cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/22423685
EDIT: For those who are too lazy to click the link, this is what it says
Hello,
Sad news for everyone. YouTube/Google has patched the latest workaround that we had in order to restore the video playback functionality.
Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won’t work anymore.
If you are interested to install Invidious at home, we remind you that we have a guide for that here: https://docs.invidious.io/installation/..
This is not the death of this project. We will still try to find new solutions, but this might take time, months probably.
I have updated the public instance list in order to reflect on the working public instances: https://instances.invidious.io. Please don’t abuse them since the number is really low.
many instances of piped and invidious still work though
For Android users, I highly recommend NewPipe as a YouTube client
I use newpipe and freetube for my Andriod and PC respectively.
Or Tubular, which is an up to date fork with Sponsorblock support as well
I wonder if some kind of mesh might work. Maybe like a secret Santa type deal. By that I mean everyone who connects, gets a randomised, anonymous partner or partners. Everyone in the swarm streams for each other.
If you have the resources, host your own to help and spread the load across public instances.
They said:
You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won’t work anymore.
and I imagine that most people that host something like this do so using a VPS. Homelabs tend to be the minority use case.
Didn’t Odysee recently removed ads? Anyway, I think I’ll start watching videos on Odysee and peertube, via RSS feeds. At least from youtubers that upload there.
People can always just stop using YouTube. It’s getting laughable the level of Stockholm syndrome people have for that shit service.
I don’t really think Stockholm syndrome applies here. I don’t watch YouTube out of some irrational bond with the platform. I watch YouTube because it’s literally the only place the creators I watch upload. I would absolutely follow the creators I watch to whatever platform the content is available on. Until then, I’m stuck with YouTube and ad blocking extensions.
I’m not saying it’s exactly the same. But there are definitely people that whine all day and night about it, and then go pacify themselves by watching even more YouTube videos.
If I hate something as much as people seem to hate YouTube, I can easily stop using it. But then again, I have enough strength of conviction to do so. I’m certainly not going to financially support them by patronizing their service. And this futile attempt to circumvent their add service was is only making them more clever about blocking people from doing so.
YouTube will always win this.
Period. End of story.
The only way to beat them is to not play. I guarantee you if the lose 50% of their viewers. They’ll change their tune.
That’s a fair point. There’s a million things you could do, and watching videos on YT is just one of them. Watching videos online has become a large part of peoples lives. Surely it has a lot to offer, but we should probably not forget it also replaces a lot of things, things we would spent are time on otherwise, if we didn’t have YT as an easy time-drain, and those other things are presumably equally rewarding or more so.
Youtube isn’t just a thing people use to waste time, but a source of educational content. That actually matters, and there isn’t a good alternative to much of it.
That being said, I agree that people could at least drop it (or reduce their usage) if they are just using it as a time waster.
The problem is, there’s just no (good) direct competition. The audience will follow creators once enough of them switch to the same alternative platform. But as long as there’s no platform with a comparable amount of money behind it, most people will continue to use Youtube.
There doesn’t need to be direct competition. Just stop watching YouTube. If someone cannot do that- they have an addiction, and ads are not their biggest problem.
Youtube is my main source of entertainment. I don’t watch regular TV, and I barely watch any movies or series. Doesn’t have anything to do with an addiction, it’s personal preference lmao
Oh look! Here’s one of them now!
Lol, ya dickhead
Many people don’t understand that youtube has a lot of use cases. But it is the new cable teevee… Got to have it.
Because there’s absolutely no valuable information that exists on YouTube, right?
Nice straw man, but I never said that.
Eh, there are some competitors:
- Nebula - costs $5/month; can get a discount if you find a creator’s discount code (I used NotJustBikes, can check out LegalEagle, HalfAsinteresting, or any of the others if you want; I got 50% off a year sub)
- Odyssee - pretty much the OG alternative to YT - I follow a few there
- Rumble - much better funded, but caters to conservatives and far-right, but there are some more moderate videos there (I like Glenn Greenwald, except for anything related to Russia); I think it’s funny that it has been blocked by some countries for allowing pro-Russian content, while also being blocked by Russia (this year) for not removing content
I sub to some channels from each (as well as Twitch and YT) though Grayjay, which seems to work pretty well. I’d say about 50% of my video watch time is on YouTube, 15-20% on Odyssee, 20-30% on Nebula, and a little on Rumble. I try to watch Nebula videos on the Nebula app so creators get credited with watch time, but I honestly prefer Grayjay.
