42 ms·

FreeTube – The Private YouTube Client

312 points by akyuu 3y ago

izacus 3y ago
Ooof, accepting Bitcoin/currency donations for a product that explicitly strips out monetization of another 3rd party service is going to be a problem for longevity of this project on GitHub.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Receiving $2000 of donations is pretty good for a small opensource project too.
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  What's wrong with that?
  - colesantiago 3y ago
    Crypto is only used for non legitimate and speculative purposes and mostly scams. [1] Instead Patreon or Librapay is a better way to support them. https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-is-a-scam.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-is-a-scam.html
    - lloydatkinson 3y ago
      I despise crypto and nft and all of that but to say crypto is only used for scams is ridiculously reductive and absurd.
      - another2another 3y ago
        And in this case it's actually being used as a direct payment method for a good/service - so actually one of the rare cases where crypto is being used as a means of exchange - which is kinda what it was invented for.
        toolz 3y ago
        Using it as a means of exchange is not rare. It's far from the majority use-case, but something that happens to the order of many billions of USD worth of exchange a year isn't rare.
      - colesantiago 3y ago
        Many people do not care about cryptocurrencies and they are not confident in its safety and reliability, that even North Korea drove most of the hacking activity in 2022. This is something that only criminals would be happy that exists. I don't think creators would want to use any form of crypto or have their wallet becoming blacklisted at any time because they 'bought' or received bitcoin/monero from someone else that is associated with north korean hackers and criminals. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-of-americans-arent-confident-in-the-safety-and-reliability-of-cryptocurrency/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-... https://civicscience.com/paypal-now-sells-cryptocurrency-but-are-people-buying/ https://civicscience.com/paypal-now-sells-cryptocurrency-but... https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2022-biggest-year-ever-for-crypto-hacking/ https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2022-biggest-year-ever-for-...
        sph 3y ago
        Wanna move the goalposts some more? Don't you think the authors should be able to choose what is the best funding method for their project? Earlier you cried about crypto being ALL a scam, now you are the concerned citizen fearing from wallets being blacklisted. While crypto has many downsides worth discussing, there is no reasoning to be had with anti-crypto zealots like you..
        colesantiago 3y ago
        > Earlier you cried about crypto being ALL a scam, now you are the concerned citizen fearing from wallets being blacklisted. It's both. It is yet another reason why nobody should use crypto. Why should anyone use a wallet that is associated with a blacklisted address? It is simply not worth the hassle, especially when the stats shows that people are not confident in the reliability or safety crypto even if they have heard about it, here is a direct link to this so that you can print this at home: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-of-americans-arent-confident-in-the-safety-and-reliability-of-cryptocurrency/sr_2023-04-10_crypto_1/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-... > Don't you think the authors should be able to choose what is the best funding method for their project? I hope you're not suggesting that crypto is the best method because we both know it isn't. It would be like busking for donations in Chernobyl. You can technically do it except nobody is or will be there to give it to you. The same can be said for crypto. You might as well use the payment systems that everyone is using rather than a volatile Rube-Goldberg machine appeals mainly to criminals. > While crypto has many downsides worth discussing, there is no reasoning to be had with anti-crypto zealots like you. Yes. There are only many downsides, no upsides. It's far quicker not to bother with crypto than to try and use it. Only criminals are bothered with it because it fits their use case better, illegitimate and criminal activity.
      - bluescrn 3y ago
        Yeah, it's also used for drugs, cybercrime, and gambling/speculating
        alias_neo 3y ago
        So is real cash-money.
        m4jor 3y ago
        Wait until you find out fiat is still the top method of currency used for all of the above.
    - suoduandao3 3y ago
      Crypto trades full transparency of transaction history for making it impossible to debank. It's literally the worst thing you could use to try and do something illegal. But, if a central authority is invested in being able to shut down any commerce it doesn't like but can't make illegal, and it does so by leaning on private parties, and you see that alliance of central government authority and their corporate donors/clients as legitimate, I suppose crypto is indeed used for non legitimate purposes. Patreon has openly debanked people for investigating human trafficking rings tied to the European migrant crisis. At least use subscribestar if you bought the slander against crypto.
      - colesantiago 3y ago
        So Librapay would be a better choice here, as state and as the author of FreeTube has already setup. https://liberapay.com/FreeTube https://liberapay.com/FreeTube No need for crypto or Patreon.
      - adra 3y ago
        I don't know why this crypto adage is so commonly beat out. Have illegal funds deposited into wallet. Send wallet funds to a large crypto exchange that doesn't play ball with regulators commingled with a bunch of people's currency. Send currency to new personal wallet. Wash trade complete. You're now using crypto anonymously to perperuate crime. Where did I go wrong?
        suoduandao3 3y ago
        'Comingle'. The transaction chain is always visible even when the exchanges don't play ball with regulators. The chain records who recieved every subunit from the initial illegal funds, you'd be painting a target on your entire laundry infrastructure. A few project like Monero can do what you're describing but they're a minority.
      - apozem 3y ago
        Crypto is used all the time by criminals. The entire ransomeware industry takes hostage payments in crypto [0]. Just this morning, I read in Number Go Up [1] about Chinese gangs using Tether to steal millions with pig-butchering scams. They don’t care if it’s traceable, they care that it’s irreversible. They can just run the money through a tumbler anyway. “Criminal activity” is one the things crypto is best at, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. [0]: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/06/08/state-of-crypto-ransomware-is-a-crypto-problem/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/06/08/state-of-crypto-r... [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/02/pig-butchering-scammers-make-billions-convincing-victims-of-love.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/02/pig-butchering-scammers-make...
    - sph 3y ago
      Crypto is only used for non legitimate and speculative purposes and mostly scams, except projects like this one which are using crypto to fund an open source project, but we don't count those. Mind your confirmation bias.
      - colesantiago 3y ago
        Except it is the worst way to fund an open source project and this use case is dwarfed by the 77 billion lost due to crypto scams and hacks.
    - dns_snek 3y ago
      Every time a legitimate project accepts crypto donations, some HN commenter feels compelled to chime in with this tired narrative of "Yes this might be legitimate but everything else is a scam". So rather than advocating for 0% fee, true peer to peer donations, your first alternative is to inject a VC-backed parasite in the middle - why?
      - colesantiago 3y ago
        And your 'alternative' is a volatile token backed by nothing, that nobody is interested in (as cited by Pew Research) has properties that exhibits a pyramid scheme at best and a ponzi scheme at worst, and doesn't even do recurring payments and it is still slow. If you want to talk about 0% fees, this doesn't exist in any widely used crypto token so I don't know where you got that from. What is being suggested (which is any crypto token) is even worse than Patreon, we just had major price manipulation on Bitcoin which tells you everything you need to know about how unstable this token is that creators will not use. ICYMI there is also Liberapay which I stated earlier that you purposefully glossed over if you don't like Patreon. In any case, any payment system is better than crypto or bitcoin, especially for creators.
        dns_snek 3y ago
        > And your 'alternative' is a volatile token backed by nothing All that matters is that there are enough people willingly using it to make it worthwhile for the project to accept these donations. Furthermore, it's not "my" alternative, I'm not trying persuade anyone to use, or not to use different avenues of accepting donations. I'm just questioning HackerNews' collective tendency to publicly shame projects that accept crypto donations. It's a shining legitimate use case for cryptocurrency, and rather than applauding it or at least ignoring it, you feel compelled to deny its existence and remind everyone that crypto is "only" used for scams and drugs - why? It comes across like the vegan stereotype of vegans reminding everyone they're vegan and trying to convince them that they should become vegan too. > If you want to talk about 0% fees, this doesn't exist in any widely used crypto token so I don't know where you got that from. You're mistaken, high TX fees are an exception, not the norm. Both Monero (which this project accepts) and Litecoin transactions cost less than $0.001.
  - short_sells_poo 3y ago
    Technically, morally or practically? Technically nothing. Morally, you are depriving the content creators and Youtube of revenue (if they rely on Youtube ads). You could argue that they aren't somehow fundamentally entitled to make money, but you are also not fundamentally entitled to consume their content. The content creator had to do work to produce the content and YT has to do work to provide a platform where it can be disseminated. Naturally, they want to be paid for doing this work. We can argue about how much they should be paid, but again nobody is forced to watch YT. It's a voluntary transaction. If you don't like ads, buy a YT subscription. If you don't want to support YT, encourage your content creators to provide their content elsewhere. Practically, some companies have been historically willing to shut one or both eyes over open source/free projects as a gesture of goodwill (or marketing exercise). The moment money is involved, the lawyers tend to be unleashed and the whole "this is just a free hobby project with no monetary incentives for the developers" goes out the window.
