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Tell HN: YouTube download websites disappearing from Google search results

• znpy 3y ago
  Use duckduckgo, i guess
  • jotjotzzz 3y ago
    Did you mean duckduckgo? Lmao!
    • znpy 3y ago
      Yes, thanks for calling that out, i was able to fix the typo :)
  • MarcellusDrum 3y ago
    I'd use an engine that censors piracy sites over an engine that censors political views any day of the week.
    • flangola7 3y ago
      Eh? Piracy is a strong political act.
    • nathan_compton 3y ago
      I have a sick compulsion to know what censorship you are talking about.
      • Firmwarrior 3y ago
        I can't find anything except some half-assed clickbait from the New York Times last year. First they paint DuckDuckGo as the favored search engine for the far-right, then say far right people are furious that it's censoring Russian propaganda I guess that reading between the lines, it could be inferred that some wrongthink is being censored, but I couldn't find any actual info
      • sshine 3y ago
        DuckDuckGo censored Russian news sites during the invasion of Ukraine. I can’t say I experienced the censorship, or that I’ve confirmed if Russian websites are still censored, but this is the reason I stopped using DuckDuckGo. Which was quite disappointing, because they had very fast, not annoying search results. But I just can’t use fast and good looking, if I can’t modulate my search filters (have filters that are always on regardless of what I prompt for). https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/duckduckgo-russian-disinformation-downranking.html https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/duckduckgo-russian-disi... > Last week, Gabriel Weinberg announced that his company would be combating Russian disinformation. “Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create,” he wrote on Twitter. “At DuckDuckGo, we’ve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.” Although the move was more or less in line with how other major online platforms have been responding to the Russian invasion, pushback from DuckDuckGo’s user base has been pronounced. More than 30,000 users on Twitter have responded to Weinberg’s post with largely negative comments about the decision, accusing the company of engaging in censorship and injecting bias into search results. Breitbart ran a piece attacking DuckDuckGo as “Diet Google,” and high-profile libertarian YouTubers have also told their followers to stop using it.
        • yegg 3y ago
          See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36143328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36143328. I had poor word choice that got grossly misinterpreted, so I subsequently wrote the help article referenced above (https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/news-rankings/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...) to give clarity: "we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings." In reality we never censored anything, nor do we have a disinformation/"truth" detector, nor did we go looking for any Russian narrative (or any other narrative for that matter). Instead, we just have essentially a spam detector that had detected some spam from Russian state sites. That's it.
    • rakoo 3y ago
      Do you have any more details ?
      • danjoredd 3y ago
        They ended their partnership with Yandex, a Russian search engine, over the war. They also started downplaying Russian search results as a method of preventing misinformation. This led to a bit of controversy because it makes one question, if they are willing to censor over one political issue, what else are they censoring? https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/duckduckgo-yandex-ukraine https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/duckduckgo-yandex-ukraine
        • yegg 3y ago
          See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36143328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36143328. To be clear, we do not censor. Per the help article referenced above (https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/news-rankings/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne...): "we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."
    • yegg 3y ago
      (Hi, I'm the CEO & Founder of DuckDuckGo.) It is simply not true that we have censored anything or made ourselves "the arbiters of truth." I realized I previously explained how our news rankings work very poorly on Twitter but I subsequently put out a clarification in this help page with a much clearer (and detailed) explanation of how our news rankings actually work: https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/news-rankings/ https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/ne... From that page: "When we apply our own ranking signals we do so in a strictly non-political manner, meaning we don’t evaluate or otherwise take into account any potential political bias or leanings of websites in our search result rankings."
      • Tommstein 3y ago
        I abandoned DuckDuckGo during the Tank Man fiasco, but recently started giving it a chance every now and then. The fact that some page loads figuratively take a literal god damn eternity in Firefox on Android (I'm talking double-digit seconds) put the kibosh on that, Google is still instantaneous.
        • yegg 3y ago
          First off, we do not remove any results ourselves for political purposes and in fact we have been banned in China for many years for that very reason. What you're referring to was a temporary bug in our image search results from Bing that they promptly fixed. If they hadn't fixed it promptly then we would have taken further action. That seems hardly cause to abandon us. That said, super slow results I can understand :). But they are super fast according to all our metrics, so something else must be going on. There was a bug in DarkReader recently causing our page to be slow that was recently fixed -- not sure if that is related. In any case, if you want to email me (my email is my profile) then we can try to get to the bottom of it.
          • Tommstein 3y ago
            I do use Dark Reader. That's a hell of a bug. I'll assume it was that until proven otherwise.
    • StanislavPetrov 3y ago
      > I'd use an engine that censors piracy sites over an engine that censors political views any day of the week. Are you suggesting that Google doesn't censor political views?
• navjack27 3y ago
  Just use a tool. Jdownloader or something.
