7 ms·

How Google fights Invidious (a privacy YouTube Front end)

106 points by morenatron 3y ago

morenatron 3y ago
As of yesterday March 30, Google has apparently made some major changes to how it authenticates devices for Youtube and thus broke thousands of Invidious instances that were happily used as a daily driver by thousands of privacy enthusiasts including me. Having Invidious (currently) broken makes me wonder where the cat and mouse wars of big tech and privacy devs are headed to
- sitkack 3y ago
  Yep. yt-dlp and youtube-dl https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl Will also start to feel the impact. My theory is that we will see a bunch of new video hosting sites as youtube itself attempts to lock down its ecosystem. They haven't paid attention in any adversarial way as far as I can tell. When they do, it wont be great.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    Wonder if it's DRM system as per the DMCA now? If so, that could signal the start of the end for yt-dlp and similar. Or at least for their hosting on public GitHub and similar places.
  - chii 3y ago
    > see a bunch of new video hosting sites i doubt that. The business of hosting video is not the hosting itself. It's the ad-driven revenue you can derive, which requires eyeballs first. Youtube's eyeball count is through the roof compared to any new video hosting site. Content creators will not switch off youtube, unless their revenue from this new site is sufficient compared to what they could've gotten from youtube (or they mirror it - in which case, why would anyone go to this new site?).
    - graemep 3y ago
      A lot of the costs scale with the number of eyeballs. "Content creators will not switch off youtube, unless their revenue from this new site is sufficient compared to what they could've gotten from youtube (or they mirror it - in which case, why would anyone go to this new site?). " There are alternatives (e.g. Nebula) and a lot of creators like them and do post their content on them to get a higher revenue share. Youtube is squeezing a lot of them. You tube is also a pretty crap user experience too. There are also people whose videos are primarily not being found through Youtube, and those are not looking for ad revenues. There are also other business models than a revenue share from Youtube.
      - chii 3y ago
        i mean, i would like them all to try. God knows youtube needs some competition. it's unfortunate that i have not seen much success so far. The competition that youtube gets is from tiktok, not clones of youtube.
        graemep 3y ago
        I think there is little chance of it changing fast. There is hope of it changing slowly. But, really, it is just part of the centralised internet we now have.
      - jasode 3y ago
        >There are alternatives (e.g. Nebula) and a lot of creators like them and do post their content on them to get a higher revenue share. Yes but... (1) Nebula "success" is partially owed to Nebula creators building up audiences on Youtube. And (2) being on Nebula requires an invitation from that platform to join. You can't just be a random unknown. In contrast, you can be an new unknown creator and start uploading videos to Youtube. Then later, if you're big enough and the quality meets Nebula's standards, they may ask you to join.[1] Those 2 reasons keep it from being a true "alternative" to Youtube. Nebula is more of an extension platform for the portion of audiences that want to pay extra for longer-form videos of their favorite Youtube creators that happen to be on Nebula. There are also lots of high-quality Youtube creators (e.g. DIY repair tutorials, etc) who are not on Nebula because it doesn't fit Nebula's "documentary" type of content. [1] Nebula CEO: >If somebody comes to me and says, “Hey, I’m friends with the creator of this channel and they do really good stuff. I think they would be a good fit,” I will take the call. If I get a cold email from a YouTuber saying, “Hey, I have 100,000 subscribers and I want to be on Nebula,” I don’t reply. : https://www.theverge.com/23076663/nebula-youtube-creator-business-future-startup-ceo-dave-wiskus#:~:text=You%20could%20add%20another%20160%20people%20to%20Nebula.%20You%20have%20to%20assume%20they%20are%20going%20to%20bring%20subscribers%20with%20them%2C%20right%3F%20How%20do%20you%20make%20the%20decision%20to%20sign%20up%20that%20161st%20creator%3F https://www.theverge.com/23076663/nebula-youtube-creator-bus...
  - poetril 3y ago
    Many of the creators I follow upload first, or alongside nebula. I’ve been using it to try and reduce my YouTube watch time with great success.
    - crtasm 3y ago
      What's nebula's setup like for accessing content? e.g. can a paid subscriber get a RSS feed(s) with direct URLs to download the videos?
      - YoshiRulz 3y ago
        While Firefox doesn't surface them anymore, I checked the page source and there are indeed per-channel feeds. They don't have direct video URLs, but yt-dlp claims to support Nebula, so you may be able to automate it.