    - 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
      > You could argue that they aren't somehow fundamentally entitled to make money, but you are also not fundamentally entitled to consume their content i don't know. take radio for example. The advertiser has paid real money to the voice actors, scripts, etc, and the radio company for hosting their content and for propagation, this is real cost. so what happens if you turn off your radio and don't hear the radio commercial? are you obligated to listen to adverts on a radio? what happens if you make a manual hardware sponsorblock? can the advertiser sue a manufacturer of this manual hardware sponsorblock machine that is an addon to radio? the original selling point of the hardware machine would be to block explicit songs and adblocking would be an added benefit. could radio companies sue radio makers or this hardware machine maker for selling this addon? knowing full well that this maker is earning money. >but you are also not fundamentally entitled to consume their content here is an alternative answer argument. when you publish on a public website, you give away this "right to prevent consumption". youtube is a public website meaning anyone without login can access content so youtube and content creator and advertisers are forfeiting their right to demand remuneration. the alternative? well look at netflix. It is a paywalled service where only paid users access the content. There isn't much of adblocking on netflix or tracking protection and other stuff. What i am trying to say is, only netflix by their nature of a paywalled gateway can expect this "no payment, no content" rule because they have put technical roadblocks. if tomorrow netflix goes open, they will be treated like youtube.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- ekianjo 3y ago
  You mean doing what users want is bad?
  - stuartjohnson12 3y ago
    Selling tools to commit crimes can be bad depending on the crime. Removing Youtube's ability to monetise probably doesn't do that much harm on a micro scale, but is problematic on a macro scale. This isn't like most piracy where the sales baseline remains the same and those who wouldn't buy will pirate, this is mostly just directly revenue negative to Youtube.
    - calderknight 3y ago
      Where is it a crime to block advertisements?
      - rplnt 3y ago
        I mean, we’re heading there.
      - amadvance 3y ago
        You made me remember the scene from A Clockwork Orange where the main character is forced to watch television screens.
    - bad_alloc 3y ago
      > commit crimes Is this really a crime? The tool does not redistribute copyrighted material for example. It only reshapes video sent to your device, allowing you to decide which parts to view.
      - fullarr 3y ago
        YouTube makes money by spying on you and serving you ads So yeah it's theft
        3y ago
- amelius 3y ago
  Why are we so dependent on GitHub?
  - jjgreen 3y ago
    Other origins are available.
  - jasode 3y ago
    >Why are we so dependent on GitHub? Because a service like Github is an emergent property of a bunch of developers making similar decisions: 1) spend time & effort setting up a git on home server or Raspberry Pi -- or -- spend that time playing with my kids or riding a bike outside 2) spend $10/month for a shared hosting plan to run my git/Gitlab instance -- or spend $0 for a free account on Github 3) expose my self-hosted home ip address -- or find a networking workaround because my house is behind ISP NAT and/or I don't want to publicize my home ip address and keep it private so I use someone else's public network ... such as Github Take variations of those 3 reasons and multiply it out by a million developers making similar decisions and you will inevitably end up with a "free automatically managed git instance in the cloud" ... aka Github.
  - mrd3v0 3y ago
    Search engines. Search engines have a massive hand when it comes to centralising. Both Google and Bing prioritise centralised services no matter how irrelevant their pages are. Just try an independent engine like https://mojeek.com https://mojeek.com and see for yourself how vastly different the surfing experience is. It's like you're back to the time when the internet was accessible and not centralised to a few Big Tech apps and websites.
    - metabagel 3y ago
      Kagi is another independent search engine worth trying. They have added a “small web” search option, which prioritizes small indie web pages.
mosselman 3y ago
What are some good iOS options?
- eur0pa 3y ago
  uYou+ and its recent forks as long as you can sideload IPAs (ie, through AltStore)
- osrec 3y ago
  Not sure there are that many. Last time I looked, there were no viable options via the app store.
- haunter 3y ago
  Yattee https://github.com/yattee/yattee https://github.com/yattee/yattee https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629 You can use it both with Piped or Invidious https://np.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_up_and_use_yattee_to_watch_youtube/ https://np.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_u... Works perfectly on both my iPhone and apple TV. No jailbreaking nothing needed.
- scns 3y ago
  Invidious, cross platform since it is a website. https://invidio.us https://invidio.us
fullarr 3y ago
Oh boy I can't wait to use the application that surely won't be nonfunctional in like 3 days
- 0x6c6f6c 3y ago
  NewPipe on Android is actually really solid, and similar in premise.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    There was a period of several months not all that long ago where they didn't work. But they're back now.
    - guilamu 3y ago
      There was not, at least not on my phone (s10e/s23). I've been using it for years without interruption.
    - lentil 3y ago
      I’ve been using NewPipe for years, and have not experienced issues as you described. Make sure you are using their own f-droid feed.
- guilamu 3y ago
  Freetube has been around for years and has been working pretty much perfectly since day one.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    Few people had a need for it, so few people used it, so Google didn't care. That's just changed as they try to bring the hammer down on ad-blockers and people are scrambling around looking for new ad-avoidance methods. Having multiple profiles with separate channel subscriptions is a nice feature. Google should have added some way to organise/group subscribed channels long ago really.
rcarr 3y ago
Anyone else think YouTube Premium is pretty reasonably priced? You are getting a music streaming service on top of ad free YouTube. I've been very happy with it since subscribing.
- bsdnoob 3y ago
  Probably not because I still get ads with YouTube Premium.
  - bibanez 3y ago
    Do you mean sponsored ads in videos?
    - jalict 3y ago
      If it is sponsored Ads, then I presumre that parented comments thinks the price is not good enough to actually provide, as it does not provide enough money for creators to not have sponsored ads as well.
      - szszrk 3y ago
        How much is "enough" money for a content creator to be satisfied? They are mostly driven by income, so why assume it will ever be a case at all.
- loveparade 3y ago
  It's not about the price. The whole UX is bad with their pushing of irrelevant clickbait content.
- JR1427 3y ago
  Yes, I do think it pretty reasonable. I don't watch "normal" TV, only YT, and I like it. Obviously there are the increasing number of ads actually within youtube videos, but at least you can skip over them.
- rplnt 3y ago
jjallen 3y ago
Great so they want to freeload off the laying users and content producers. The serving and production of this content has real costs. This does not make the Internet a better place. Paying for stuff you like does though.
- peoplefromibiza 3y ago
  > Paying for stuff you like does though great! make it, put it on your website (using owncast for example) and I'll pay. I won't pay YouTube though, sorry not sorry.
  - jjallen 3y ago
    Why no mention of Patreon which is where most YT creators are asking you to pay them? Does that also not meet your stipulations as to where and how you are willing to pay for a product you are consuming?
    - danShumway 3y ago
      Freetube doesn't block anyone from paying a creator on Patreon.
    - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
      > Why no mention of Patreon which is where most YT creators are asking you to pay them? because it's not YouTube. I do not want the platform to succeed, because it's killing the competition and it's also killing the creators.
  - wkz 3y ago
    > I won't pay YouTube though, [in that case I will unilaterally decide that I can consume your content free of charge], sorry not sorry. For clarity, I just added the quiet part.
    - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
      I'm on board with that.
telegpt 3y ago
[dead]
cecida 3y ago
If it had the ability to block videos that have that stupid mouth open and shocked expression of the presenter in the preview tile then I’d be sold.
- Einenlum 3y ago
  You should maybe check this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dearrow/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dearrow/
  - qwertox 3y ago
    The problem with this is that the thumbnails usually also contain helpful information. As an example, a recommendation from ARTEde with the title "Poor despite job | ARTE Re:" where the thumbnail shows "Brits at the limit" and someone standing in an supermarket aisle. Or the title "TSMC's First Breakthrough: The Copper/Low K Interconnect..." with the thumbnail "COPPER SEMIS" on top of a magnified semiconductor.
    - SushiHippie 3y ago
      This is from the same person that made sponsorblock https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ This means that it's the community that sees sensational thumbnails and changes them to some other thumbnail. By default dearrow shows random thumbnails if no other were provided by the community. But you can disable this and show original thumbnails, but if there is a community submitted thumbnail it will show the community submitted one. I think for example the arte thumbnails won't get changed to other thumbnails as they are not sensational/clickbaity/mouth open.
