13 ms·

Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

315 points by e2le 3y ago

edelans 3y ago
I don't understand how piped can be at the same time - legal - not use YT APIs - ad-free can someone help me understand how this works?
syuw32heje44 3y ago
[flagged]
huntears 3y ago
That is the FOSS front end I use for yt and it has been ultra stable I highly recommend it :)
based_gigachad2 3y ago
Also check out a FOSS Android app LibreTube[1]. No ads, SponsorBlock, ReturnYouTubeDislike, can proxy all the videos through a Piped instance, subscription sync with a Piped account, offline and online playlists are supported [1]: https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube
- k4rli 3y ago
  NewPipe+Sponsorblock is also nice. No logins.
  - based_gigachad2 3y ago
    You can use LibreTube without a Piped account as well - the subscriptions will be saved locally
  - FireInsight 3y ago
    What's different is that NewPipe connects to YouTube servers directy while LibreTube doesn't. Also, LT has MD3.
    - nbittich 3y ago
      How do you get a YouTube video without connecting to YouTube?
      - flexagoon 3y ago
        Through Piped, which proxies all requests through it's server
CalRobert 3y ago
How will tools like this persist after Google enforces WEI for people using youtube?
- gray_-_wolf 3y ago
  > How will tools like this persist They will not, that is the whole point of WEI.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  They won't. That's the point.
- infinityio 3y ago
  Likely by means of reverse-engineered APIs from smart TVs (or similar) with limited capability to provide integrity, although I'm sure there are steps Google can take to make that harder
- rekoil 3y ago
  Forgive my ignorance, but what is "WEI"?
  - crtasm 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
- crtasm 3y ago
  Considering how many viewers they have using televisions/set top boxes/streaming usb sticks that will never get an update, do you see that happening any time soon?
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    These won't be supported forever
    - 3y ago
scosman 3y ago
Invidious is a good piped alternative for those starting to look at this space: https://invidious.io/ https://invidious.io/ Yattee is a good front end app for both piped and invidious for Apple TV (and iOS and macOS but I prefer the browser on those platforms)
- edelans 3y ago
  I have troubles understanding what's the value added by Yattee if it's only a "front end", while piped already claims it's a front end for YT. Can you help me get a clearer understanding ? I'm interested in ditching YT in favor of a privacy friendly / ad-free alternative.
  - bashZorina_09 3y ago
    Yattee aims to fit more in line as a native Apple subscription organizer and player application suite, with native window controls and tighter integrations, but it's mostly up to you to decide how'd you like your setup to be. Ideally, you could self host only the Piped framework and connect this to Yattee without hosting the WebUI frontend, but without the latter, you cannot create a user for yourself to store subscriptions, and using the provided AIO Docker Images is overkill for self hosting as you are required to purchase and point to DNS records for this system (mostly to the benefit of publically hosting an instance of Piped). Invidious is more suited for this regard, but has issues with parsing some videos and their metadata (usually new uploads for a week, Vevo Music Videos etc.)
- pvg 3y ago
  Invidious had its own big thread yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37900458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37900458
jollyllama 3y ago
Every time I try to go to a Piped instance, it fails to load the video. Updates/quotas are even worse than Nitter instances, I think.
cornfutes 3y ago
I was just thinking yesterday that there needs to be a 3rd party tool that reintroduces the thumbs down button.
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  There is, at least on browsers. I use the Return YouTube Dislike extension on Chrome.
  - bl4kers 3y ago
    https://returnyoutubedislike.com/install https://returnyoutubedislike.com/install
- vxNsr 3y ago
  there are a few projects that do this, but it doesn't really matter... not enough people use any single one and most new videos will never really show accurate info
yard2010 3y ago
I have to say that the crypto space is doomed and nobody cares about decentralization, but the technology behind it enables doing exactly this: 1 backend and many different clients. IMO this is the future - breaking monopolies with separation of powers a la John Locke
- mariusor 3y ago
  How is this related to crypto currencies in any way? Any web API can allow multiple clients so I'm a bit lost at why you're so excited about this.
- themoonisachees 3y ago
  People care about decentralization, they don't care about projects that are thinly veiled attempts at extracting money from them under the promise of decentralization
