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Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube
- dreadlordbone 2y agoI assume this is in the wake of the cease & desist sent to Invidious (the engine behind Freetube) by the YouTube peeps: https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-orders-invidious-privacy-software-to-shut-down-in-7-days-230609/ https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-orders-invidious-privacy-so...
- walterbell 2y agoIsn't this app still using Invidious public servers? The cat-and-mouse game continues.
- Qwertious 2y agoIt's an option that can be toggled on. By default it pulls from YouTube AFAICT.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoIf it can hide videos with overexpressive faces on the title cards, I'm in.
- ClassyJacket 2y agoOn desktop you can use YouTube Clickbait Remover for that
- rcdemski 2y agoI use the dearrow extension to nuke the title cards https://dearrow.ajay.app/ https://dearrow.ajay.app/
- mrmetanoia 2y agoThis is like someone turned the volume down in my brain. I had not seen this, very cool.
- pndy 2y agoFreetube has this bundled in as a feature
- igornadj 2y agoThe post mentions you can switch thumbnails out to be a random frame from the video, so yes, seems like it.
- roenxi 2y agoI'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of Google and I don't have a lot of respect for the YouTube selection algorithm. However this culture of expecting Google to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Google is willing to host and organise a vast number of videos because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then Google won't host the videos, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy YouTube in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target). If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if Google's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use YouTube - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make PeerTube work or investigate the long list of alternative video platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_video_platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_video_platforms .
- akkartik 2y agoI had a lot more sympathy for this argument a few years ago, but lately Google does enough short-term thinking all by itself that it seems fine to just take what you can get for as long as it does something that happens to be useful to you, amidst all the stuff it does that is useful only to itself. Just be prepared for the good times to end at any moment.
- Vampiero 2y agoHey, you want a monopoly on information while at the same time operating the largest ad network in the world? Then don't complain if people block your stupid ads and count yourself lucky that the government didn't split your megacorp into several tiny companies The only morally wrong thing here is NOT blocking Google's ads
- stavros 2y agoWhy doesn't the government split the megacorp into several tiny companies? All this collusion between these otherwise unrelated companies is only good for Google.
- eurekin 2y agoIn the age of LLM's, I with there was some way to automatically pull videos about particular topic, extract the information out of the transcript (skip the clickbait as well) and deduplicate. I spend so much time watching videos just to conclude "ah right, it's actually based on the same info previous 3 videos"
- MBCook 2y agoOr if you don’t want to see ads you could pay for it instead. Like an adult. Works great. They present a perfectly valid choice to you, and it works great. It’s a reasonable enough price (not great but reasonable), but it supports the creators you watch with part of your subscription money. Plus it has other benefits if you care, like free TV shows and movies and YouTube music. I don’t use that stuff but it is there.
- pkulak 2y agoAnd it you don’t want to pay, and can’t handle ads, don’t use the service. I don’t understand why people think they are entitled to any content they want, when they want it, for free.
- stavros 2y agoThe problem is that I don't care. I've had it with everyone wanting "just" $9.99/mo. I watch a few random two-minute videos a day, that's not worth as much as Netflix to me. I don't want the TV shows, I don't want the music channels, I just want to watch my little videos without ads. How much are you making from me on ads? Just charge me that and remove them.
- MBCook 2y agoThen watch with ads. That’s a fair choice. Why are you entitled to ad free viewing? “It’s only a few so it’s ok I take something for nothing” is not a legal concept I think would hold up in other contexts.
- jeffbee 2y agoLet's try it. 20 seconds to first start on a M2 mac mini, not amazing. Search takes about 3-5 seconds. Navigate to video another 3-5 seconds. No 4k. No casting. Can't change the playback speed. Can't jump on timeline with 0-9 keys. Doesn't sync to my other devices. Doesn't know about my membership perks, of course. After a few minutes I would say this is easily the worst way to watch YouTube short of printing the videos out.
- VogonPoetry 2y agoThe 20 seconds first start is because it is only an x86_64 binary -- no native Arm build.
- jeffbee 2y agoIt's their fault for shipping Chrome instead of shipping HTML.
- simjnd 2y agoExactly this. I also expected the app to have the shell UI downloaded locally and only fill it with fetched data, but the slow load times and blank pages make me think it really just is a browser. Somehow worse than your typical Electron app.
- codedokode 2y agoIs there a server-side Youtube client? I.e. the one that you install on a server and open in a browser.
- ethanol-brain 2y agohttps://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends Some of these are open source and easy to run, like https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
- bitwize 2y agoThe best way to watch YouTube is via the official YouTube site or app, because everything else is a potential DMCA violation and, if it blocks or skips ads, is tantamount to theft of service.
- cozzyd 2y agoDoubtful it beats YouTube premium on my TV...
- ruthmarx 2y agoIt definitely is. I switched to it primarily because the main website just takes up so much memory, needlessly. I have no moral issue with this either. If Google wants money then they need to be more legitimate in their business dealings. No ignoring DMCA abuse, no ending user accounts with no appeal, no dark patterns period.
- hackit2 2y agoWhen I made a comment on one video about the Ukraine war, Google instantly deleted my Youtube channel (that had nothing on it), citing the comment was against their community guidelines. After that I'm hesitant to use any of services that I pay Google for in the future, and taking steps to move away from them.
- dreamymoon 2y agoyup been using for 3/4 months now. tho it is filled with bugs. if you use extended screens, good luck. and a few more like app crashing, unable to handle multiple app launches at once, and so on. I am looking for a better open-source alternative tbh.
- HKH2 2y agoOn Android, NewPipe is great (but it sometimes breaks when there are API changes).
- toastercat 2y agoNewPipe is another piracy app meant to steal content from YouTube creators. It is not great.
- thisislife2 2y agoIs this an Electron app? I wonder why it can't be just a browser extension instead?
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y agodon't forget to donate something: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube?tab=readme-ov-file#donate https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube?tab=readme-ov-file#d...
- hnburnsy 2y agoOn SmartTvs and AndroidTv use STN... https://smarttubenext.com/ https://smarttubenext.com/