- max51 3y ago
  There are extensions that can swap the thumbnails with a frame from the video. It's not as good as a handpicked frame, but it's a lot better overall compared to the garbage youtubers are making now. The one I use on chrome is called "clickbait remover for youtube"
zare_st 3y ago
Right of computer owner to access public network resources and display it in the way he wants is above profit incentives of resource provider and above any other proprietary rights for that matter. For instance, if I receive a HTML/CSS data that displays a trademarked design (which should be kept as a whole), I am able to mangle the presentation part any way I want for personal usage. If I publish a site that's a mangled copy of a trademarked site, that's gray area. For my PC usage, no gray area. Same with disassembling, reverse engineering, etc. Then, I have a right to publish any tools that perform any customizations over owner's items, be them hardware or software. Customizing proprietary software and reselling it is illicit. Customizing for one's own purposes isn't (the proprietor may choose to drop support for owner on his prerogative). Most important point is that YT and alikes want to freeload in the middle area. They want to be free and public, but they want to force the way you consume them. That is a no go. YT can choose to make a closed system, but then they would lose all random people without accounts finding YT links and watching them. Really, tie the google account, and set up watching quotas, direct payment or any other system where YT directly gets "paid back". The user can use his tokens to access streams from wherever he wants, youtube-dl or whatnot.
- _Algernon_ 3y ago
  The right to general purpose computing should be part of the constitution in any country that claims to value free speech.
  - bcjordan 3y ago
    Freedom of expressions
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    And who is obligated to provide these resources? There is a big difference between the government not being able to restrict you in some way, and some party providing you with something (general purpose computing in this case). Presumably someone should have provided printing presses as well.
    - 3y ago
rasengan 3y ago
Let’s be clear - just because you block cookies and javascript doesn’t mean google, who owns and runs the servers for YouTube, can’t track you. Great thought but completely useless.
- ajvs 3y ago
  If you want to prevent tracking use Tor. This is not meant to be used to eliminate all tracking.
graiz 3y ago
It's worth pointing out that this hurts the creators who make those videos that you are watching.
sdfghswe 3y ago
Surely google won't let this stand for long, right? As soon as it gets any kind of popularity google will intentionally break it.
- rglullis 3y ago
  They've been trying to do it with Invidious and youtube-dl already.
  - sdfghswe 3y ago
    Right. And whenever I try to use youtube-dl, historically there's been a 25%+ chance that it's broken at that point in time. Either I have to update it, or download it from somewhere else or whatever. I think last time I had to go outside of the debian repo to get a binary or something.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      > I think last time I had to go outside of the debian repo to get a binary or something. Debian is certainly not the best option for those that depend on packages that change frequently. The fact that you got it to work 75% of the time is actually a positive surprise.
      - sdfghswe 3y ago
        To be clear. I got it to work 100% of the times. What I meant was that 25% of those it required some digging around for the latest whatever-the-issue-was on my part, and 75% of those it just worked.
scbzzzzz 3y ago
I see there is lot of dilemma in comments here regarding blocking ads. blocking ads is not piracy, blocking ads should be norm. I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status. I am "ok" with ads shown in TV channels, because they show the same for all above mentioned categories. let me make a simple analogy, how do you feel if a circus publicizes as free, has a billboard to show ads, and in background they hires a detective to follow your every move 24/7 , note down your interests/dislikes so they can show you personalised ads based on the interests. creepy right, That how i feel these companies do. just because someone/company spent money and posted a billboard on public space, doesn't mean you have to read through it. It is the risk they assumed, just like youtube/creators made the decision to host videos for free on a public space. it is a bad decision from their part and they have to live with it and not gaslight people. I hate to see youtube die, It is a wonderful archive for society. if you want you can buy premium/see ads so that society wont lose some thing valuable. but not because of creators/YT losing revenue.(that's the risk they assumed when they started the business). and then there are people who say, you can turn off ad personalization, I did since last 5 years and you know what I see. Some Scam apps/NSFW ads content. and there is no way to report the ads unless I turn on ad personalization. I would like to repeat statement from louis rossmann , don't accept the premise of the corporates when the premise itself is shaky.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status. How do they try to manipulate you? Appeal to you, sure. Not wanting them to have your data, absolutely. But manipulate?
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    Much advertising is psychological manipulation. The creation of a vacuum that didn't previously exist but now needs to be filled. Or the pointing out of a vacuum that previously went unnoticed, but is now noticed and therefore must be filled.
  - deleted 3y ago
TLLtchvL8KZ 3y ago
I got that big warning about having 2 videos left before being locked out of youtube viewing due to running an "ad-blocker", that was last week, I've not watched a video on the site since. I just download it with yt-dlp or throw it in to mpv. If those stop working I'll probably just stop watching youtube altogether since I only watch maybe 6-10 vids a week anyway. This "app" does look quite good, but for how long it will work if g**e keeps making it difficult I don't know.
- zelphirkalt 3y ago
  https://redirect.invidious.io/ https://redirect.invidious.io/ This might be useful to you. Alternative YT frontend with many instances. Usually the only third party connection is to googlevideo.com, which is unavoidable, if you want videos from YT. Sometimes a video might not play or might not be downloadable. Simply switch instance, maybe to an instance in another country, and try there.
- jphilip 3y ago
  I have logged out. Also tried yt-dlp but logging out and web is easier for search etc.
arepublicadoceu 3y ago
I was a premium subscriber for 1 month and quickly cancelled my subscription, the reason is simple: I was still bombarded by ads, just not YouTube ads. If YouTube want my business back they should simply find a way to force YouTube creators to provide two video streams, one with sponsored content for non premium users and one with their sponsored content shenanigans stripped out for premium users. This would make me subscribe asap even if I couldn't care less for YouTube Music as a happy spotify user. I know I can use sponsorblock to get rid of this, but I just felt silly having to use an adblocker while still paying for youtube premium.
sotix 3y ago
If people don’t want to pay for YouTube, then why not use peertube[0]? I don’t understand the arguments here. If you don’t want ads, then pay for Premium. It’s fantastic that an option exists to solve the problem! If you don’t like the price, then don’t pay for it. Somehow people have got it in their minds that YouTube owes them content for free. That’s a great mindset to make the shift to peertube and away from YouTube, but I don’t think it holds up as justification for getting mad at YouTube for forcing their preexisting paid plan to remove ads. Either pay for YouTube Premium or shift to a different model of video sharing. Both options currently exist! [0] https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/
- willcipriano 3y ago
  If Google could take some value from me without compensation, they would. In fact they do, they monetize my data and sell it to advertisers. Using a adblocker is just returning the favor.
  - jsnell 3y ago
    Well, first of all, they don't actually sell your data. If we accept "sell your data" as a shorthand for "allow targeting ads to you without actually giving the seller of the ad any information about you", it's still something you can control. In fact, the very first time you use YouTube you'd be shown a non-modal dialog about whether they're allowed to use your data for ad targeting or not, and have to make a yes/no choice So it sure sounds like your objection is just an excuse.
  - sotix 3y ago
    You can use fastmail instead of gmail. Kagi instead of Google search, Apple Maps or OSM instead of Google maps. Firefox instead of chrome. PiHole to block Google trackers. Disallow the Google indexer in your website’s robots.txt. If you don’t like Google, don’t use their products. Yes, they are hard to avoid. However, in the case of YouTube, it can be avoided by not using it. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
    - 3y ago
winter_blue 3y ago
I personally don't mind paying for YouTube Premium. It's a tiny tiny fraction if compared to the cost my rent and my (relatively exorbitant) car insurance rate. I would think most folks making a software engineer's salary wouldn't have a hard time with its cost. It eliminates ads, you get a "premium bitrate" on 1080p videos, so I'm fairly happy with it. Of course, in terms of ROI value, the YT Premium subscription gives you very little since the content is already free (when viewed with ads), especially if you consider that YT Premium is priced similarly to major streaming services which actually offer a significant amount of amazing original content (ad-free as well, at least in the case of Disney, Netflix, and Apple).
- beej71 3y ago
  I'm also a subscriber. However, Google turning evil has me considering that it's unethical to give them money. As we speak I'm moving my stuff out of Google Drive and will just use the free tier if I need it for anything. I love YT, but if I end my subscription I will stop watching it because of my complete hatred for ads.
- AlecSchueler 3y ago
  Most people don't have a software engineers salary. I've got 1 euro in 58 cents in my bank account right now. I literally cannot afford YouTube Premium.