  - FireInsight 3y ago
    I agree with the sentiment, but "people care about decentralization" is very debatable IMO. Most people don't care, they just want the content.
- sleepybrett 3y ago
  the problems people have with crypto does not include 'decentralization'
- ilaksh 3y ago
  I think what you are trying to get into is decentralized technologies.
- rabf 3y ago
  https://help.odysee.tv/category-basics/whatisodysee/ https://help.odysee.tv/category-basics/whatisodysee/
- alex_lav 3y ago
  When you desperately want your hammer to be valid and worthwhile, everything becomes a nail.
sheepscreek 3y ago
I am a paying YT Premium customer and am honestly deeply frustrated by their child proofing controls. The worst is having a “Guest” mode on the TV app that you can’t turn off. It lets anybody completely bypass all restrictions. There is an open ticket on this dating back many years. Their best response to date has been ~ “it can’t be done - will share feedback with the team.” The sudden interest/surge in custom YT frontends has inspired me to build a custom TV app with tighter controls. Does anyone know how they work? Are they using YouTube private API directly, or running a full blown shadow browser and siphoning data into the custom front-end? Update: edited for clarity
- ruune 3y ago
  Web scraping [0] and grabbing the googlevideo stream from there [1], at least in the case of invidious [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invidious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invidious [1] https://docs.invidious.io/faq/#q-what-data-is-shared-with-youtube https://docs.invidious.io/faq/#q-what-data-is-shared-with-yo...
  - anonym29 3y ago
    Piped uses a proxy server so that no direct connection is made between the client and Google's servers, for added privacy from Google.
- tym0 3y ago
  I use LibreTube[0] on my phone which is a client for Piped so you can probably make your TV App a client as well so you don't have to do the scraping yourself. [0] https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube
- doodlesdev 3y ago
  You could start by taking a look at the base library that powers NewPipe and Piped called NewPipe Extractor [0][1]. It can extract the information you need from YouTube without using the API, I believe that includes access to the video streams themselves. Otherwise you could try and use Invidious through the developer API [2] although I must admit I have zero idea how good it is. [0]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor [1]: https://teamnewpipe.github.io/documentation/ https://teamnewpipe.github.io/documentation/ [2]: https://docs.invidious.io/api/ https://docs.invidious.io/api/
boesboes 3y ago
Since they have started blocking invidious instances, I've switched to the Freetube app as a YT client. Work great imo & no dependence on external services/hosts. Hopefully they are not plannign on enforcing WEI soon..
JacobSeated 3y ago
The privacy argument is extremely important, also in regards to avoiding tracking via ads, but I do not think bypassing or blocking ads is the way forward. In the free democratic world, we really should aim to do better than this, and instead try to actually develop privacy respecting alternatives that is not going to undermine the internet, further empower the big players, or hurt website owners unnecessarily – including Google/YouTube. The obvious problem with such tools is that it may allow bypassing YouTube's ad-wall, and as a website owner I can see why that is problematic. It is bad enough that local GDPR interpretations can practically prevent website owners from monetizing their websites via interest based ads. For YouTube it probably does not matter as much it would to smaller sites and bloggers, but it is still a violation of their TOS. So, if you want ad-free, consider simply paying. Besides, I am personally not too worried what Google might be using my data for. Thankfully, Google is owned by a US-based company – I would be more worried if the company was placed in China, Russia, or any other country that does not care about freedom rights at all. Of course, there is always the risk of data-leaks, and that's a valid point – but then why do we tolerate that the government has data on us!? That's even worse than a company tracking us!!
- cubefox 3y ago
  Blocking ads is also a perfect example of a Kantian non-universalizable maxim.
  - MediumOwl 3y ago
    I don't think Kant, or any reasonable philosopher, would consider blocking ads a moral dilemma, which is the precondition of a maxim.
    - cubefox 3y ago
      A moral dilemma is not a precondition of a maxim.
    - travoc 3y ago
      Blocking harmful, manipulative, inappropriate advertisements on my childrens' (supervised) use of YouTube is the most moral thing I can do today.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