      - magnetowasright 3y ago
        They have rss feeds[0] but it looks like it's more for notifications of new content or creators rather than direct downloads for the videos/podcasts. I don't think they'd implement something like direct downloads but idk. ETA: Accessing content on nebula, I have my feed of videos from the creators to which I subscribe and I select videos to watch from there. It's basic but as someone who never got into watching youtube (I bookmarked channels on invidious instances and looked for new videos there) it's pretty good. They're also open to feature requests and are improving the site. [0] https://blog.nebula.tv/rss-feed/ https://blog.nebula.tv/rss-feed/
        anticensor 2y ago
        Nebula does not have comments though, it is more like a creator managed Netflix.
  - blackoil 3y ago
    Who will pay for them?
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
    Retrieving JSON with yt-dlp's chosen "Android" headers no longer works but it is still possible to retrieve JSON with "iOS" headers.
HlessClaudesman 3y ago
YouTube was one of the jewels of the internet. Now that Google is furiously yanking it's teats, YouTube has become just another "fuck you, pay me" ad infested hellscape. Video distribution is ripe for disruption.
- cjk2 3y ago
  Yes (this sentence was sponsored by NordVPN), that.
- Valodim 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "disruption" here. Offering video content at scale costs a lot of money, it's gotta come from somewhere. And the options are users directly (YouTube Premium), users indirectly (ads), product investment by a large company (old YouTube), or financial investment by VC. Pick your poison?
  - throwaway4good 3y ago
    TikTok could do it.
    - blackoil 3y ago
      By showing ads.
  - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
    Nevertheless there are a ton of very high quality, and seemingly successful, streamed-prerecorded pirate video sites these past few years, and One might assume their users be more adblocky than google's users. Oh and also porn sites I guess, and what's the advertising worth there vs on youtube
    - Valodim 3y ago
      Content rights are a big part of the cost, and criminal enterprises won't attract too many original content creators I'd wager.
vundercind 3y ago
The only responsible way to let kids use YouTube is through some kind of alternative front end, because YouTube won’t provide the simple control mechanism of an allowed channel/playlist/videos list. Be nice if they’d fix that before blocking off the only OK ways to use the thing. (Nobody else does either, can’t even have an allowed-apps list on Apple TV, it’s all-or-nothing with totally useless rating restrictions instead, this is the main thing parents need and nobody wants to provide it)
- pwillia7 3y ago
  I think NVIDIA shield android TV has more options for parental controls, but I don't use them so can't say for sure.
  - vundercind 3y ago
    Yeah, had one but it was glitchy/crashy and several codec combos for Jellyfin were messed up (supported by hardware, but buggy) so I ended up back with Apple, which is how things usually go. A quick search reads like you need third party launchers to block/allow specific apps, anyway. Seems like asking for even more jankiness, but at least it’s an option.
- em-bee 3y ago
  which app are you using now? is there any that support such a list? i could see a possibility to add such a feature to eg freetube
  - vundercind 3y ago
    Some yt-dlp script with tons of features that adds full metadata and is smart enough not to re-download things. Have its output in Jellyfin, displaying as year-season-names tv shows, a show per channel or playlist. I would love an allowlist proxy-site (like invidious) that I could redirect most YouTube requests in my house to, but I’ve not seen any that support that.
    - 3y ago
k8svet 3y ago
NewPipe seems unaffected. Quite interesting.
no_time 3y ago
All of these projects are on borrowed time. The fact that we have them at all right now is a testament to how good we have it in IT as a whole. Market conditions being so good that I can piss away terabytes of their bandwidth with Newpipe et al and it doesn't worth dedicating one engineer to deploy safetynet on the Android&ios endpoints, and perhaps Widevine on the desktop ones. It will be a real "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" moment when this inevitably happens. Since I won't give them any money out of principle, that will be the end of my days of watching YT.
- racked 3y ago
  Widevine video encryption really kicked my ass the other day. It's supposed to be bypassable but I've yet to find a practical option that doesn't require hours of fiddling.
  - ShowalkKama 3y ago