qweqwe14 3y ago
Regarding ad-blocking: it's pretty simple – no single person in the entire world goes on the internet to view ads. People come to get information/content and just don't really care about other fluff that interferes with that. As long as it's possible to block ads, people will just do it, because it provides a SUPERIOR browsing experience than otherwise. I sometimes turn uBlock off by accident and instantly get reminded how screwed the browsing experience is without it. Some people also claim that ad-blocking hurts content creators. This is mostly false. Most content creators have realized by now that relying on ad revenue as a considerable source of income is unsustainable in the long term, due to aformentioned reasons. That's why most have Patreon, Ko-fi, merch shops, donations etc., which is a far more solid business model. I block all ads everywhere I can, I don't care if they track me or not, if they are "privacy-respecting" or other crap, I simply don't care. And I encourage everyone to do the same. "I didn't request the ad"
- Goronmon 3y ago
  That's why most have Patreon, Ko-fi, merch shops, donations etc., which is a far more solid business model. Is it? Most of the times I've seen these things come up it's mainly in the context of those being additional, but much smaller, revenue streams for the vast majority of creators. Are there many creators surviving entirely (or at least primarily) on subscription/donation/etc revenue?
  - qweqwe14 3y ago
    There are, I also forgot to mention general product placement/integrations, sponsorships and stuff like that, although SponsorBlock has put a dent in that (primarily pre-roll type ads)
- charcircuit 3y ago
  Creators make the most money doing direct brand deals where they advertise something for a brand.
ahati 3y ago
Let me putit out there, I don't like seeing ads and I like watching videos. I know a lot of creators are creating for fun. They do not care about ad revenues. Youtube promise them of a safe place only to show some creepy ads to viewers like me. Youtube needs to die.
stkdump 3y ago
All these 3rd party clients and sites to watch videos should coordinate and define a protocol for creators with a youtube channel to cross-reference a google-free (maybe self-hosted) platform to get to their content as a safeguard to not fully loose their viewership if either the creator or the subscribers get booted off the platform for whatever reason google deems a violation of their policies. Then creators can promote these 3rd party apps. Of course any other platforms will not easily be able to replace youtube's monetization, but at least keeping the contact could buy them some time.
qwerty456127 3y ago
Very cool. It's awesome we finally have an independent YouTube player app which, unlike existing players (we could always use MPV and others), also has searching and specific video related recommendations. But there is a room for improvement. E.g. its history appears forgetting a video's pause position as soon as I start watching another one. A handier speed change (wheel-scrollable perhaps, e.g. the YouTube Enhancer browser extension has it) is a necessity - I increase and decrease speed very often depending on how well and easy do I understand a particular part so using a pop-up menu annoys. The same about sharing - I want a single-click to copy the URL to the clipboard, not a multi-share pop-up menu. An option to pre-download full videos (in a per-video preferred format, together with the subtitles) then play from the file, then let me purge/prune this cache manually would be great (I usually prefer the "18" 360p MP4 format, 240p if that's a podcast with no interesting visual content, 720-1024p if its a coding lecture where I need to read what's on the screen, higher in some rare cases when there's something beautiful, all available subtitles and chapters should better be embedded in the file). Blocking ads should indeed be configurable. To be honest, I personally can hardly imagine myself enabling ads (I rather donate when I really like someone, and that's much more than YouTube itself would pay them for my view), nevertheless just killing all ads for everyone without even an option to change this manually somehow feels wrong. And probably begging for trouble of Google and/or other corporations attacking the project. If I were the developer I would rather enable ads by default and let the users configure blocking the way they see fit. I would consider adding these features myself as this fortunately is a free project on GitHub but Electron means that would require me to learn web frontend which is so complicated[1] it's not really my thing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895164
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
einpoklum 3y ago
Why do they like windows over tabs so much? :-(
loughnane 3y ago
Its ironic they accept monero; if youtube did (or something equivalent) I'd be able to pay for premium without them tracking my watch history. At the end of the day that's all I want. No ads, no tracking.
albert_e 3y ago
Impressive. Is there a Andoid app with similar features? Also, is there a equivalent for Coursera Videos? (Jut unhappy with Coursera UX) :)
albert_e 3y ago
bug report: when you are playing a playlist and go to the "pop out" window, clicking on "Next video" button on the pop out player messes up the payback (moves to next video only in the main parent window to new video which starts playing simultaneously) also, clicking "back to tab" on the floating player window ... does not return the user focus to the main plyaer window. you have to hunt for it in task bar and ppen the main window manually yourself. related feature request: it would be great if the floating popup player also had a time seek control main playback controls on video should include next/previous buttons when playing from a playlist
euix 3y ago
I think there is an additional issue here - which is if you want to pay to remove ads from youtube you have to have an account and that by definition provides your analytics and browsing history to youtube no? There is no way to remove ads without turning over your behavioral analytics to youtube.
mcpackieh 3y ago
Normie-friendly projects like this are going to get yt-dlp ruined.
sourcepluck 3y ago
There are: + Invidious, FreeTube, yt-dlp for music and videos + Internet Archive for loads more films, shows, music, University courses in their entirety, etc + Metager/Qwant/Ecosia for search, Duckduckgo for image search + Anna's Archive, Libgen, etc, for books + External hard drives for storage People apparently so concerned about ethics, I suggest considering setting up a monthly donation that goes out directly to people actually working on behalf of the public. Depending what you're into, that could be the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, or any of I don't know how many other projects working on specific cool free software projects, operating systems, and the like. Tor, Blender, Guix, Debian, Arch, Freenet, MediaGoblin, Peertube, Mastodon. Whatever, there are tons of things. If you give money to Google and Amazon (buying books on the Kindle) and tell yourself you're helping "creators", well, you might be falling victim to a vicious false dichotomy. Try this book, or a talk from Cory Doctorow about the book first to whet your appetite https://chokepointcapitalism.com/ https://chokepointcapitalism.com/
hjk_bear 3y ago
I see a lot of comments focusing only on the ad-free part of Freetube, however there are really good reasons to use it apart from that. I was a ad-blocker Youtube website user and I switched to only using Freetube (even before the "adpocalypse") because of changes Youtube has been making/removing. Here are some things that made me switch: - mega fast compared to youtube website (especially for firefox users) - separates videos/shorts/live on your subscription feed into custom tabs (can also hide any) - search results are actually usable and shown in a grid (No "People also watched|For you|Previously watched|Latest" every 1/2 results taking your whole screen) - can customize scroll over video player action (skip, volume, playback rate) - set custom forward/rewind and playback rate intervals - set default video quality - >2x playback rate (up to 10x) - distraction free settings (you can hide almost anything you want on each page, examples: trending/recommended videos, the likes/dislikes, the live chat, live streams, premieres, profile pictures in comments and much more) - hide videos from specific channels - display video titles without excessive capitalisation option - easily export/import your subscriptions to any format - multiple local accounts each with its own subscriptions The "still needs some work" things: - playlist support is not in yet (you can save videos but they all go to one place and you can't order them) - some parts of the UI, although very usable/fast, need some love (looking at you settings page) - tab support would be great instead of having to open new windows
amrocha 3y ago
I haven't seen anyone else with my perspective on ads, so I thought I'd share it. I believe ads actively make life worse. Modern ads are based on creating wants, rather than addressing needs. The more wants you have, the less satisfied you will be with your life. If I needed to do some home improvement and went to the hardware store, and there were ads for certain brands in the store, that's not a problem. The ads are giving me information about a product that I might need. But that's not how most advertisement works. Car companies don't advertise to people who need a car to commute, they show you an ad with a hot guy driving a car in a beautiful landscape and make you want to be that guy. You can't be the guy without the car, so you want the car. The goal of the ad is not to inform, it's to create a desire. I don't want to want. I want to be content, and I can't be content if I'm always wanting. The only way around it is to not want in the first place. If you're a Buddhist monk then you can do that already, but I'm not. Human nature is to want things, so the way I have to prevent myself from wanting things is by not exposing myself to superfluous ads.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  Completely agree. Ads make everything worse. Ads in public spaces are bad enough, but I absolutely will not have ads in my own home.
rldjbpin 3y ago
i am not sure about how does it separate itself from piped or invidious in practice. in fact it can use invidious api as a feature. plus you need to install an extension. but if it is more reliable than piped then i am all for it.