• _23sd 3y ago
  This is nothing new [1], but the music industry has seemingly been getting more aggressive recently. The other day there was a story about an independent label trying to get a Wikipedia article delisted [2]. TorrentFreak is doing great work covering all these developments, by the way. The sites are being delisted and sometimes taken down entirely with “anti-circumvention” claims, and it will continue at least until some appeals courts rule on whether YouTube ripping counts as circumvention under the DMCA. Search engines can follow GitHub’s example and take a stand against the validity of these notices, but otherwise they are just following the letter of the DMCA. [1] https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-delists-youtube-rippers-from-google-using-rare-anti-circumvention-notices-191108/ https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-delists-youtube-rippers-from-g... [2] https://torrentfreak.com/music-company-asks-google-to-delist-youtube-downloader-wikipedia-article-230528/ https://torrentfreak.com/music-company-asks-google-to-delist...
  • ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    Now that most people use LEGAL online sources of music, the industry is scraping for new members of the public to persecute, prosecute, and rip off.
    • meinheld111 3y ago
      Maybe stagnating subscriber numbers force the question of where they are going
      • gjsman-1000 3y ago
        That, but also, movie companies are not exactly living well with great profits right now. Disney+ is losing about $1.5 billion per quarter. Despite being very close to maxing-out the number of subscribers they will ever get. They've tried raising prices which seems to be helping reduce the bleeding, but investors are now in a lawsuit with them to determine whether the profitability projections were ever reasonable (and, surprise, Disney might have been doing some classic Hollywood Accounting to make the streaming division look better). Warner Bros. Discovery; well, $57 billion in debt with only about $40 billion in revenue per year... or $6B in profit per year. Financial struggles and pressure from investors? Immense. Their leverage ratio is 5:1 (whereas, 3:1 is considered the maximum for even remotely healthy). It's also kind of a big deal to have $57 billion in debt when the company's entire market cap is $28 billion, give or take. Thus HBO Max had a very stiff and sudden price hike a few months ago. And so on. The media market just isn't great right now. The Disney+ and Warner struggles are also definitely coming into play when the Writer's Guild comes knocking asking for higher pay.
• bondarchuk 3y ago
  yt-dlp
• lobster45 3y ago
  Try invidious. https://invidious.io/ https://invidious.io/ It is a FOSS front end to YT. You can do anything, download in various video and audio formats. Watch any video without signing in. No ads, etc. There are other options as well such as https://newpipe.net/ https://newpipe.net/ client for Android and Yattee for iOS. https://github.com/yattee/yattee https://github.com/yattee/yattee
  • doublerabbit 3y ago
    Thanks for this. Will be hosting my own copy.
    • BLKNSLVR 3y ago
      Piped is another option that can be self hosted: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped It's been on my to-do list for a while now.
  • explosion-s 3y ago
    I like LibreTube better than NewPipe. It has more features and a better interface imo
• ls612 3y ago
  Just googled "yt-dlp" and got its github page as the first result so that's food for thought.
  • usr1106 3y ago
    That's not term the average use would enter into their search. And not a tool that that too many non-techies could use. I as a software developer use it occasionally. And nearly every time (after a break of several months) there seem to be new tricks to learn/parameters to consider. At least if you some requirements on what format you need.
  • galleywest200 3y ago
    For what it is worth, yt-dlp rejects videos that have DRM (official Vevo music videos, etc).
• villgax 3y ago
  Google is too afraid of putting YouTube behind a paywall & desperately wants that Ad money so they'll do everything they can to ensure you see moar Ads. Just use YouTube-dl or ytdlp on your local machine or heck WASM
  • yakattak 3y ago
    Asking out of curiosity but how does Web Assembly play into it?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• _erererer 3y ago
  how long before chatgpt and execution are tied together in one platform - and we can ask it download it for us?
  • adoxyz 3y ago
    likely never. I had written a script a while back to easily download youtube video transcripts. In the past, I've been able to use ChatGPT to debug the script and improve it. Now if I ask any questions about the script the response is "this goes against YT ToS and I can't help you"
    • galleywest200 3y ago
      Could you just massage the text and convince ChatGPT its from elsewhere?
      • adoxyz 3y ago
        Out of curiosity I tried a bunch of different ways to trick it with no luck.
• evo_9 3y ago
  I switched to this recently, works really well: https://www.4kdownload.com/ https://www.4kdownload.com/
  • aio2 3y ago
    I used to use it, but I prefer Invidious
• perihelions 3y ago
  Related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36106741 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36106741 ("Music Company Asks Google to Delist 'YouTube Downloader' Wikipedia Article (torrentfreak.com)"; 3 days ago, 65 comments)
• Zemtomo 3y ago
  I mean you use a Google product to circumvent a Google product. I understand the frustration of course but it's hard to me to complain about Google because I never thought Google search is independent unbiased.