If this is too off-topic please just ignore it (and don't DV). I want to embed YT videos on a website, but we would like them to be as private as possible. For example, DDG has a player which shields the watcher from YT's data hoovering. Any suggestions? Perhaps the search terms I'm using are wrong?
- acdha 3y ago
  In that situation I’d favor self-hosting - it’s easy, friendlier for users, and unless you’re getting a huge amount of traffic not very expensive. Swimming upstream against YouTube’s business model is just locking in time spent worrying about what you missed.
- rozenglass 3y ago
  You can embed videos from an Invidious instance instead; on a video's page[1] there's an "embed video" link[2] you can use. The instance can be one hosted by you if you don't trust public ones, and you probably want to enable proxying by default if you don't want your clients to stream the video directly from Google's servers. You can also use a browser extension like libredirect[3] to automatically replace YouTube embeds with Invidious ones while browsing the web. [1]: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=xzTH_ZqaFKI https://yewtu.be/watch?v=xzTH_ZqaFKI [2]: https://yewtu.be/embed/xzTH_ZqaFKI https://yewtu.be/embed/xzTH_ZqaFKI [3]: https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension
- bluGill 3y ago
  Peertube lets you host them yourself.
- kavin1337 3y ago
  Hi, you can embed it using simple HTML! For example, you can try this: <iframe src="https://piped.video/embed/jNQXAC9IVRw https://piped.video/embed/jNQXAC9IVRw" />
mikece 3y ago
With a name like "Piped" I wonder if it's related to the NewPipe app, one of my favorite apps on Graphene OS and something that I really wish existed on iOS.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Both are simply related to "tube" without having to use a word that would make them target of the youtube trademark holder.
- cyber24 3y ago
  Piped is indeed 'related' to NewPipe: Both NewPipe and Piped use "NewPipe Extractor" to extract Video information (AFAIK including stream data) from streaming sites like YouTube. I believe the main difference is that NewPipe is an Android App frontend and Piped is a web frontend with the Extractor library as a core dependency. Which makes the NewPipe Extractor library a great starting point for building more, different frontend applications. Disclaimer: I'm no expert and this is an oversimplified explanation.
- nwsm 3y ago
  At first glance I thought this would be an article about corporate HR's "Performance Improvement Plans"
ilaksh 3y ago
How long until YouTube figures out how to block all of this stuff like Piped and Invidious etc.? I feel like a better answer would be alternative platforms.
- eek2121 3y ago
  impossible without also blocking end users or requiring premium. even if they required a login, the video can be scraped. They have been working towards requiring chrome, but that won’t work unless they close source it and lock down developer tools and apis, which would be a death sentence for chrome.
- Gareth321 3y ago
  It would mean blocking the billions of embedded YouTube videos scattered across the world in websites and emails and apps. It would be a catastrophic own-goal. That said, there are still many ways for them to enshittify their service. I worry that in the next few years they’re going to start splicing ads mid-stream. That’s much harder to block.
- atentaten 3y ago
  When WEI rolls out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity reply
- dceddia 3y ago
  The unfortunate answer is that it’s coming, and in the form of the Web Environment Integrity API, aka device attestation. If/when they manage to deploy this to enough devices, they will be able to restrict viewing to only allow ”blessed” clients. It needs hardware-level support, and that has been rolling out for maybe 10+ years now in the form of TPM modules and such. The future they’re aiming for is that unless you’re using an approved (unmodified) browser on an approved (unmodified) device, you get nothing. It would basically turn large swaths of the internet into a walled garden overnight.
  - treyd 3y ago
    I don't know how much sway it has in this but didn't the W3C signal opposition to the WEI effort? And it's possible the antitrust lawsuits will have more influence on their audacity in this matter.
wppick 3y ago
I find that YouTubes recommendation algorithm is not great. It would be a cool feature to be able to something like assume a persona and have recommended videos that similar like minded people watched. There's effectively infinite videos on YouTube but it's common I can go there looking for a video and find nothing interesting to watch. In some cases it's pushing recommendations for videos all similar to a recent video I had watched, but I'm no longer interested in that topic
- judge2020 3y ago