312 points by akyuu 3y ago

Ooof, accepting Bitcoin/currency donations for a product that explicitly strips out monetization of another 3rd party service is going to be a problem for longevity of this project on GitHub.

londons_explore 3y ago
Receiving $2000 of donations is pretty good for a small opensource project too.
yellow_lead 3y ago
What's wrong with that?
- colesantiago 3y ago
  Crypto is only used for non legitimate and speculative purposes and mostly scams. [1] Instead Patreon or Librapay is a better way to support them. https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-is-a-scam.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-is-a-scam.html
  - lloydatkinson 3y ago
    I despise crypto and nft and all of that but to say crypto is only used for scams is ridiculously reductive and absurd.
    - another2another 3y ago
      And in this case it's actually being used as a direct payment method for a good/service - so actually one of the rare cases where crypto is being used as a means of exchange - which is kinda what it was invented for.
      - toolz 3y ago
        Using it as a means of exchange is not rare. It's far from the majority use-case, but something that happens to the order of many billions of USD worth of exchange a year isn't rare.
    - colesantiago 3y ago
      Many people do not care about cryptocurrencies and they are not confident in its safety and reliability, that even North Korea drove most of the hacking activity in 2022. This is something that only criminals would be happy that exists. I don't think creators would want to use any form of crypto or have their wallet becoming blacklisted at any time because they 'bought' or received bitcoin/monero from someone else that is associated with north korean hackers and criminals. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-of-americans-arent-confident-in-the-safety-and-reliability-of-cryptocurrency/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-... https://civicscience.com/paypal-now-sells-cryptocurrency-but-are-people-buying/ https://civicscience.com/paypal-now-sells-cryptocurrency-but... https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2022-biggest-year-ever-for-crypto-hacking/ https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2022-biggest-year-ever-for-...
      - sph 3y ago
        Wanna move the goalposts some more? Don't you think the authors should be able to choose what is the best funding method for their project? Earlier you cried about crypto being ALL a scam, now you are the concerned citizen fearing from wallets being blacklisted. While crypto has many downsides worth discussing, there is no reasoning to be had with anti-crypto zealots like you..
        colesantiago 3y ago
        > Earlier you cried about crypto being ALL a scam, now you are the concerned citizen fearing from wallets being blacklisted. It's both. It is yet another reason why nobody should use crypto. Why should anyone use a wallet that is associated with a blacklisted address? It is simply not worth the hassle, especially when the stats shows that people are not confident in the reliability or safety crypto even if they have heard about it, here is a direct link to this so that you can print this at home: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-of-americans-arent-confident-in-the-safety-and-reliability-of-cryptocurrency/sr_2023-04-10_crypto_1/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/10/majority-... > Don't you think the authors should be able to choose what is the best funding method for their project? I hope you're not suggesting that crypto is the best method because we both know it isn't. It would be like busking for donations in Chernobyl. You can technically do it except nobody is or will be there to give it to you. The same can be said for crypto. You might as well use the payment systems that everyone is using rather than a volatile Rube-Goldberg machine appeals mainly to criminals. > While crypto has many downsides worth discussing, there is no reasoning to be had with anti-crypto zealots like you. Yes. There are only many downsides, no upsides. It's far quicker not to bother with crypto than to try and use it. Only criminals are bothered with it because it fits their use case better, illegitimate and criminal activity.
    - bluescrn 3y ago
      Yeah, it's also used for drugs, cybercrime, and gambling/speculating
      - alias_neo 3y ago
        So is real cash-money.
      - m4jor 3y ago
        Wait until you find out fiat is still the top method of currency used for all of the above.
  - suoduandao3 3y ago
    Crypto trades full transparency of transaction history for making it impossible to debank. It's literally the worst thing you could use to try and do something illegal. But, if a central authority is invested in being able to shut down any commerce it doesn't like but can't make illegal, and it does so by leaning on private parties, and you see that alliance of central government authority and their corporate donors/clients as legitimate, I suppose crypto is indeed used for non legitimate purposes. Patreon has openly debanked people for investigating human trafficking rings tied to the European migrant crisis. At least use subscribestar if you bought the slander against crypto.
    - colesantiago 3y ago
      So Librapay would be a better choice here, as state and as the author of FreeTube has already setup. https://liberapay.com/FreeTube https://liberapay.com/FreeTube No need for crypto or Patreon.
    - adra 3y ago
      I don't know why this crypto adage is so commonly beat out. Have illegal funds deposited into wallet. Send wallet funds to a large crypto exchange that doesn't play ball with regulators commingled with a bunch of people's currency. Send currency to new personal wallet. Wash trade complete. You're now using crypto anonymously to perperuate crime. Where did I go wrong?
      - suoduandao3 3y ago
        'Comingle'. The transaction chain is always visible even when the exchanges don't play ball with regulators. The chain records who recieved every subunit from the initial illegal funds, you'd be painting a target on your entire laundry infrastructure. A few project like Monero can do what you're describing but they're a minority.
    - apozem 3y ago
      Crypto is used all the time by criminals. The entire ransomeware industry takes hostage payments in crypto [0]. Just this morning, I read in Number Go Up [1] about Chinese gangs using Tether to steal millions with pig-butchering scams. They don’t care if it’s traceable, they care that it’s irreversible. They can just run the money through a tumbler anyway. “Criminal activity” is one the things crypto is best at, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. [0]: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/06/08/state-of-crypto-ransomware-is-a-crypto-problem/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/06/08/state-of-crypto-r... [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/02/pig-butchering-scammers-make-billions-convincing-victims-of-love.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/02/pig-butchering-scammers-make...
  - sph 3y ago
    Crypto is only used for non legitimate and speculative purposes and mostly scams, except projects like this one which are using crypto to fund an open source project, but we don't count those. Mind your confirmation bias.
    - colesantiago 3y ago
      Except it is the worst way to fund an open source project and this use case is dwarfed by the 77 billion lost due to crypto scams and hacks.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    Every time a legitimate project accepts crypto donations, some HN commenter feels compelled to chime in with this tired narrative of "Yes this might be legitimate but everything else is a scam". So rather than advocating for 0% fee, true peer to peer donations, your first alternative is to inject a VC-backed parasite in the middle - why?
    - colesantiago 3y ago
      And your 'alternative' is a volatile token backed by nothing, that nobody is interested in (as cited by Pew Research) has properties that exhibits a pyramid scheme at best and a ponzi scheme at worst, and doesn't even do recurring payments and it is still slow. If you want to talk about 0% fees, this doesn't exist in any widely used crypto token so I don't know where you got that from. What is being suggested (which is any crypto token) is even worse than Patreon, we just had major price manipulation on Bitcoin which tells you everything you need to know about how unstable this token is that creators will not use. ICYMI there is also Liberapay which I stated earlier that you purposefully glossed over if you don't like Patreon. In any case, any payment system is better than crypto or bitcoin, especially for creators.
      - dns_snek 3y ago
        > And your 'alternative' is a volatile token backed by nothing All that matters is that there are enough people willingly using it to make it worthwhile for the project to accept these donations. Furthermore, it's not "my" alternative, I'm not trying persuade anyone to use, or not to use different avenues of accepting donations. I'm just questioning HackerNews' collective tendency to publicly shame projects that accept crypto donations. It's a shining legitimate use case for cryptocurrency, and rather than applauding it or at least ignoring it, you feel compelled to deny its existence and remind everyone that crypto is "only" used for scams and drugs - why? It comes across like the vegan stereotype of vegans reminding everyone they're vegan and trying to convince them that they should become vegan too. > If you want to talk about 0% fees, this doesn't exist in any widely used crypto token so I don't know where you got that from. You're mistaken, high TX fees are an exception, not the norm. Both Monero (which this project accepts) and Litecoin transactions cost less than $0.001.
- short_sells_poo 3y ago
  Technically, morally or practically? Technically nothing. Morally, you are depriving the content creators and Youtube of revenue (if they rely on Youtube ads). You could argue that they aren't somehow fundamentally entitled to make money, but you are also not fundamentally entitled to consume their content. The content creator had to do work to produce the content and YT has to do work to provide a platform where it can be disseminated. Naturally, they want to be paid for doing this work. We can argue about how much they should be paid, but again nobody is forced to watch YT. It's a voluntary transaction. If you don't like ads, buy a YT subscription. If you don't want to support YT, encourage your content creators to provide their content elsewhere. Practically, some companies have been historically willing to shut one or both eyes over open source/free projects as a gesture of goodwill (or marketing exercise). The moment money is involved, the lawyers tend to be unleashed and the whole "this is just a free hobby project with no monetary incentives for the developers" goes out the window.
  - 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
    > You could argue that they aren't somehow fundamentally entitled to make money, but you are also not fundamentally entitled to consume their content i don't know. take radio for example. The advertiser has paid real money to the voice actors, scripts, etc, and the radio company for hosting their content and for propagation, this is real cost. so what happens if you turn off your radio and don't hear the radio commercial? are you obligated to listen to adverts on a radio? what happens if you make a manual hardware sponsorblock? can the advertiser sue a manufacturer of this manual hardware sponsorblock machine that is an addon to radio? the original selling point of the hardware machine would be to block explicit songs and adblocking would be an added benefit. could radio companies sue radio makers or this hardware machine maker for selling this addon? knowing full well that this maker is earning money. >but you are also not fundamentally entitled to consume their content here is an alternative answer argument. when you publish on a public website, you give away this "right to prevent consumption". youtube is a public website meaning anyone without login can access content so youtube and content creator and advertisers are forfeiting their right to demand remuneration. the alternative? well look at netflix. It is a paywalled service where only paid users access the content. There isn't much of adblocking on netflix or tracking protection and other stuff. What i am trying to say is, only netflix by their nature of a paywalled gateway can expect this "no payment, no content" rule because they have put technical roadblocks. if tomorrow netflix goes open, they will be treated like youtube.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ekianjo 3y ago
You mean doing what users want is bad?
- stuartjohnson12 3y ago
  Selling tools to commit crimes can be bad depending on the crime. Removing Youtube's ability to monetise probably doesn't do that much harm on a micro scale, but is problematic on a macro scale. This isn't like most piracy where the sales baseline remains the same and those who wouldn't buy will pirate, this is mostly just directly revenue negative to Youtube.
  - calderknight 3y ago
    Where is it a crime to block advertisements?
    - rplnt 3y ago
      I mean, we’re heading there.
    - amadvance 3y ago
      You made me remember the scene from A Clockwork Orange where the main character is forced to watch television screens.
  - bad_alloc 3y ago
    > commit crimes Is this really a crime? The tool does not redistribute copyrighted material for example. It only reshapes video sent to your device, allowing you to decide which parts to view.
    - fullarr 3y ago
      YouTube makes money by spying on you and serving you ads So yeah it's theft
      - 3y ago
amelius 3y ago
Why are we so dependent on GitHub?
- jjgreen 3y ago
  Other origins are available.
- jasode 3y ago
  >Why are we so dependent on GitHub? Because a service like Github is an emergent property of a bunch of developers making similar decisions: 1) spend time & effort setting up a git on home server or Raspberry Pi -- or -- spend that time playing with my kids or riding a bike outside 2) spend $10/month for a shared hosting plan to run my git/Gitlab instance -- or spend $0 for a free account on Github 3) expose my self-hosted home ip address -- or find a networking workaround because my house is behind ISP NAT and/or I don't want to publicize my home ip address and keep it private so I use someone else's public network ... such as Github Take variations of those 3 reasons and multiply it out by a million developers making similar decisions and you will inevitably end up with a "free automatically managed git instance in the cloud" ... aka Github.
- mrd3v0 3y ago
  Search engines. Search engines have a massive hand when it comes to centralising. Both Google and Bing prioritise centralised services no matter how irrelevant their pages are. Just try an independent engine like https://mojeek.com https://mojeek.com and see for yourself how vastly different the surfing experience is. It's like you're back to the time when the internet was accessible and not centralised to a few Big Tech apps and websites.
  - metabagel 3y ago
    Kagi is another independent search engine worth trying. They have added a “small web” search option, which prioritizes small indie web pages.