I’ve been trying to cut down on how much I watch anyway, so hopefully I’ll be able to slowly eliminate YT from my life.
I know about Nebula, but you have to admit, the barrier to entrance is a lot higher for most people because of the subscription fee, so it’s not necessarily a direct comparison. Some of my favourite content creators are on there.
Didn’t know about Odysee. As far as I can see, that platform uses crypto for payments, which could also act as a deterrent to some people.
As for Rumble: Personally, I wouldn’t touch anything related to JD Vance with a ten foot pole (he’s a pretty big investor). And one of their biggest channels seems to be by Andrew Tate (ew). To be fair, I couldn’t tell you for sure that Youtube doesn’t take money from any of them in some form. But they seem to be more of an equal opportunity offender lol.
As far as I can see, that platform uses crypto for payments, which could also act as a deterrent to some people.
I’m confused, what I’m hearing is:
- YouTube - don’t want because of ads and ownership by Google
- Nebula - don’t want because of required subscription
- Odysee - don’t want because of optional crypto payments
- Rumble - undesirables use/invest in the platform?
- PeerTube (not mentioned) - not enough content
That seems unreasonable to me. All three of those alternatives have no ads and have content that you would probably enjoy. You don’t need to use crypto to use Odysee. You don’t need to watch Andrew Tate or support JD Vance to use Rumble. You do need to pay for Nebula, but you can pay for a single month if you just want to try it out.
But at the end of the day, these alternatives need to get paid to survive. None of them are perfect, which is a big part of why I use Grayjay, which lets me sub to creators from all of them without having to see those services’ front pages. I pay for Nebula and I donate to creators I like at Odysee outside the built-in crypto system. I don’t like JD Vance, but I also don’t particularly care if we invests in Rumble, that really doesn’t affect me in any way. My goal is to reduce my YT use, and I’m not going to get there by continually moving the goalposts, so I decided to just pull the trigger and try them all out, and they’re fine.
Rumble - […] I think it’s funny that it has been blocked by some countries
Rumble is blocked here in Brazil, not because Brazil blocked it (although there was once a strife between Rumble and Brazilian Supreme Court due to a half dozen far-right influencers) , but because Rumble themselves blocked us.
Yeah, my understanding is that they blocked Brazil due to some stuff they disagreed with. They’re certainly a mixed bag.
Wow all this bullying is really convincing me to go back to their shitty platform.
If i can’t access my fav creators anymore itl just motivate me to do sm productive, like building web3
Haven’t you heard? web3 is going great so far!
Oh no, the execution and information thus far has been horrible. You are alluding to blockchain are you? When i look at the website you post i see absolutely nothing that i even recognize as web3 its all cryptostuff.
I don’t get why everybody is so hell-bend on blockchain based internet (sure its decentralized but come on, we’re creative enough to do better). Its like people don’t get the point of “user owned” and are expecting companies to build a better internet for them without serving their own interests.
No, we are going to need to do this ourselves, self host our own data and services, open source everything.
Lemmy and the fediverse are the closest i have seen to being proto web 3 in spirit and there are also still far from perfect.
I have read the “What is web3” from that site and could not disagree on the definition more. I would not be suprised if both the blockchain cults and this website are part of the propaganda machine that is stopping a free internet from happening.
My web3 is aligned much more with this: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video
If i can’t access my fav creators anymore itl just motivate me to do sm productive
YT literally does not care. You may not, but I suspect MANY more people will go back to watching ads or signing up for Premium. Just like when Netflix canceled password sharing and everyone complained but their revenue went up by 15%.
I don’t judge people who give in to the oppressor. Life is hard and you have to pick your battles, more important stuff then blocking ads for “normal” people.
For me its largely a disability/accessibility thing. The whole site is not usable.
Its not that i want to die on this hill its that corporate bullshit is measurably detrimental to my health. My hill is the only one i can exist on.