  > In some cases it's pushing recommendations for videos all similar to a recent video I had watched, but I'm no longer interested in that topic If it has already showed you your organic recommendations multiple times before, it knows it needs to grab onto something new to try to get you to watching. Since you watched that recent video, that's the best chance it has of getting you to click anything since you've shown direct interest in it. You can click 'not interested' on these and it's pretty good at following that instruction, at least unless your next video is another video similar to it.
- chipsrafferty 3y ago
  I have started to click "don't recommend this channel" quite a bit on YouTube shorts and I am finding it is recommending me more channels like the one that I just said I would never like to see again...
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Skip that button and use BlockTube to blacklist channels instead.
  - xemdetia 3y ago
    My favourite is when you did click don't recommend channel it sometimes still comes back after a year or two like a bad relationship on Facebook. I try and maintain a few browsers with different recommendations streams and it's always wild when I have a new PC and I get some really toxic recommendations.
  - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cbuq 3y ago
Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS? As much as I don't like ads as the next person, my Google account is one thing I don't want to risk. Anybody hear of this happening or think it's a possibility down the road?
- sampli 3y ago
  How would your Google account be linked to piped usage?
- mkhopper 3y ago
  I use the SmartTube frontend on my TV and do not have it linked to my Google account for exactly this reason. I just leave it set as the default user. Yes, it's a bit of a pain if I find a channel that I would like to subscribe to, that I need to do it twice (once on the TV, once in YT on my phone), but that's a very hurdle.
- WhyNotHugo 3y ago
  > Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS? It's probably a grey area. It's hard to claim that I'm acting against YouTube's TOS by using Piped. Aside from the fact that I haven't agreed to them, I'm also not interacting with YouTube. As for the devs: they're merely writing a proxy. I'm sure some creative lawyer can find a way to portrait this as illegal, but it's likely a stretch.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  The game is rigged, so you should stop caring about the rules. Also, don't associate your google account with your youtube usage. Problem solved.
- avg_dev 3y ago
  This is my question too. If I am going to risk my Google Account getting banned, there is no way I want to try something like this. If it is actually explicitly allowed, then sure I will use it.
  - elashri 3y ago
WhyNotHugo 3y ago
Invidious is also a great frontend. From what I can tell, a lot lighter an simpler. From what I can tell, Piped also uses a custom fonts to render controls(?), so it doesn't work well with remote fonts disabled. My go-to instance is: https://yewtu.be/ https://yewtu.be/ Occasionally it might be down, but it's easy to find others.
- unixfox 3y ago
  Piped also require JavaScript.
Zod666 3y ago
I want a frontend where I control suggestions. If I'm watching something where I want more of that topic, I would then click 'suggest more like this' if I don't and it's just some stupid one-off video it won't suggest similar going forward. Do any alt-frontends have that functionality?
gorenb 3y ago
how many youtube alternative frontends are there?
- e2le 3y ago
  A few. https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube
parski 3y ago
Only Docker, again.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
JaneLovesDotNet 3y ago
I must be in the minority here, but I feel YouTube provides enough value that it's worth paying for to get rid of ads.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jeanl 3y ago
I tried a few of the servers, the pages load very quickly, search is fast etc. But when I click on the play arrow, a long time elapsed before the video starts. Is this expected? (is this because ads are being skipped in the background)?
component 3y ago
I recently learned about Piped - liked it so much that I've made an iOS shortcut [1] that replaces YouTube URLs with piped.video edit: iCloud link [1] https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d8ee1ef618da423e889272f9c0f4a6a0 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d8ee1ef618da423e889272f9c0f...
dang 3y ago
Related: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37881771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37881771 - Oct 2023 (128 comments) Tell HN: Cloudflare Is Blocking Piped - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33667236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33667236 - Nov 2022 (120 comments) LibreTube: Alternative YouTube front end for Android built with Piped - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746420 - March 2022 (46 comments) Piped: A privacy-friendly YouTube front end which is efficient by design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27869188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27869188 - July 2021 (230 comments)