    you can use https://cdm-project.com/Android-Tools/dumper-diazole.git https://cdm-project.com/Android-Tools/dumper-diazole.git it uses frida to make dumping l3 keys really easy (start frida, run the script, open firefox, visit a test DRM page, profit??)
    - lern_too_spel 3y ago
      If you're happy with 480p.
hivacruz 3y ago
As an alternative YouTube Front-end, there is also Piped[0][1] [0]: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped [1]: https://piped.video https://piped.video
Nifty3929 3y ago
I'd love to see some thoughts and ideas about how to pay content producers while still maintaining control and privacy. The current solutions like invidious don't offer that. Youtube's value is much more as a payment vehicle than anything else. Is there a different type of front-end that could be built which still maintains ads or allows you to login to Youtube Premium, but which still gives you control over all the other stuff?
- hinkley 3y ago
  In the old days, you’d put ads in a section of the newspaper based on an expected demographic affinity. Or in certain TV shows. This could be a situation where Nielsen could be the good guy. Let’s use the information we already collected over the last two decades, and information from volunteers to audit those numbers and assign shopping patterns to subject matters and interests instead of individuals. Maybe then I’ll stop getting ads for very expensive, buy-once a-decade items for months after I just bought one. You’d be so much better off advertising accessories to me. Those I will buy and while your ad agency still works for you.
- dvngnt_ 3y ago
  i use pateron
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - TheBozzCL 3y ago
    If Google ever fully blocks alternate clients, I'm gonna have to cancel all my Patreon memberships and I'll make damn sure they know why. I mean, my subscription's not gonna be worth that much to them, but it's still more than they would earn from me watching ads. Fuck the ad industry.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Quite a few content creators have reached for some combination of tools like Patron and paid private memberships. Pre-roll and mid-roll ads are also getting more common in both YouTube and podcast content as well. I think one tricky thing is reach, YouTube promises a huge potential audience that you don't get syndicating your own RSS feed and residuals don't usually exist for pre/mid-roll ads like they do for YouTube (if you get much longterm growth).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
saurik 3y ago
Right after reading this thread, I happened to open YouTube and got a notification today about a price increase on YouTube Red from $12.99 to $18.99.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  Well cracking down on piracy isn't free, its both a reason to increase prices and a good PR story to tell when deciding to increase prices.
TheBozzCL 3y ago
BTW, I don't understand the workaround: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/pull/4552/files https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/pull/4552/files Which was taken from here: https://github.com/LuanRT/YouTube.js/pull/624 https://github.com/LuanRT/YouTube.js/pull/624 Could anybody explain it to me?
2devnull 3y ago
I’m finding twitter (now x) is rapidly replacing YouTube in direct proportion to YouTube’s increasing suckifucation. At least for new content. Mostly I use YouTube for old content that is or should be in the public domain, and for music, mostly classical which I could get from the radio for free with almost no ads. I think society really needs something like Wikipedia for video.
- master-lincoln 2y ago
  I only use Youtube through my TV interface. X is not an alternative
lakomen 3y ago
Interesting, because vanced worked for a while longer on an old A52 Samsung than on my s10+ and the video was this fake video "this client is no longer supported, please upgrade". Google is holding humanity's cultural heritage hostage and ad-placing the shit out of it. I wouldn't mind 1 skippable pre-roll ad and the same post-roll. But not 2 and in-between and unskippable. And I'll do anything to block those ads. Google is at war with its users, viewers and creators alike.
neurostimulant 3y ago
Looks like YouTube revanced has been blocked as well (at least mine doesn't work anymore). all videos have been replaced with a video playing "not available on this app" over black background.
renegat0x0 2y ago
I am running my of YouTube front-end. Link: https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive Demo: https://renegat0x0.ddns.net/apps/catalog https://renegat0x0.ddns.net/apps/catalog Allows me to add channels, download individual videos, bookmark videos, etc. Uses iframe to display the video. I have no problems with viewing videos: - I use ff with adblock - videos are embedded using no-referrer-when-downgrade policy I have literally no ads. There are some drawbacks: - YouTube may change their policies, change embedding strategies - To have control over videos, you still have to manually download them