mosselman 3y ago

What are some good iOS options?

eur0pa 3y ago
uYou+ and its recent forks as long as you can sideload IPAs (ie, through AltStore)
osrec 3y ago
Not sure there are that many. Last time I looked, there were no viable options via the app store.
haunter 3y ago
Yattee https://github.com/yattee/yattee https://github.com/yattee/yattee https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629 You can use it both with Piped or Invidious https://np.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_up_and_use_yattee_to_watch_youtube/ https://np.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_u... Works perfectly on both my iPhone and apple TV. No jailbreaking nothing needed.
scns 3y ago
Invidious, cross platform since it is a website. https://invidio.us https://invidio.us

fullarr 3y ago

Oh boy I can't wait to use the application that surely won't be nonfunctional in like 3 days

0x6c6f6c 3y ago
NewPipe on Android is actually really solid, and similar in premise.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  There was a period of several months not all that long ago where they didn't work. But they're back now.
  - guilamu 3y ago
    There was not, at least not on my phone (s10e/s23). I've been using it for years without interruption.
  - lentil 3y ago
    I’ve been using NewPipe for years, and have not experienced issues as you described. Make sure you are using their own f-droid feed.
guilamu 3y ago
Freetube has been around for years and has been working pretty much perfectly since day one.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  Few people had a need for it, so few people used it, so Google didn't care. That's just changed as they try to bring the hammer down on ad-blockers and people are scrambling around looking for new ad-avoidance methods. Having multiple profiles with separate channel subscriptions is a nice feature. Google should have added some way to organise/group subscribed channels long ago really.

rcarr 3y ago

Anyone else think YouTube Premium is pretty reasonably priced? You are getting a music streaming service on top of ad free YouTube. I've been very happy with it since subscribing.

bsdnoob 3y ago
Probably not because I still get ads with YouTube Premium.
- bibanez 3y ago
  Do you mean sponsored ads in videos?
  - jalict 3y ago
    If it is sponsored Ads, then I presumre that parented comments thinks the price is not good enough to actually provide, as it does not provide enough money for creators to not have sponsored ads as well.
    - szszrk 3y ago
      How much is "enough" money for a content creator to be satisfied? They are mostly driven by income, so why assume it will ever be a case at all.
loveparade 3y ago
It's not about the price. The whole UX is bad with their pushing of irrelevant clickbait content.
JR1427 3y ago
Yes, I do think it pretty reasonable. I don't watch "normal" TV, only YT, and I like it. Obviously there are the increasing number of ads actually within youtube videos, but at least you can skip over them.
rplnt 3y ago

jjallen 3y ago

Great so they want to freeload off the laying users and content producers. The serving and production of this content has real costs. This does not make the Internet a better place. Paying for stuff you like does though.

peoplefromibiza 3y ago
> Paying for stuff you like does though great! make it, put it on your website (using owncast for example) and I'll pay. I won't pay YouTube though, sorry not sorry.
- jjallen 3y ago
  Why no mention of Patreon which is where most YT creators are asking you to pay them? Does that also not meet your stipulations as to where and how you are willing to pay for a product you are consuming?
  - danShumway 3y ago
    Freetube doesn't block anyone from paying a creator on Patreon.
  - peoplefromibiza 3y ago
    > Why no mention of Patreon which is where most YT creators are asking you to pay them? because it's not YouTube. I do not want the platform to succeed, because it's killing the competition and it's also killing the creators.
- wkz 3y ago
  > I won't pay YouTube though, [in that case I will unilaterally decide that I can consume your content free of charge], sorry not sorry. For clarity, I just added the quiet part.
  - BLKNSLVR 3y ago
    I'm on board with that.

telegpt 3y ago

[dead]

cecida 3y ago

If it had the ability to block videos that have that stupid mouth open and shocked expression of the presenter in the preview tile then I’d be sold.