The elites don’t want you to know but “[y]ou may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home)”
Following their guide gives a local Invidious client, don’t forget to 1) copy their production compose file instead of using the one on git and 2) change “hmac_key”… from my experience setting up cron (
crontab -e) to restart the docker container once per day keeps the Invidious docker healthyAt least until they start blacklisting IPs using Invidious.
One of the positives of nat
If you do this, I would be fully prepared to lose access to all your Google services along with anyone else who may use Google services on the same IP. Gmail, Play store, Chrome, etc, etc can easily be wiped out with a ban from Google and this can seriously fuck people’s day up if they’ve used Gmail and have 2FA setup on any external account.
I guess I forgot to take that into consideration… I’m not worried about Google banning my IP since I essentially don’t use any Google services at all and my home IP is hidden behind a wireguard tunnel, but yes that is a valid concern
But I mean someone can just spin it up on their home network so… No way 192.168.0.1:3000 can get someone into trouble right
Like any other web services, Google can see the public ip your personal invidious instance is using to access youtube servers. The local
192.168.x.xip are for internal access.
Oh that’s why no videos would load.
Damn it
yt-dlp still works.
A spark of hope in a dim world.
I’ve seen it go down in some cases on VPNs, so it could be a matter of time (or they’ll find a solution again and the back and forth will just continue).
newpiped and freetube will continue to work but piped is also blocked as well
Doesn’t freetube use invidious api?
I can use invidious, but also works without it. Unless Google decides to mess with that too. Was broken for a few days like a month ago or smth
It directly pulls Videos from Google servers unlike Invidious U can use Invidious on it but I doubt it works so well
idk
It also has a local API
Not just invidious, they’ve just de facto blocked video embedding:
If you’re wondering how a viable competitor could arise, other companies needing a video hosting solution that they can rely on to run their storefronts is a perfect use case. This is the Humble Bundle storefront, and they could pretty easily spin up a peertube instance. If that became commonplace, it could be one way for peertube to become ubiquitous.
other companies needing a video hosting solution that they can rely on to run their storefronts is a perfect use case.
Many companies use Vimeo for this.
Professional hosting for business use is not hard, and fairly common even. But these make up a tiny fraction of YouTube videos, and they mostly post there to get organic growth and be suggested to people already watching YouTube.
Sure but it’s really common to see embedded youtube videos on storefronts, and if storefronts en masse abandoned it that’s one more piece of the market that youtube has lost.
They can’t keep locking it down and not lose market share, is my point. They’re enshittifying so much, so fast, and eventually there will be a tipping point.
They can’t keep locking it down and not lose market share, is my point
They can very much afford to lose a tiny amount of marketshare in exchange for a massive increase in ad and subscription revenue, is my point.
“Massive increase” I think needs a source.
And they rely on the network effect to be the de facto standard video hoster. Every little bit of that network that they carve off while they’re enshittifying brings them closer to the critical point where people can afford to ditch them.
The logic that they can “afford” to lose marketshare is exactly what will make them keep losing it until people migrate en masse and they lose all of their marketshare.
Youtube is now big enough for not caring about the network effect.
- Start companies
- make a free product with network effect
- gain a lot of users
- now that you have your user base, user growth is not as relevant anymore and therefore network effect is not needed anymore
- enshitificate for more ad revenue, more tracking and direct subscriptions
- profit (finally after decades)
Capitalism is just fucked 🤷🏻🏴☠️
“Massive increase” I think needs a source.
Don’t have one. Pure speculation. Much like yours, I assume? Unless you have a source to the contrary?
How often do you see professional videos on the trending page on YT?
Source for what? The network effect? I gave you a link, you can read.
And youtube is enshittifying.
These are both well-established effects. My sourcing is finished now. It beats your “pure speculation” unless you have something else you want to add.
Source for what?
This:
They’re enshittifying so much, so fast, and eventually there will be a tipping point.
or this:
Every little bit of that network that they carve off while they’re enshittifying brings them closer to the critical point where people can afford to ditch them.
or this:
The logic that they can “afford” to lose marketshare is exactly what will make them keep losing it until people migrate en masse and they lose all of their marketshare.
And youtube is enshittifying.
Yes, you’ve said that several times.
These are both well-established effects.
The fact that it exists is not evidence that it’s taking place here.
My sourcing is finished now.