106 points by morenatron 3y ago

As of yesterday March 30, Google has apparently made some major changes to how it authenticates devices for Youtube and thus broke thousands of Invidious instances that were happily used as a daily driver by thousands of privacy enthusiasts including me. Having Invidious (currently) broken makes me wonder where the cat and mouse wars of big tech and privacy devs are headed to

sitkack 3y ago
Yep. yt-dlp and youtube-dl https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl Will also start to feel the impact. My theory is that we will see a bunch of new video hosting sites as youtube itself attempts to lock down its ecosystem. They haven't paid attention in any adversarial way as far as I can tell. When they do, it wont be great.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Wonder if it's DRM system as per the DMCA now? If so, that could signal the start of the end for yt-dlp and similar. Or at least for their hosting on public GitHub and similar places.
- chii 3y ago
  > see a bunch of new video hosting sites i doubt that. The business of hosting video is not the hosting itself. It's the ad-driven revenue you can derive, which requires eyeballs first. Youtube's eyeball count is through the roof compared to any new video hosting site. Content creators will not switch off youtube, unless their revenue from this new site is sufficient compared to what they could've gotten from youtube (or they mirror it - in which case, why would anyone go to this new site?).
  - graemep 3y ago
    A lot of the costs scale with the number of eyeballs. "Content creators will not switch off youtube, unless their revenue from this new site is sufficient compared to what they could've gotten from youtube (or they mirror it - in which case, why would anyone go to this new site?). " There are alternatives (e.g. Nebula) and a lot of creators like them and do post their content on them to get a higher revenue share. Youtube is squeezing a lot of them. You tube is also a pretty crap user experience too. There are also people whose videos are primarily not being found through Youtube, and those are not looking for ad revenues. There are also other business models than a revenue share from Youtube.
    - chii 3y ago
      i mean, i would like them all to try. God knows youtube needs some competition. it's unfortunate that i have not seen much success so far. The competition that youtube gets is from tiktok, not clones of youtube.
      - graemep 3y ago
        I think there is little chance of it changing fast. There is hope of it changing slowly. But, really, it is just part of the centralised internet we now have.
    - jasode 3y ago
      >There are alternatives (e.g. Nebula) and a lot of creators like them and do post their content on them to get a higher revenue share. Yes but... (1) Nebula "success" is partially owed to Nebula creators building up audiences on Youtube. And (2) being on Nebula requires an invitation from that platform to join. You can't just be a random unknown. In contrast, you can be an new unknown creator and start uploading videos to Youtube. Then later, if you're big enough and the quality meets Nebula's standards, they may ask you to join.[1] Those 2 reasons keep it from being a true "alternative" to Youtube. Nebula is more of an extension platform for the portion of audiences that want to pay extra for longer-form videos of their favorite Youtube creators that happen to be on Nebula. There are also lots of high-quality Youtube creators (e.g. DIY repair tutorials, etc) who are not on Nebula because it doesn't fit Nebula's "documentary" type of content. [1] Nebula CEO: >If somebody comes to me and says, “Hey, I’m friends with the creator of this channel and they do really good stuff. I think they would be a good fit,” I will take the call. If I get a cold email from a YouTuber saying, “Hey, I have 100,000 subscribers and I want to be on Nebula,” I don’t reply. : https://www.theverge.com/23076663/nebula-youtube-creator-business-future-startup-ceo-dave-wiskus#:~:text=You%20could%20add%20another%20160%20people%20to%20Nebula.%20You%20have%20to%20assume%20they%20are%20going%20to%20bring%20subscribers%20with%20them%2C%20right%3F%20How%20do%20you%20make%20the%20decision%20to%20sign%20up%20that%20161st%20creator%3F https://www.theverge.com/23076663/nebula-youtube-creator-bus...
- poetril 3y ago
  Many of the creators I follow upload first, or alongside nebula. I’ve been using it to try and reduce my YouTube watch time with great success.
  - crtasm 3y ago
    What's nebula's setup like for accessing content? e.g. can a paid subscriber get a RSS feed(s) with direct URLs to download the videos?
    - YoshiRulz 3y ago
      While Firefox doesn't surface them anymore, I checked the page source and there are indeed per-channel feeds. They don't have direct video URLs, but yt-dlp claims to support Nebula, so you may be able to automate it.
    - magnetowasright 3y ago
      They have rss feeds[0] but it looks like it's more for notifications of new content or creators rather than direct downloads for the videos/podcasts. I don't think they'd implement something like direct downloads but idk. ETA: Accessing content on nebula, I have my feed of videos from the creators to which I subscribe and I select videos to watch from there. It's basic but as someone who never got into watching youtube (I bookmarked channels on invidious instances and looked for new videos there) it's pretty good. They're also open to feature requests and are improving the site. [0] https://blog.nebula.tv/rss-feed/ https://blog.nebula.tv/rss-feed/
      - anticensor 2y ago
        Nebula does not have comments though, it is more like a creator managed Netflix.
- blackoil 3y ago
  Who will pay for them?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  Retrieving JSON with yt-dlp's chosen "Android" headers no longer works but it is still possible to retrieve JSON with "iOS" headers.