• usr1106 3y ago
  I use Youtube very sparingly. Sometimes not at all for months, sometimes a bit more for some days. I might consider paying for going ad-free. But their pricing is exorbitant for my usage. Some pay per view with a monthly capping at the current rate might be OK. So currently my biggest incentive is to avoid the whole ad-heavy crap. And if I have something that I want to share to a group or my language class I use yt-dlp to ensure availability in different countries and no interruptions by ads.
• jchw 3y ago
  If you're on Android, grab "dvd" off F-Droid. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.yausername.dvd/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.yausername.dvd/ Fairly user friendly, but also far more powerful than third party YouTube downloader services you can find online. I don't personally use it, but there's also Videomass for Windows. https://jeanslack.github.io/Videomass/ https://jeanslack.github.io/Videomass/ These tools give you relatively user-friendly access to yt-dlp.
  • DANmode 3y ago
    What does it offer over NewPipe, if anyone knows?
    • jchw 3y ago
      Apples/oranges: NewPipe is a full YouTube client that can download videos, whereas yt-dlp and its frontends are downloaders for a myriad of websites that include YouTube. You can, for example, download video from Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, etc. in addition to YouTube using yt-dlp/dvd/etc.
    • tintedfireglass 3y ago
      for someone who uses newpipe already it is of no use. but for users of the standard YouTube client. Downloading this application is better than downloading a full fledged yt client and video player for downloading a few videos off of YouTube
• bitwize 3y ago
  Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. YouTube's URL obfuscation is "effective" DRM, circumventing it is a crime. Do not expect Google to list websites that promote criminal activity.
• absoluteunit1 3y ago
  It seems Google is trying to eliminate anything that affects YouTubes bottom line more aggressively than before. Introducing ad-blocker blockers is among one of those. Another one I’ve noticed and I’m sure it’s not a coincidence; I always use YouTube via browser on mobile (has some great extensions including ad blockers) and I’ve noticed that the quality on the mobile browser is limited to 360p… There’s no option to increase in the drop-down. I tested on various videos that have 1080p in the web browser and no dice. There’s trying to squeeze every penny from YouTube
  • somenameforme 3y ago
    It has to be kind of odd strategizing for a company like Google. YouTube has reached practical global market saturation. The only way to grow is to squeeze more out of your existing audience. But the more you do that, to more you expose yourself to disruption. The Sword of Damocles, corporate edition?
• canogat 3y ago
  Downie for mac is great
• Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
  Good! Learn how to run youtube-dl yourself (or one of its spinoffs).
• tinybug 3y ago
  I use vidjuice, https://www.vidjuice.com/ https://www.vidjuice.com/, it work great on windows and mac
• udev4096 3y ago
  What did you expect? Google voluntarily allowing you to download videos from it's greatest source of revenue? Grow up
• kmoser 3y ago
  The VCR was a tool that allowed people to time-shift (record now, watch later) copyrighted material, which was determined by courts to be fair use. It also allowed people to duplicate their own material, which was unquestionably always legal. YouTube downloaders are just modern day VCRs. That they can be used to violate copyright doesn't mean they are only used to violate copyright. There are plenty of public domain videos on YouTube, and downloading them doesn't violate copyright.
  • zarzavat 3y ago
    If I understand it’s not overtly about copyright but about anti-DRM. The YT download tools necessarily have to break YT’s DRM which is per se illegal in the US. VCRs save unencrypted inputs, they don’t break any DRM. Now, breaking DRM is not illegal all over the world. So the YT download tools could decide to base themselves in jurisdictions where breaking DRM is legal, this is why you can download VLC which is French. That wouldn’t help with their Google listings however, as Google is American.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • kmoser 3y ago
      How do YT download tools "break" YT's DRM any more than your browser "breaks" YT's DRM? Both devices are user-agents, and allow a user to decode and view content. Once that content gets sent to your monitor it is no longer encrypted, thus no different from any other video signal.
  • Ballas 3y ago
    Later VCRs actually did comply to DRM. You could not record, for instance the output from a DVD player as well as some STBs.
  • contravariant 3y ago
    Any kind of agency can be considered a circumvention of copyright protection, it is an insane law that needs to be destroyed as soon as possible. The U.S. has basically given big companies a big red button they can push to stop people from doing something they don't like, and we're debating whether something does or doesn't warrant them pushing the button rather than whether such a button should even exist.
• lionelholt 3y ago
  I just did a Google search for "YouTube Download" and in the first page it returned SSYouTube, DVDVideoSoft, Y2Mate, 10Downloader, and YTBvideoly. I didn't test DVDVideoSoft because it's a Windows app and I don't want to bother with installing in VirtualBox, but the website itself is working. The other ones are online downloaders and while they don't retrieve the highest quality, 720p is still HD. Most of them simply redirect to a streaming url from which to Ctrl+S, but one of them did have an actual Download button. None of them are the best, but still functional, thus I'd say Google isn't doing such a great job at censoring.
• hndamien 3y ago
  This was never in results, but it is light and clean. https://videodownloader.world/ https://videodownloader.world/