LOL no.
yo rainworld i used to have a friend that was a fan of that game
It’s a 10/10 for me! Amazing game but definitely not for everyone
True
What happened?
I dont feel like i wanna say it on lemmy
So when do we start just showing up the the doorstep of google employees?
I work for the fucking military industrial complex and not even I would be a bad enough person to work on breaking invidious.
People should learn to live without YT, instead of making an existential drama about it (about its ads, really).
This is the way. Let those content creators sucking up your time be the background noise they were always meant to be.
tell me you don’t work in IT without telling me you don’t work in IT.
YT is more than just thots in shorts and fake scumbag competition game show hosts.
there’s a whole community of educators and creators that are genuinely useful and is the core of what YT used to be used for.
I have a BSc in CompSci and an MSc in Cybersec & Dig. Forensics and I’m actively employed as a mid level engineer in the field on a fully employer-sponsored Skilled Worker Visa, doing everything from vulnerability management and triage to GRC for ISO27001 to advising product and engineering teams on implementation details for best practices and compliance for a multinational org to DR&BC tabletops etc etc. I think this counts as IT.
Perhaps even more impressively though: I use Vim btw (to program in C).
I am not necessarily trying to brag very much, only to establish my own perspective, I don’t consider myself particularly talented or intelligent or successful - otherwise I’d have gone into research, but I am currently (and kinda always) studying to improve my skills and stay up to date.
Just recently I decided to take a look into pentesting to learn the l33t side of things more as my education only ever briefly touched on it, I started in August as something to keep my brain sane during studies for the settlement visa (Life in the UK) test, and I’ve made it to Hacker Rank on HackTheBox a week ago or so. I think I watched a grand total of one Ippsec video, the rest of everything I read.
I don’t know where you got the “game show hosts” from my comment, and I’m not aware of this if it exists as some broader trend. I don’t see YouTube shorts it’s all long blocked for me since release haha.
Yes YT tutorials and whatnot are good, but they are only good as broad introductions to a topic, personal opinions, or a particular historical narrative (Dr.Chuck on C’s history for instance). Those are few good nuggets between an endless sea of scams selling you a course or some other grift.
At a certain point you should start going a bit more in depth and reading - actively engaging with the material, move beyond simply knowing or purely copying and pasting terminal commands and understand why things work the way they do.
You don’t become an electrical engineer or something by watching electroboom, you learn what it’s about yes, but the rest you learn by reading and making, even basic arduino/breadboard projects will teach you more.
The best thing about YouTube is how good it is as background noise.
Ahh, that makes sense. you’re not the target demographic of YT. you’re too educated and too driven and you learn through more advanced methods.
that’s OK, great for you and I’m happy that you’re so successful. now, what about the millions of users that don’t have the means to access higher education and training provided by their employers? what about the 18yo kid living in a leaky trailer with their methed out mom or dad that’s looking for literally any way out they can afford.
perhaps in your quest you surrounded yourself with ultra successful people and forgot that there is a whole world with billions of people that do not have the same means as you do.
not trying to diminish the hard work and efforts you have clearly applied, but just because you did doesn’t mean everyone can.
by removing easy access to content provided by these communities, even if they are wholly or partially incorrect, it only deepens the chasm between long term professional success and endentured struggle.
I will not support any action that denies a life the opportunity to rise above their status and claim a better life for themselves and their family. for every one person who stands above their born status increases the potential successes of those around them, and even cooler, it’s a feedback system. your successes become their successes, and their successes become our successes.
Just to make it clear, I’m not trying to diminish your success I’m just trying to establish my perspective on your perspective so that we can share in a perspective that includes our success.
Oh no I totally understand that I’m privileged as all hell.
That said I also learned a helluva lot more outside of my degree during said degree and after.
Formal teaching is really like YouTube and it’s meant to introduce you to what you don’t know more than anything, and as I said that’s a good thing as an introduction, but the vast majority of content is written, and you learn far more from it.
I would suggest the devs to be able to create instances from within tor. It would be slow, but impossible to block. Or from any other network that don’t rely on single IP access to YouTube . Or, make a mesh of collaborative home instances. Google can’t block millions of home IPs. Or use any mesh collaborative network capable of it.
TOR exit node IP addresses are well-known. If YouTube wants to, they can just block the TOR network.