HlessClaudesman 3y ago

YouTube was one of the jewels of the internet. Now that Google is furiously yanking it's teats, YouTube has become just another "fuck you, pay me" ad infested hellscape. Video distribution is ripe for disruption.

cjk2 3y ago
Yes (this sentence was sponsored by NordVPN), that.
Valodim 3y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "disruption" here. Offering video content at scale costs a lot of money, it's gotta come from somewhere. And the options are users directly (YouTube Premium), users indirectly (ads), product investment by a large company (old YouTube), or financial investment by VC. Pick your poison?
- throwaway4good 3y ago
  TikTok could do it.
  - blackoil 3y ago
    By showing ads.
- xkcd-sucks 3y ago
  Nevertheless there are a ton of very high quality, and seemingly successful, streamed-prerecorded pirate video sites these past few years, and One might assume their users be more adblocky than google's users. Oh and also porn sites I guess, and what's the advertising worth there vs on youtube
  - Valodim 3y ago
    Content rights are a big part of the cost, and criminal enterprises won't attract too many original content creators I'd wager.

vundercind 3y ago

The only responsible way to let kids use YouTube is through some kind of alternative front end, because YouTube won’t provide the simple control mechanism of an allowed channel/playlist/videos list. Be nice if they’d fix that before blocking off the only OK ways to use the thing. (Nobody else does either, can’t even have an allowed-apps list on Apple TV, it’s all-or-nothing with totally useless rating restrictions instead, this is the main thing parents need and nobody wants to provide it)

pwillia7 3y ago
I think NVIDIA shield android TV has more options for parental controls, but I don't use them so can't say for sure.
- vundercind 3y ago
  Yeah, had one but it was glitchy/crashy and several codec combos for Jellyfin were messed up (supported by hardware, but buggy) so I ended up back with Apple, which is how things usually go. A quick search reads like you need third party launchers to block/allow specific apps, anyway. Seems like asking for even more jankiness, but at least it’s an option.
em-bee 3y ago
which app are you using now? is there any that support such a list? i could see a possibility to add such a feature to eg freetube
- vundercind 3y ago
  Some yt-dlp script with tons of features that adds full metadata and is smart enough not to re-download things. Have its output in Jellyfin, displaying as year-season-names tv shows, a show per channel or playlist. I would love an allowlist proxy-site (like invidious) that I could redirect most YouTube requests in my house to, but I’ve not seen any that support that.
  - 3y ago

k8svet 3y ago

NewPipe seems unaffected. Quite interesting.

no_time 3y ago

All of these projects are on borrowed time. The fact that we have them at all right now is a testament to how good we have it in IT as a whole. Market conditions being so good that I can piss away terabytes of their bandwidth with Newpipe et al and it doesn't worth dedicating one engineer to deploy safetynet on the Android&ios endpoints, and perhaps Widevine on the desktop ones. It will be a real "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" moment when this inevitably happens. Since I won't give them any money out of principle, that will be the end of my days of watching YT.