315 points by e2le 3y ago

I don't understand how piped can be at the same time - legal - not use YT APIs - ad-free can someone help me understand how this works?

syuw32heje44 3y ago

[flagged]

huntears 3y ago

That is the FOSS front end I use for yt and it has been ultra stable I highly recommend it :)

based_gigachad2 3y ago

Also check out a FOSS Android app LibreTube[1]. No ads, SponsorBlock, ReturnYouTubeDislike, can proxy all the videos through a Piped instance, subscription sync with a Piped account, offline and online playlists are supported [1]: https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube

k4rli 3y ago
NewPipe+Sponsorblock is also nice. No logins.
- based_gigachad2 3y ago
  You can use LibreTube without a Piped account as well - the subscriptions will be saved locally
- FireInsight 3y ago
  What's different is that NewPipe connects to YouTube servers directy while LibreTube doesn't. Also, LT has MD3.
  - nbittich 3y ago
    How do you get a YouTube video without connecting to YouTube?
    - flexagoon 3y ago
      Through Piped, which proxies all requests through it's server

CalRobert 3y ago

How will tools like this persist after Google enforces WEI for people using youtube?

gray_-_wolf 3y ago
> How will tools like this persist They will not, that is the whole point of WEI.
dotancohen 3y ago
They won't. That's the point.
infinityio 3y ago
Likely by means of reverse-engineered APIs from smart TVs (or similar) with limited capability to provide integrity, although I'm sure there are steps Google can take to make that harder
rekoil 3y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but what is "WEI"?
- crtasm 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
crtasm 3y ago
Considering how many viewers they have using televisions/set top boxes/streaming usb sticks that will never get an update, do you see that happening any time soon?
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  These won't be supported forever
  - 3y ago

scosman 3y ago

Invidious is a good piped alternative for those starting to look at this space: https://invidious.io/ https://invidious.io/ Yattee is a good front end app for both piped and invidious for Apple TV (and iOS and macOS but I prefer the browser on those platforms)

edelans 3y ago
I have troubles understanding what's the value added by Yattee if it's only a "front end", while piped already claims it's a front end for YT. Can you help me get a clearer understanding ? I'm interested in ditching YT in favor of a privacy friendly / ad-free alternative.
- bashZorina_09 3y ago
  Yattee aims to fit more in line as a native Apple subscription organizer and player application suite, with native window controls and tighter integrations, but it's mostly up to you to decide how'd you like your setup to be. Ideally, you could self host only the Piped framework and connect this to Yattee without hosting the WebUI frontend, but without the latter, you cannot create a user for yourself to store subscriptions, and using the provided AIO Docker Images is overkill for self hosting as you are required to purchase and point to DNS records for this system (mostly to the benefit of publically hosting an instance of Piped). Invidious is more suited for this regard, but has issues with parsing some videos and their metadata (usually new uploads for a week, Vevo Music Videos etc.)
pvg 3y ago
Invidious had its own big thread yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37900458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37900458

jollyllama 3y ago

Every time I try to go to a Piped instance, it fails to load the video. Updates/quotas are even worse than Nitter instances, I think.

cornfutes 3y ago

I was just thinking yesterday that there needs to be a 3rd party tool that reintroduces the thumbs down button.

stronglikedan 3y ago
There is, at least on browsers. I use the Return YouTube Dislike extension on Chrome.
- bl4kers 3y ago
  https://returnyoutubedislike.com/install https://returnyoutubedislike.com/install
vxNsr 3y ago
there are a few projects that do this, but it doesn't really matter... not enough people use any single one and most new videos will never really show accurate info

yard2010 3y ago

I have to say that the crypto space is doomed and nobody cares about decentralization, but the technology behind it enables doing exactly this: 1 backend and many different clients. IMO this is the future - breaking monopolies with separation of powers a la John Locke