Einenlum 3y ago
You should maybe check this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dearrow/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dearrow/
- qwertox 3y ago
  The problem with this is that the thumbnails usually also contain helpful information. As an example, a recommendation from ARTEde with the title "Poor despite job | ARTE Re:" where the thumbnail shows "Brits at the limit" and someone standing in an supermarket aisle. Or the title "TSMC's First Breakthrough: The Copper/Low K Interconnect..." with the thumbnail "COPPER SEMIS" on top of a magnified semiconductor.
  - SushiHippie 3y ago
    This is from the same person that made sponsorblock https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ This means that it's the community that sees sensational thumbnails and changes them to some other thumbnail. By default dearrow shows random thumbnails if no other were provided by the community. But you can disable this and show original thumbnails, but if there is a community submitted thumbnail it will show the community submitted one. I think for example the arte thumbnails won't get changed to other thumbnails as they are not sensational/clickbaity/mouth open.
max51 3y ago
There are extensions that can swap the thumbnails with a frame from the video. It's not as good as a handpicked frame, but it's a lot better overall compared to the garbage youtubers are making now. The one I use on chrome is called "clickbait remover for youtube"

zare_st 3y ago

Right of computer owner to access public network resources and display it in the way he wants is above profit incentives of resource provider and above any other proprietary rights for that matter. For instance, if I receive a HTML/CSS data that displays a trademarked design (which should be kept as a whole), I am able to mangle the presentation part any way I want for personal usage. If I publish a site that's a mangled copy of a trademarked site, that's gray area. For my PC usage, no gray area. Same with disassembling, reverse engineering, etc. Then, I have a right to publish any tools that perform any customizations over owner's items, be them hardware or software. Customizing proprietary software and reselling it is illicit. Customizing for one's own purposes isn't (the proprietor may choose to drop support for owner on his prerogative). Most important point is that YT and alikes want to freeload in the middle area. They want to be free and public, but they want to force the way you consume them. That is a no go. YT can choose to make a closed system, but then they would lose all random people without accounts finding YT links and watching them. Really, tie the google account, and set up watching quotas, direct payment or any other system where YT directly gets "paid back". The user can use his tokens to access streams from wherever he wants, youtube-dl or whatnot.

_Algernon_ 3y ago
The right to general purpose computing should be part of the constitution in any country that claims to value free speech.
- bcjordan 3y ago
  Freedom of expressions
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  And who is obligated to provide these resources? There is a big difference between the government not being able to restrict you in some way, and some party providing you with something (general purpose computing in this case). Presumably someone should have provided printing presses as well.
  - 3y ago

rasengan 3y ago

Let’s be clear - just because you block cookies and javascript doesn’t mean google, who owns and runs the servers for YouTube, can’t track you. Great thought but completely useless.

ajvs 3y ago
If you want to prevent tracking use Tor. This is not meant to be used to eliminate all tracking.

graiz 3y ago

It's worth pointing out that this hurts the creators who make those videos that you are watching.

sdfghswe 3y ago

Surely google won't let this stand for long, right? As soon as it gets any kind of popularity google will intentionally break it.

rglullis 3y ago
They've been trying to do it with Invidious and youtube-dl already.
- sdfghswe 3y ago
  Right. And whenever I try to use youtube-dl, historically there's been a 25%+ chance that it's broken at that point in time. Either I have to update it, or download it from somewhere else or whatever. I think last time I had to go outside of the debian repo to get a binary or something.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    > I think last time I had to go outside of the debian repo to get a binary or something. Debian is certainly not the best option for those that depend on packages that change frequently. The fact that you got it to work 75% of the time is actually a positive surprise.
    - sdfghswe 3y ago
      To be clear. I got it to work 100% of the times. What I meant was that 25% of those it required some digging around for the latest whatever-the-issue-was on my part, and 75% of those it just worked.

scbzzzzz 3y ago

I see there is lot of dilemma in comments here regarding blocking ads. blocking ads is not piracy, blocking ads should be norm. I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status. I am "ok" with ads shown in TV channels, because they show the same for all above mentioned categories. let me make a simple analogy, how do you feel if a circus publicizes as free, has a billboard to show ads, and in background they hires a detective to follow your every move 24/7 , note down your interests/dislikes so they can show you personalised ads based on the interests. creepy right, That how i feel these companies do. just because someone/company spent money and posted a billboard on public space, doesn't mean you have to read through it. It is the risk they assumed, just like youtube/creators made the decision to host videos for free on a public space. it is a bad decision from their part and they have to live with it and not gaslight people. I hate to see youtube die, It is a wonderful archive for society. if you want you can buy premium/see ads so that society wont lose some thing valuable. but not because of creators/YT losing revenue.(that's the risk they assumed when they started the business). and then there are people who say, you can turn off ad personalization, I did since last 5 years and you know what I see. Some Scam apps/NSFW ads content. and there is no way to report the ads unless I turn on ad personalization. I would like to repeat statement from louis rossmann , don't accept the premise of the corporates when the premise itself is shaky.

nonethewiser 3y ago
> I am ok with seeing ads, until they don't track my behavior, they don't try to manipulate my decisions based on age,region,sex,location, earning status. How do they try to manipulate you? Appeal to you, sure. Not wanting them to have your data, absolutely. But manipulate?
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  Much advertising is psychological manipulation. The creation of a vacuum that didn't previously exist but now needs to be filled. Or the pointing out of a vacuum that previously went unnoticed, but is now noticed and therefore must be filled.
- deleted 3y ago

TLLtchvL8KZ 3y ago

I got that big warning about having 2 videos left before being locked out of youtube viewing due to running an "ad-blocker", that was last week, I've not watched a video on the site since. I just download it with yt-dlp or throw it in to mpv. If those stop working I'll probably just stop watching youtube altogether since I only watch maybe 6-10 vids a week anyway. This "app" does look quite good, but for how long it will work if g**e keeps making it difficult I don't know.

zelphirkalt 3y ago
https://redirect.invidious.io/ https://redirect.invidious.io/ This might be useful to you. Alternative YT frontend with many instances. Usually the only third party connection is to googlevideo.com, which is unavoidable, if you want videos from YT. Sometimes a video might not play or might not be downloadable. Simply switch instance, maybe to an instance in another country, and try there.
jphilip 3y ago
I have logged out. Also tried yt-dlp but logging out and web is easier for search etc.

arepublicadoceu 3y ago

I was a premium subscriber for 1 month and quickly cancelled my subscription, the reason is simple: I was still bombarded by ads, just not YouTube ads. If YouTube want my business back they should simply find a way to force YouTube creators to provide two video streams, one with sponsored content for non premium users and one with their sponsored content shenanigans stripped out for premium users. This would make me subscribe asap even if I couldn't care less for YouTube Music as a happy spotify user. I know I can use sponsorblock to get rid of this, but I just felt silly having to use an adblocker while still paying for youtube premium.

sotix 3y ago

If people don’t want to pay for YouTube, then why not use peertube[0]? I don’t understand the arguments here. If you don’t want ads, then pay for Premium. It’s fantastic that an option exists to solve the problem! If you don’t like the price, then don’t pay for it. Somehow people have got it in their minds that YouTube owes them content for free. That’s a great mindset to make the shift to peertube and away from YouTube, but I don’t think it holds up as justification for getting mad at YouTube for forcing their preexisting paid plan to remove ads. Either pay for YouTube Premium or shift to a different model of video sharing. Both options currently exist! [0] https://joinpeertube.org/ https://joinpeertube.org/

willcipriano 3y ago
If Google could take some value from me without compensation, they would. In fact they do, they monetize my data and sell it to advertisers. Using a adblocker is just returning the favor.
- jsnell 3y ago
  Well, first of all, they don't actually sell your data. If we accept "sell your data" as a shorthand for "allow targeting ads to you without actually giving the seller of the ad any information about you", it's still something you can control. In fact, the very first time you use YouTube you'd be shown a non-modal dialog about whether they're allowed to use your data for ad targeting or not, and have to make a yes/no choice So it sure sounds like your objection is just an excuse.
- sotix 3y ago
  You can use fastmail instead of gmail. Kagi instead of Google search, Apple Maps or OSM instead of Google maps. Firefox instead of chrome. PiHole to block Google trackers. Disallow the Google indexer in your website’s robots.txt. If you don’t like Google, don’t use their products. Yes, they are hard to avoid. However, in the case of YouTube, it can be avoided by not using it. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
  - 3y ago

winter_blue 3y ago

I personally don't mind paying for YouTube Premium. It's a tiny tiny fraction if compared to the cost my rent and my (relatively exorbitant) car insurance rate. I would think most folks making a software engineer's salary wouldn't have a hard time with its cost. It eliminates ads, you get a "premium bitrate" on 1080p videos, so I'm fairly happy with it. Of course, in terms of ROI value, the YT Premium subscription gives you very little since the content is already free (when viewed with ads), especially if you consider that YT Premium is priced similarly to major streaming services which actually offer a significant amount of amazing original content (ad-free as well, at least in the case of Disney, Netflix, and Apple).

beej71 3y ago
I'm also a subscriber. However, Google turning evil has me considering that it's unethical to give them money. As we speak I'm moving my stuff out of Google Drive and will just use the free tier if I need it for anything. I love YT, but if I end my subscription I will stop watching it because of my complete hatred for ads.
AlecSchueler 3y ago
Most people don't have a software engineers salary. I've got 1 euro in 58 cents in my bank account right now. I literally cannot afford YouTube Premium.

