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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 instan

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...
      - 3y ago
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    It's dumb that it requires switching. Why aren't there any tools or services for publishing content simultaneously to every platform? New platform? Make an account and add it to my publishing tool, done. Now my content posts there as well. I think it's difficult by design. The platforms don't want that, they want the lock-in and switching costs.
    - chii 3y ago
      > It's dumb that it requires switching. seeding other platforms with your content that was meant to be youtube is fine (i'm sure there are tools that could do this already), but the problem is that those new platforms aren't monetized like youtube is. For a content creator, if they dilute their audience (by saying that their content is available on some other platform), they might have less views on youtube which is the money maker.
  - luyu_wu 3y ago
    About time we all switched to Bilibili /lh
  - bobajeff 3y ago
    Odysee (front end to LBRY) seems to have a fair number of creators using it. Like others have said there is also Nebula and CuriosityStream.
  - thatguy0900 3y ago
    I've always wondered how those new sites are supposed to survive when the only people who care enough to be early adopters are also the ones who want to use adblock and tracker blockers.
- 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.

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...
    - 3y ago
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  It's dumb that it requires switching. Why aren't there any tools or services for publishing content simultaneously to every platform? New platform? Make an account and add it to my publishing tool, done. Now my content posts there as well. I think it's difficult by design. The platforms don't want that, they want the lock-in and switching costs.
  - chii 3y ago
    > It's dumb that it requires switching. seeding other platforms with your content that was meant to be youtube is fine (i'm sure there are tools that could do this already), but the problem is that those new platforms aren't monetized like youtube is. For a content creator, if they dilute their audience (by saying that their content is available on some other platform), they might have less views on youtube which is the money maker.
- luyu_wu 3y ago
  About time we all switched to Bilibili /lh
- bobajeff 3y ago
  Odysee (front end to LBRY) seems to have a fair number of creators using it. Like others have said there is also Nebula and CuriosityStream.
- thatguy0900 3y ago
  I've always wondered how those new sites are supposed to survive when the only people who care enough to be early adopters are also the ones who want to use adblock and tracker blockers.
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.