mariusor 3y ago
How is this related to crypto currencies in any way? Any web API can allow multiple clients so I'm a bit lost at why you're so excited about this.
themoonisachees 3y ago
People care about decentralization, they don't care about projects that are thinly veiled attempts at extracting money from them under the promise of decentralization
- FireInsight 3y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but "people care about decentralization" is very debatable IMO. Most people don't care, they just want the content.
sleepybrett 3y ago
the problems people have with crypto does not include 'decentralization'
ilaksh 3y ago
I think what you are trying to get into is decentralized technologies.
rabf 3y ago
https://help.odysee.tv/category-basics/whatisodysee/ https://help.odysee.tv/category-basics/whatisodysee/
alex_lav 3y ago
When you desperately want your hammer to be valid and worthwhile, everything becomes a nail.

sheepscreek 3y ago

I am a paying YT Premium customer and am honestly deeply frustrated by their child proofing controls. The worst is having a “Guest” mode on the TV app that you can’t turn off. It lets anybody completely bypass all restrictions. There is an open ticket on this dating back many years. Their best response to date has been ~ “it can’t be done - will share feedback with the team.” The sudden interest/surge in custom YT frontends has inspired me to build a custom TV app with tighter controls. Does anyone know how they work? Are they using YouTube private API directly, or running a full blown shadow browser and siphoning data into the custom front-end? Update: edited for clarity

ruune 3y ago
Web scraping [0] and grabbing the googlevideo stream from there [1], at least in the case of invidious [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invidious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invidious [1] https://docs.invidious.io/faq/#q-what-data-is-shared-with-youtube https://docs.invidious.io/faq/#q-what-data-is-shared-with-yo...
- anonym29 3y ago
  Piped uses a proxy server so that no direct connection is made between the client and Google's servers, for added privacy from Google.
tym0 3y ago
I use LibreTube[0] on my phone which is a client for Piped so you can probably make your TV App a client as well so you don't have to do the scraping yourself. [0] https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube
doodlesdev 3y ago
You could start by taking a look at the base library that powers NewPipe and Piped called NewPipe Extractor [0][1]. It can extract the information you need from YouTube without using the API, I believe that includes access to the video streams themselves. Otherwise you could try and use Invidious through the developer API [2] although I must admit I have zero idea how good it is. [0]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor [1]: https://teamnewpipe.github.io/documentation/ https://teamnewpipe.github.io/documentation/ [2]: https://docs.invidious.io/api/ https://docs.invidious.io/api/

boesboes 3y ago

Since they have started blocking invidious instances, I've switched to the Freetube app as a YT client. Work great imo & no dependence on external services/hosts. Hopefully they are not plannign on enforcing WEI soon..

JacobSeated 3y ago

The privacy argument is extremely important, also in regards to avoiding tracking via ads, but I do not think bypassing or blocking ads is the way forward. In the free democratic world, we really should aim to do better than this, and instead try to actually develop privacy respecting alternatives that is not going to undermine the internet, further empower the big players, or hurt website owners unnecessarily – including Google/YouTube. The obvious problem with such tools is that it may allow bypassing YouTube's ad-wall, and as a website owner I can see why that is problematic. It is bad enough that local GDPR interpretations can practically prevent website owners from monetizing their websites via interest based ads. For YouTube it probably does not matter as much it would to smaller sites and bloggers, but it is still a violation of their TOS. So, if you want ad-free, consider simply paying. Besides, I am personally not too worried what Google might be using my data for. Thankfully, Google is owned by a US-based company – I would be more worried if the company was placed in China, Russia, or any other country that does not care about freedom rights at all. Of course, there is always the risk of data-leaks, and that's a valid point – but then why do we tolerate that the government has data on us!? That's even worse than a company tracking us!!

cubefox 3y ago
Blocking ads is also a perfect example of a Kantian non-universalizable maxim.
- MediumOwl 3y ago
  I don't think Kant, or any reasonable philosopher, would consider blocking ads a moral dilemma, which is the precondition of a maxim.
  - cubefox 3y ago
    A moral dilemma is not a precondition of a maxim.
  - travoc 3y ago
    Blocking harmful, manipulative, inappropriate advertisements on my childrens' (supervised) use of YouTube is the most moral thing I can do today.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

