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Agreed. Youtube downloaders are essential for backup purposes and for getting clips to put in your own videos as fair use. But people turning them in to fully u

Agreed. Youtube downloaders are essential for backup purposes and for getting clips to put in your own videos as fair use. But people turning them in to fully user facing ad free frontends are driving the crackdown on the tools so we will end up with no way at all to download videos.. Would be nice if Youtube just let premium users download the actual video files. What I find interesting is how so many of the Chinese social media platforms just let you download videos while western tech companies pretty much universally block it.

nulld3v 2y ago
YouTube downloaders have existed since the dawn of YouTube. And I really don't think they have jumped in popularity recently or anything.
- dijit 2y ago
  They get shut down constantly if they become popular though. yt-dlp is itself a fork of the (very popular) youtube-dl
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    youtube-dl just went largely dormant. There was a fiasco involving a unit test specifically downloading copyrighted content, but it was corrected. yt-dlp just became the more active fork.
    - dijit 2y ago
      You've identified the reason for the fork, but not the reason the projects maintainers burned out in the first place. youtube-dl were under the microscope and were even unlisted from github at one point[0]. And as recent as 1yr ago had their website taken offline[1]. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/jgtzum/youtubedl_repo_had_been_dmcad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/jgtzum/youtube... [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/comments/15wx4sl/youtubedl_site_goes_offline_due_to_courtordered/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/comments/15wx4sl/youtubed...
      - soulofmischief 2y ago
        The unlisting from GitHub was precisely due to the reason I mentioned, and Nat Friedman himself, CEO of GitHub at the time, dropped into the youtube-dl development IRC, assured the team that he had their back, and that the moment the infringing test was fixed, he would personally restore access, which he did posthaste. Regarding the website being taken down, it was hosted in Germany and it was a German court order. Germany is notorious for this stuff, and it should never have been hosted there. If they wanted, they could have found a more reasonable host. I understand the burnout, but it comes with the territory, and powerful enough people made it clear that the team did have their support. With some effort, the project could have continued on at full pace at least as uninhibited as its forks. Now the URL just redirects to the yt-dlp GitHub repository, anyway.
    - crtasm 2y ago
      Specifically testing the extra code needed to download certain videos - they didn't pick them just for the hell of it. It seemed unwise to have that in the public repo but I wouldn't describe it as a fiasco.
      - soulofmischief 2y ago
        It was a fiasco because it led to the repo being DMCA'd
jjulius 2y ago
You said it yourself - it'd be nice if YouTube stopped and thought about what it could be doing differently to not drive as many people towards things like this. As I said elsewhere, the root cause isn't the people developing these frontends, it's the fact that the existing official frontend leaves users wanting something else.
- phantomathkg 2y ago
  To do that we literally need shareholder not chasing money and pushing Alphabet pushing the Youtube team for higher and higher profit margin.
  - arcosdev 2y ago
    The sad root of all things.
999900000999 2y ago
> how so many of the Chinese social media platforms just let you download videos The rate things are going I’ll just have to use those sites instead. YouTube is a weird position. A lot of content is public domain and should be freely downloaded. Other content isn’t. A good middle ground would be for YouTube to just give uploaders an option to enable downloads. I do agree that people need to STOP trying to make yt-dl easy to use to the point it actually competes with YouTube. YouTube Red when you factor in music is a very good deal. I’ve been subscribed for years. Like it or not but YouTube is almost entirely funded by ads. You don’t have a right to use the service without paying.
- mschoch 2y ago
  [dead]
- WD-42 2y ago
  Us not having the right seems a little extreme. What if I close my eyes and block my ears during evey ad? Do I not have the right to use YouTube then?
  - mrmattyboy 2y ago
    I would say yes and no (leaning on the no)... I think saying you don't have a right is fine... they are providing a service and dictating it's usage and you are using it. So on the "closing your eyes". On one side, yes, allowing your browser to play the video and YT then being able to treat as a advert view means that youtube gets paid and the creator gets paid. However... I would personally view this as can a person do this and how it works as a generalisation and I would say "no", because if everyone did this (why does just one person have the right to close their eyes), then (at least I'd imagine) the companies paying for advertising would see a drop in click-throughs and (I don't know what you call it.. but let's just say) more money. They'd then stop paying for adverts. Then no companies would want to pay for adverts and YT is no longer profitable (to YT or the creators).
    - margana 2y ago

nulld3v 2y ago

YouTube downloaders have existed since the dawn of YouTube. And I really don't think they have jumped in popularity recently or anything.

