. However it occasionally gets authentication errors and I have to restart the service manually.
- hi5eyes 5y ago
  invidio.us is a much cleaner experience compared to default youtube/cancer youtube search too
emanuelpina 5y ago
There're two instances at the moment: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances Here's the documentation, including how to self-host an instance: https://piped-docs.kavin.rocks/ https://piped-docs.kavin.rocks/
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Ah, Docker. Looks like you have to run a minimum of TWO servers (or containers). You need a Java 11 server, and at least one golang proxy. Looks like "self-hosting" means, in practice, cloud hosting.

sebmellen 5y ago

How is this different from Invidious [0]? [0]: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

0-_-0 5y ago
better resolutions
alexmcc81 5y ago
No Invidious official release since 2019 and it had huge memory leak issues that was unresolved for months last time I checked. Public instances were constantly restarting docker instances to work around it.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  The invidious repo is very active though, does an official release actually matter?
lapinot 5y ago
Related: https://sr.ht/~cadence/tube/ https://sr.ht/~cadence/tube/ A reimplementation of the invidious api based on a youtube-dl backend, together with a js-light frontend. I'm working on something similar, but leveraging youtube-dl to actually be platform-agnostic.

ipaddr 5y ago

It is missing the date filter.

smolder 5y ago

Can we fix the "An" in the title?

emanuelpina 5y ago
Done! Thanks for the heads up.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

alexmcc81 5y ago

I tried to set this up in docker. It fails with an exception that I think is related to the Captcha solver. There is no explanation I can see about how I can turn this feature off or why/if the Captcha solver (which is a paid service) is required.

emanuelpina 5y ago
I haven't tried it yet. Maybe the author can help you. Here's how you can reach him: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped#contact https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped#contact
hyperdunc 5y ago
I'm wondering if captcha is going to be a problem on any YT front end that hammers the site to fetch updates for a bunch of channels/subscriptions. It's a problem I've encountered using NewPipe on Android.

mcrittenden 5y ago

For what it's worth, I built something very similar to this and it ran for 7 years until Google shut it down for violating the terms of service. Here's a blog post I wrote with specifics, I case it also applies to your service. https://critter.blog/2020/08/04/a-farewell-to-toogles/ https://critter.blog/2020/08/04/a-farewell-to-toogles/

Jgrubb 5y ago
My very first thought was "wonder how long before YouTube shuts this down somehow".. Also, old drupal crew represent
- mcrittenden 5y ago
  Represent! I only stopped working with Drupal about 6 months ago.
gopiandcode 5y ago
I think the difference here is that Piped is using a custom backend server (piped-backend) which scrapes youtube html to obtain the video content/metadata (a-la invidious), while your app was using the youtube API. Google is allowed to shut your app down, but AFAIK can't police who can and can't consume their publicly available HTML.
- zibzab 5y ago
  Oh, they definitely try to shut down these products by constantly changing the page structure or using javascript to obfuscate things: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/3951 https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/3951
animesh 5y ago
I remember your project. It was written in AngularJS then to showcase its power. It was a very refreshing demo. Good luck.

everyone 5y ago

I'm in the EU and many youtube videos show up as age restricted for me. The existing normal workarounds for this (nsfwtube, vlc, mpv, send google random id image) dont seem to work for me anymore here. I was left with 2 options. 1. Give google my real id (which I will never do in a million years) 2. Download each video in its entirety using youtube downloader site, then watch it, which is inconvenient. I ended up building a simple desktop program that can stream youtube videos while also bypassing the age thing.

moneywoes 5y ago
How did you go about building that?
- everyone 5y ago
  Sorry, I dont wanna say in public in case youtube also close off this loophole.
gundmc 5y ago
Normally using the embedded video URL bypasses age restrictions. Did the new EU law change that?
- everyone 5y ago
  apparently yes. Age restricted videos cant be embedded. you just get a black box saying to watch on youtube.
Y_Y 5y ago
My Google account will be 18 in about six months. I have a crazy dream that they'll remove my age restriction then. Never mind that I've got things like paid GCP on that account. It's bizzare though, that it could be required (legally) for me to send some company a copy of my idea to see e.g. acrime documentary.

mgraczyk 5y ago

> YouTube has an extremely invasive privacy policy which relies on using user data in unethical ways I just want to weigh in a counterpoint to make sure that this isn't the only voice people ever hear. I think that Google using data to personalize ads and recommend videos is ethically ok. I think this is a case of straw-manning potentially legitimate complaints about Google's service by using the word "ethics" to skip the work of making an actual argument. Further I think products like this are actually unethical. They are an unethical use of the data produced by Youtube creators, who miss out on ad revenue which they worked hard to earn. And btw, you can opt out of ads personalization on https://adssettings.google.com/ https://adssettings.google.com/ EDIT: I work at Google (not on ads or Youtube) and have worked at other large ads companies in the past. I work at these companies _because_ I think ads are ok, not the other way around. My views are my own.