If this is too off-topic please just ignore it (and don't DV). I want to embed YT videos on a website, but we would like them to be as private as possible. For example, DDG has a player which shields the watcher from YT's data hoovering. Any suggestions? Perhaps the search terms I'm using are wrong?

acdha 3y ago
In that situation I’d favor self-hosting - it’s easy, friendlier for users, and unless you’re getting a huge amount of traffic not very expensive. Swimming upstream against YouTube’s business model is just locking in time spent worrying about what you missed.
rozenglass 3y ago
You can embed videos from an Invidious instance instead; on a video's page[1] there's an "embed video" link[2] you can use. The instance can be one hosted by you if you don't trust public ones, and you probably want to enable proxying by default if you don't want your clients to stream the video directly from Google's servers. You can also use a browser extension like libredirect[3] to automatically replace YouTube embeds with Invidious ones while browsing the web. [1]: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=xzTH_ZqaFKI https://yewtu.be/watch?v=xzTH_ZqaFKI [2]: https://yewtu.be/embed/xzTH_ZqaFKI https://yewtu.be/embed/xzTH_ZqaFKI [3]: https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension https://github.com/libredirect/browser_extension
bluGill 3y ago
Peertube lets you host them yourself.
kavin1337 3y ago
Hi, you can embed it using simple HTML! For example, you can try this: <iframe src="https://piped.video/embed/jNQXAC9IVRw https://piped.video/embed/jNQXAC9IVRw" />

mikece 3y ago

With a name like "Piped" I wonder if it's related to the NewPipe app, one of my favorite apps on Graphene OS and something that I really wish existed on iOS.

prmoustache 3y ago
Both are simply related to "tube" without having to use a word that would make them target of the youtube trademark holder.
cyber24 3y ago
Piped is indeed 'related' to NewPipe: Both NewPipe and Piped use "NewPipe Extractor" to extract Video information (AFAIK including stream data) from streaming sites like YouTube. I believe the main difference is that NewPipe is an Android App frontend and Piped is a web frontend with the Extractor library as a core dependency. Which makes the NewPipe Extractor library a great starting point for building more, different frontend applications. Disclaimer: I'm no expert and this is an oversimplified explanation.
nwsm 3y ago
At first glance I thought this would be an article about corporate HR's "Performance Improvement Plans"

ilaksh 3y ago

How long until YouTube figures out how to block all of this stuff like Piped and Invidious etc.? I feel like a better answer would be alternative platforms.

eek2121 3y ago
impossible without also blocking end users or requiring premium. even if they required a login, the video can be scraped. They have been working towards requiring chrome, but that won’t work unless they close source it and lock down developer tools and apis, which would be a death sentence for chrome.
Gareth321 3y ago
It would mean blocking the billions of embedded YouTube videos scattered across the world in websites and emails and apps. It would be a catastrophic own-goal. That said, there are still many ways for them to enshittify their service. I worry that in the next few years they’re going to start splicing ads mid-stream. That’s much harder to block.
atentaten 3y ago
When WEI rolls out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity reply
dceddia 3y ago
The unfortunate answer is that it’s coming, and in the form of the Web Environment Integrity API, aka device attestation. If/when they manage to deploy this to enough devices, they will be able to restrict viewing to only allow ”blessed” clients. It needs hardware-level support, and that has been rolling out for maybe 10+ years now in the form of TPM modules and such. The future they’re aiming for is that unless you’re using an approved (unmodified) browser on an approved (unmodified) device, you get nothing. It would basically turn large swaths of the internet into a walled garden overnight.
- treyd 3y ago
  I don't know how much sway it has in this but didn't the W3C signal opposition to the WEI effort? And it's possible the antitrust lawsuits will have more influence on their audacity in this matter.