racked 3y ago
Widevine video encryption really kicked my ass the other day. It's supposed to be bypassable but I've yet to find a practical option that doesn't require hours of fiddling.
- ShowalkKama 3y ago
  you can use https://cdm-project.com/Android-Tools/dumper-diazole.git https://cdm-project.com/Android-Tools/dumper-diazole.git it uses frida to make dumping l3 keys really easy (start frida, run the script, open firefox, visit a test DRM page, profit??)
  - lern_too_spel 3y ago
    If you're happy with 480p.

hivacruz 3y ago

As an alternative YouTube Front-end, there is also Piped[0][1] [0]: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped [1]: https://piped.video https://piped.video

Nifty3929 3y ago

I'd love to see some thoughts and ideas about how to pay content producers while still maintaining control and privacy. The current solutions like invidious don't offer that. Youtube's value is much more as a payment vehicle than anything else. Is there a different type of front-end that could be built which still maintains ads or allows you to login to Youtube Premium, but which still gives you control over all the other stuff?

hinkley 3y ago
In the old days, you’d put ads in a section of the newspaper based on an expected demographic affinity. Or in certain TV shows. This could be a situation where Nielsen could be the good guy. Let’s use the information we already collected over the last two decades, and information from volunteers to audit those numbers and assign shopping patterns to subject matters and interests instead of individuals. Maybe then I’ll stop getting ads for very expensive, buy-once a-decade items for months after I just bought one. You’d be so much better off advertising accessories to me. Those I will buy and while your ad agency still works for you.
dvngnt_ 3y ago
i use pateron
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- TheBozzCL 3y ago
  If Google ever fully blocks alternate clients, I'm gonna have to cancel all my Patreon memberships and I'll make damn sure they know why. I mean, my subscription's not gonna be worth that much to them, but it's still more than they would earn from me watching ads. Fuck the ad industry.
_heimdall 3y ago
Quite a few content creators have reached for some combination of tools like Patron and paid private memberships. Pre-roll and mid-roll ads are also getting more common in both YouTube and podcast content as well. I think one tricky thing is reach, YouTube promises a huge potential audience that you don't get syndicating your own RSS feed and residuals don't usually exist for pre/mid-roll ads like they do for YouTube (if you get much longterm growth).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

saurik 3y ago

Right after reading this thread, I happened to open YouTube and got a notification today about a price increase on YouTube Red from $12.99 to $18.99.

_heimdall 3y ago
Well cracking down on piracy isn't free, its both a reason to increase prices and a good PR story to tell when deciding to increase prices.

TheBozzCL 3y ago

BTW, I don't understand the workaround: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/pull/4552/files https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/pull/4552/files Which was taken from here: https://github.com/LuanRT/YouTube.js/pull/624 https://github.com/LuanRT/YouTube.js/pull/624 Could anybody explain it to me?

2devnull 3y ago

I’m finding twitter (now x) is rapidly replacing YouTube in direct proportion to YouTube’s increasing suckifucation. At least for new content. Mostly I use YouTube for old content that is or should be in the public domain, and for music, mostly classical which I could get from the radio for free with almost no ads. I think society really needs something like Wikipedia for video.

master-lincoln 2y ago
I only use Youtube through my TV interface. X is not an alternative

lakomen 3y ago

Interesting, because vanced worked for a while longer on an old A52 Samsung than on my s10+ and the video was this fake video "this client is no longer supported, please upgrade". Google is holding humanity's cultural heritage hostage and ad-placing the shit out of it. I wouldn't mind 1 skippable pre-roll ad and the same post-roll. But not 2 and in-between and unskippable. And I'll do anything to block those ads. Google is at war with its users, viewers and creators alike.

neurostimulant 3y ago

Looks like YouTube revanced has been blocked as well (at least mine doesn't work anymore). all videos have been replaced with a video playing "not available on this app" over black background.

renegat0x0 2y ago

I am running my of YouTube front-end. Link: https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive Demo: https://renegat0x0.ddns.net/apps/catalog https://renegat0x0.ddns.net/apps/catalog Allows me to add channels, download individual videos, bookmark videos, etc. Uses iframe to display the video. I have no problems with viewing videos: - I use ff with adblock - videos are embedded using no-referrer-when-downgrade policy I have literally no ads. There are some drawbacks: - YouTube may change their policies, change embedding strategies - To have control over videos, you still have to manually download them