qweqwe14 3y ago

Regarding ad-blocking: it's pretty simple – no single person in the entire world goes on the internet to view ads. People come to get information/content and just don't really care about other fluff that interferes with that. As long as it's possible to block ads, people will just do it, because it provides a SUPERIOR browsing experience than otherwise. I sometimes turn uBlock off by accident and instantly get reminded how screwed the browsing experience is without it. Some people also claim that ad-blocking hurts content creators. This is mostly false. Most content creators have realized by now that relying on ad revenue as a considerable source of income is unsustainable in the long term, due to aformentioned reasons. That's why most have Patreon, Ko-fi, merch shops, donations etc., which is a far more solid business model. I block all ads everywhere I can, I don't care if they track me or not, if they are "privacy-respecting" or other crap, I simply don't care. And I encourage everyone to do the same. "I didn't request the ad"

Goronmon 3y ago
That's why most have Patreon, Ko-fi, merch shops, donations etc., which is a far more solid business model. Is it? Most of the times I've seen these things come up it's mainly in the context of those being additional, but much smaller, revenue streams for the vast majority of creators. Are there many creators surviving entirely (or at least primarily) on subscription/donation/etc revenue?
- qweqwe14 3y ago
  There are, I also forgot to mention general product placement/integrations, sponsorships and stuff like that, although SponsorBlock has put a dent in that (primarily pre-roll type ads)
charcircuit 3y ago
Creators make the most money doing direct brand deals where they advertise something for a brand.

ahati 3y ago

Let me putit out there, I don't like seeing ads and I like watching videos. I know a lot of creators are creating for fun. They do not care about ad revenues. Youtube promise them of a safe place only to show some creepy ads to viewers like me. Youtube needs to die.

stkdump 3y ago

All these 3rd party clients and sites to watch videos should coordinate and define a protocol for creators with a youtube channel to cross-reference a google-free (maybe self-hosted) platform to get to their content as a safeguard to not fully loose their viewership if either the creator or the subscribers get booted off the platform for whatever reason google deems a violation of their policies. Then creators can promote these 3rd party apps. Of course any other platforms will not easily be able to replace youtube's monetization, but at least keeping the contact could buy them some time.

qwerty456127 3y ago

Very cool. It's awesome we finally have an independent YouTube player app which, unlike existing players (we could always use MPV and others), also has searching and specific video related recommendations. But there is a room for improvement. E.g. its history appears forgetting a video's pause position as soon as I start watching another one. A handier speed change (wheel-scrollable perhaps, e.g. the YouTube Enhancer browser extension has it) is a necessity - I increase and decrease speed very often depending on how well and easy do I understand a particular part so using a pop-up menu annoys. The same about sharing - I want a single-click to copy the URL to the clipboard, not a multi-share pop-up menu. An option to pre-download full videos (in a per-video preferred format, together with the subtitles) then play from the file, then let me purge/prune this cache manually would be great (I usually prefer the "18" 360p MP4 format, 240p if that's a podcast with no interesting visual content, 720-1024p if its a coding lecture where I need to read what's on the screen, higher in some rare cases when there's something beautiful, all available subtitles and chapters should better be embedded in the file). Blocking ads should indeed be configurable. To be honest, I personally can hardly imagine myself enabling ads (I rather donate when I really like someone, and that's much more than YouTube itself would pay them for my view), nevertheless just killing all ads for everyone without even an option to change this manually somehow feels wrong. And probably begging for trouble of Google and/or other corporations attacking the project. If I were the developer I would rather enable ads by default and let the users configure blocking the way they see fit. I would consider adding these features myself as this fortunately is a free project on GitHub but Electron means that would require me to learn web frontend which is so complicated[1] it's not really my thing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37895164

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

einpoklum 3y ago

Why do they like windows over tabs so much? :-(

loughnane 3y ago

Its ironic they accept monero; if youtube did (or something equivalent) I'd be able to pay for premium without them tracking my watch history. At the end of the day that's all I want. No ads, no tracking.

albert_e 3y ago

Impressive. Is there a Andoid app with similar features? Also, is there a equivalent for Coursera Videos? (Jut unhappy with Coursera UX) :)

albert_e 3y ago

bug report: when you are playing a playlist and go to the "pop out" window, clicking on "Next video" button on the pop out player messes up the payback (moves to next video only in the main parent window to new video which starts playing simultaneously) also, clicking "back to tab" on the floating player window ... does not return the user focus to the main plyaer window. you have to hunt for it in task bar and ppen the main window manually yourself. related feature request: it would be great if the floating popup player also had a time seek control main playback controls on video should include next/previous buttons when playing from a playlist

euix 3y ago

I think there is an additional issue here - which is if you want to pay to remove ads from youtube you have to have an account and that by definition provides your analytics and browsing history to youtube no? There is no way to remove ads without turning over your behavioral analytics to youtube.

mcpackieh 3y ago

Normie-friendly projects like this are going to get yt-dlp ruined.

sourcepluck 3y ago

There are: + Invidious, FreeTube, yt-dlp for music and videos + Internet Archive for loads more films, shows, music, University courses in their entirety, etc + Metager/Qwant/Ecosia for search, Duckduckgo for image search + Anna's Archive, Libgen, etc, for books + External hard drives for storage People apparently so concerned about ethics, I suggest considering setting up a monthly donation that goes out directly to people actually working on behalf of the public. Depending what you're into, that could be the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, or any of I don't know how many other projects working on specific cool free software projects, operating systems, and the like. Tor, Blender, Guix, Debian, Arch, Freenet, MediaGoblin, Peertube, Mastodon. Whatever, there are tons of things. If you give money to Google and Amazon (buying books on the Kindle) and tell yourself you're helping "creators", well, you might be falling victim to a vicious false dichotomy. Try this book, or a talk from Cory Doctorow about the book first to whet your appetite https://chokepointcapitalism.com/ https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

hjk_bear 3y ago

I see a lot of comments focusing only on the ad-free part of Freetube, however there are really good reasons to use it apart from that. I was a ad-blocker Youtube website user and I switched to only using Freetube (even before the "adpocalypse") because of changes Youtube has been making/removing. Here are some things that made me switch: - mega fast compared to youtube website (especially for firefox users) - separates videos/shorts/live on your subscription feed into custom tabs (can also hide any) - search results are actually usable and shown in a grid (No "People also watched|For you|Previously watched|Latest" every 1/2 results taking your whole screen) - can customize scroll over video player action (skip, volume, playback rate) - set custom forward/rewind and playback rate intervals - set default video quality - >2x playback rate (up to 10x) - distraction free settings (you can hide almost anything you want on each page, examples: trending/recommended videos, the likes/dislikes, the live chat, live streams, premieres, profile pictures in comments and much more) - hide videos from specific channels - display video titles without excessive capitalisation option - easily export/import your subscriptions to any format - multiple local accounts each with its own subscriptions The "still needs some work" things: - playlist support is not in yet (you can save videos but they all go to one place and you can't order them) - some parts of the UI, although very usable/fast, need some love (looking at you settings page) - tab support would be great instead of having to open new windows

amrocha 3y ago

I haven't seen anyone else with my perspective on ads, so I thought I'd share it. I believe ads actively make life worse. Modern ads are based on creating wants, rather than addressing needs. The more wants you have, the less satisfied you will be with your life. If I needed to do some home improvement and went to the hardware store, and there were ads for certain brands in the store, that's not a problem. The ads are giving me information about a product that I might need. But that's not how most advertisement works. Car companies don't advertise to people who need a car to commute, they show you an ad with a hot guy driving a car in a beautiful landscape and make you want to be that guy. You can't be the guy without the car, so you want the car. The goal of the ad is not to inform, it's to create a desire. I don't want to want. I want to be content, and I can't be content if I'm always wanting. The only way around it is to not want in the first place. If you're a Buddhist monk then you can do that already, but I'm not. Human nature is to want things, so the way I have to prevent myself from wanting things is by not exposing myself to superfluous ads.

globular-toast 3y ago
Completely agree. Ads make everything worse. Ads in public spaces are bad enough, but I absolutely will not have ads in my own home.

rldjbpin 3y ago

i am not sure about how does it separate itself from piped or invidious in practice. in fact it can use invidious api as a feature. plus you need to install an extension. but if it is more reliable than piped then i am all for it.