ekianjo 5y ago
> who miss out on ad revenue which they worked hard to earn What? Who cares? They can have multiple revenue streams and they often do with Patreon and sponsored messages inside videos. That nonsense that they rely only on youtube ad money has to stop. EDIT; oh you work for Google! That explains everything. Nice of you to mention that explicitly, by the way.
- nohr 5y ago
  No one said it's their only revenue. You're making up words no one said. It is unethical to consume content without accepting that ad revenue is how its covered. That's it.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    You can make the case it's also "unethical" to track everything users are doing across the whole web with Google Analytics, and then using that data to sell ads to third parties. "Being ethical" cuts both ways.
  - hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    > It is unethical to consume content without accepting [ads] Well in my belief, ads are unethical. These two views don't reconcile. And since I'm in control of my computer, I get to decide if the ads play or not.

manigandham 5y ago

The feature I miss the most is Collections where I could group my subscriptions into folders. I have too many now to easily browse them (although adding them to an RSS reader helps somewhat).

owlbynight 5y ago

Not really cool to steal YouTube's bandwidth in my opinion. The only ethical high ground that really exists here is to stop using the service altogether.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

What is the hosting charges for the demo instance? Says it has CDN also. Is the cdn for actual YouTube video files or just the ui of piped? How do you handle a barrage of accounts ? What is the specs for self hosting this ? Minimum? Can this be made a private instance so that it doesn't attract attention? What is this different from say invidious ? A cool projeft nonetheless. I like it.

machinehermiter 5y ago

Awesome. If someone wants to post a version with just the search bar and nothing trending that would be even better. I would literally use that everyday and never go to youtube.com I am just tired having to see moronic content and a start page of 20 random stupid faces for extra clicks. Bookmarked the live version and will use this as is. I just think it needs a result count for the search. I think that is a useful feature. I love the grid of 6 videos across in the search. Can really sift through things much better.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

The site claims > No connections to Google's servers How does that work? Proxying the video would be prohibitively expensive.

Jamie9912 5y ago

With all video being streamed through Cloudflare? I hope you're on the $200 paid plan because Cloudflare ain't gonna be happy with the bandwidth and will likely warn you very soon if they haven't already

ivrrimum 5y ago

I set this up on my personal server as a replacement for youtube in my life. Really cool project. needs an independant api tho.

dredmorbius 5y ago

A nice alternative to add to the arsenal, along with Invidious (https://redirect.invidious.io/ https://redirect.invidious.io/) and federated hosting alternatives such as PeerTube (https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/). 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. https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube https://github.com/mps-youtube/mps-youtube - Runs without any browser at all. - From a console. - Without video, if you so specify. - Enables full search, can be limited to music posts only, 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. The only feature missing that I can recall is the ability to blacklist specific accounts. A chief problem with clickbait, propaganda, baiting, and radicalisation channel proliferation is that the activities carry little risk. Yes, YouTube itself occasionally removes high-profile cases, but people themselves cannot say "never show me anything from this source again", at least last I checked. Curation of sources, and killing high-noise sources, continues to be my most effective techique for boosting S/N. That said, mps-youtube was and remains the best interface I've found for searching for, curating, and managing online video access to my interests and without any tracking or ads, both of which have massive negative social externalities. 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. YouTube apparently did all they could to kill this, and have largely succeeded.

crazypython 5y ago
I use mpv. You can paste a YouTube link directly into mpv and it will start streaming.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  As do I. The key difference is that with mpv, content discovery is external. With mps-youtube, you're using the console tool itself to discover, curate, archive, generate playlists, and play back media. With mpv, you have to have the URL to hand it first. To mpv's advantage: - It works on a wide range of sources, unlike mps-youtube which is specific to YouTube - You can often throw the URL of a page containing the media in question and have mpv automatically detect and extract the correct media entry. (This works less often than I'd like, and I have some curl | sed one-liners which I throw at numerous cases, often starting from: curl -s <URL> | grep '\.mp3' | tr [,<>] '\n' | grep '\.mp3' That will at least provide a candidate list of media. (There may well be better queries, this works in a sufficient number of cases and is reasonably easily adapted in the shell.)

raspyberr 5y ago

I wish mpv/youtube-dl worked with this. I often like watching videos from the terminal and piped URLs don't work through mpv/youtube-dl