dijit 2y ago
They get shut down constantly if they become popular though. yt-dlp is itself a fork of the (very popular) youtube-dl
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  youtube-dl just went largely dormant. There was a fiasco involving a unit test specifically downloading copyrighted content, but it was corrected. yt-dlp just became the more active fork.
  - dijit 2y ago
    You've identified the reason for the fork, but not the reason the projects maintainers burned out in the first place. youtube-dl were under the microscope and were even unlisted from github at one point[0]. And as recent as 1yr ago had their website taken offline[1]. [0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/jgtzum/youtubedl_repo_had_been_dmcad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/jgtzum/youtube... [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/comments/15wx4sl/youtubedl_site_goes_offline_due_to_courtordered/ https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/comments/15wx4sl/youtubed...
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      The unlisting from GitHub was precisely due to the reason I mentioned, and Nat Friedman himself, CEO of GitHub at the time, dropped into the youtube-dl development IRC, assured the team that he had their back, and that the moment the infringing test was fixed, he would personally restore access, which he did posthaste. Regarding the website being taken down, it was hosted in Germany and it was a German court order. Germany is notorious for this stuff, and it should never have been hosted there. If they wanted, they could have found a more reasonable host. I understand the burnout, but it comes with the territory, and powerful enough people made it clear that the team did have their support. With some effort, the project could have continued on at full pace at least as uninhibited as its forks. Now the URL just redirects to the yt-dlp GitHub repository, anyway.
  - crtasm 2y ago
    Specifically testing the extra code needed to download certain videos - they didn't pick them just for the hell of it. It seemed unwise to have that in the public repo but I wouldn't describe it as a fiasco.
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      It was a fiasco because it led to the repo being DMCA'd

jjulius 2y ago

You said it yourself - it'd be nice if YouTube stopped and thought about what it could be doing differently to not drive as many people towards things like this. As I said elsewhere, the root cause isn't the people developing these frontends, it's the fact that the existing official frontend leaves users wanting something else.

phantomathkg 2y ago
To do that we literally need shareholder not chasing money and pushing Alphabet pushing the Youtube team for higher and higher profit margin.
- arcosdev 2y ago
  The sad root of all things.

999900000999 2y ago

> how so many of the Chinese social media platforms just let you download videos The rate things are going I’ll just have to use those sites instead. YouTube is a weird position. A lot of content is public domain and should be freely downloaded. Other content isn’t. A good middle ground would be for YouTube to just give uploaders an option to enable downloads. I do agree that people need to STOP trying to make yt-dl easy to use to the point it actually competes with YouTube. YouTube Red when you factor in music is a very good deal. I’ve been subscribed for years. Like it or not but YouTube is almost entirely funded by ads. You don’t have a right to use the service without paying.

mschoch 2y ago
[dead]
WD-42 2y ago
Us not having the right seems a little extreme. What if I close my eyes and block my ears during evey ad? Do I not have the right to use YouTube then?
- mrmattyboy 2y ago
  I would say yes and no (leaning on the no)... I think saying you don't have a right is fine... they are providing a service and dictating it's usage and you are using it. So on the "closing your eyes". On one side, yes, allowing your browser to play the video and YT then being able to treat as a advert view means that youtube gets paid and the creator gets paid. However... I would personally view this as can a person do this and how it works as a generalisation and I would say "no", because if everyone did this (why does just one person have the right to close their eyes), then (at least I'd imagine) the companies paying for advertising would see a drop in click-throughs and (I don't know what you call it.. but let's just say) more money. They'd then stop paying for adverts. Then no companies would want to pay for adverts and YT is no longer profitable (to YT or the creators).
  - margana 2y ago