wppick 3y ago

I find that YouTubes recommendation algorithm is not great. It would be a cool feature to be able to something like assume a persona and have recommended videos that similar like minded people watched. There's effectively infinite videos on YouTube but it's common I can go there looking for a video and find nothing interesting to watch. In some cases it's pushing recommendations for videos all similar to a recent video I had watched, but I'm no longer interested in that topic

judge2020 3y ago
> In some cases it's pushing recommendations for videos all similar to a recent video I had watched, but I'm no longer interested in that topic If it has already showed you your organic recommendations multiple times before, it knows it needs to grab onto something new to try to get you to watching. Since you watched that recent video, that's the best chance it has of getting you to click anything since you've shown direct interest in it. You can click 'not interested' on these and it's pretty good at following that instruction, at least unless your next video is another video similar to it.
chipsrafferty 3y ago
I have started to click "don't recommend this channel" quite a bit on YouTube shorts and I am finding it is recommending me more channels like the one that I just said I would never like to see again...
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Skip that button and use BlockTube to blacklist channels instead.
- xemdetia 3y ago
  My favourite is when you did click don't recommend channel it sometimes still comes back after a year or two like a bad relationship on Facebook. I try and maintain a few browsers with different recommendations streams and it's always wild when I have a new PC and I get some really toxic recommendations.
- 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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cbuq 3y ago

Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS? As much as I don't like ads as the next person, my Google account is one thing I don't want to risk. Anybody hear of this happening or think it's a possibility down the road?

sampli 3y ago
How would your Google account be linked to piped usage?
mkhopper 3y ago
I use the SmartTube frontend on my TV and do not have it linked to my Google account for exactly this reason. I just leave it set as the default user. Yes, it's a bit of a pain if I find a channel that I would like to subscribe to, that I need to do it twice (once on the TV, once in YT on my phone), but that's a very hurdle.
WhyNotHugo 3y ago
> Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS? It's probably a grey area. It's hard to claim that I'm acting against YouTube's TOS by using Piped. Aside from the fact that I haven't agreed to them, I'm also not interacting with YouTube. As for the devs: they're merely writing a proxy. I'm sure some creative lawyer can find a way to portrait this as illegal, but it's likely a stretch.
mcpackieh 3y ago
The game is rigged, so you should stop caring about the rules. Also, don't associate your google account with your youtube usage. Problem solved.
avg_dev 3y ago
This is my question too. If I am going to risk my Google Account getting banned, there is no way I want to try something like this. If it is actually explicitly allowed, then sure I will use it.
- elashri 3y ago

WhyNotHugo 3y ago

Invidious is also a great frontend. From what I can tell, a lot lighter an simpler. From what I can tell, Piped also uses a custom fonts to render controls(?), so it doesn't work well with remote fonts disabled. My go-to instance is: https://yewtu.be/ https://yewtu.be/ Occasionally it might be down, but it's easy to find others.

unixfox 3y ago
Piped also require JavaScript.

Zod666 3y ago

I want a frontend where I control suggestions. If I'm watching something where I want more of that topic, I would then click 'suggest more like this' if I don't and it's just some stupid one-off video it won't suggest similar going forward. Do any alt-frontends have that functionality?

gorenb 3y ago

how many youtube alternative frontends are there?

e2le 3y ago
A few. https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends#youtube

parski 3y ago

Only Docker, again.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

JaneLovesDotNet 3y ago

I must be in the minority here, but I feel YouTube provides enough value that it's worth paying for to get rid of ads.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jeanl 3y ago

I tried a few of the servers, the pages load very quickly, search is fast etc. But when I click on the play arrow, a long time elapsed before the video starts. Is this expected? (is this because ads are being skipped in the background)?

component 3y ago

I recently learned about Piped - liked it so much that I've made an iOS shortcut [1] that replaces YouTube URLs with piped.video edit: iCloud link [1] https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d8ee1ef618da423e889272f9c0f4a6a0 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d8ee1ef618da423e889272f9c0f...

dang 3y ago

Related: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37881771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37881771 - Oct 2023 (128 comments) Tell HN: Cloudflare Is Blocking Piped - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33667236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33667236 - Nov 2022 (120 comments) LibreTube: Alternative YouTube front end for Android built with Piped - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30746420 - March 2022 (46 comments) Piped: A privacy-friendly YouTube front end which is efficient by design - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27869188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27869188 - July 2021 (230 comments)