Comment by Ourgon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ourgon | Hacker News Reader

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The solution to the Youtube-problem is to use a Youtube-frontend like Invidious [1] in combination with an extension like Privacy Redirect [2] of libredirect [3] so you don't need to touch the Youtube site at all. The same works for things like Twitter and Reddit (which can be redirected to front-ends offering the same content) or Google Maps, Google Search and Google Translate (which get redirected to alternative services). Some of these alternatives - Invidious for Youtube, Nitter for Twitter, libreddit for Reddit - can (but don't have to) be run on your own server, others use established services. This way you get the benefits of accessing content from adversarial services like Twitter and Youtube without having to interface with them directly on any device you use, not just that phone you happened to install some alternative front end like Newpipe on. You can "subscribe" to Youtube channels without telling Google you did so, you can access those subscriptions from anywhere, etc.

Ditch that Youtube app and while you're at it ditch the rest of those Google apps as well. Freedom is just one click away: Are you sure you want to uninstall this app? [OK].

[1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

[2] https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect

[3] https://github.com/libredirect/libredirect

This works flawlessly at the moment (currently using the same setup). However it's more of a workaround than a solution - Google could break/throttle all of Invidious at any point if it drives ad revenue down another couple points, just like they recently did to Vanced. The real solution is the hard one - moving away from YT entirely

Invidious is different from Vanced in that Vanced was a mod on top of the main YouTube application, while Invidious is just a different frontend with presumably no infringement of YouTube IP or code or TOS. Now, youtube-dl got the infamous copyright complaint by RIAA because they advertised using it to download copyrighted music[0], so perhaps a stronger case could be made if any code within Invidious used more hidden APIs or otherwise shows using it to watch Standard YouTube License videos without fulfilling the quid pro quo of watching ads.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872911

> because they advertised using it to download copyrighted music

Their unit tests used some music videos, and only because Youtube's website uses different javascript for such videos. It's a stretch to call that advertising, I don't believe I'd ever read the tests code before the complaint.

YouTube is getting shittier by the year also. Forcing me to watch an ad that takes 5 seconds to even start then after said ad the video freezes and doesn’t even play requiring a page refresh just to watch something. I’m ready for the alternative to arrive.

There are no video ads if you pay for YouTube Premium (outside of embedded paid sponsor stuff added by the video producers themselves).

Or even better: youtube in the browser, with ublock origin + sponsorblock, and Youtube becomes at least less annoying.

If you search for a solution, not workaround, consider this: https://joinpeertube.org.

I host a number of Peertube instances next to Invidious. There is a reason for having both of these: Peertube can not access Youtube-hosted material. Thus, to publish your own material use Peertube, to access Youtube-hosted material use something like Invidious.

Seems like an anti-trust lawsuit just waiting to happen if they do.

I don't see anti-trust actions happening in current administration.

Normally the EU is always up for making life complicated for big tech but we are currently... indisposed.

I thought that there was a rather strongly worded memo to the FTC to enforce anti-trust in july of last year.

> just like they recently did to Vanced

What did they do to Vanced? Still works on my phone.

It still works but it's no longer being worked on nor offered for download.

Discussed recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30663739

Cease and desist.

Am I the only one who is less likely to pay Google for anything when they pull hi-jinks like this? The more that they change how things work, the more that I want to disable updates and use libre software alternatives. If they were just cool and didn't try to prevent me from having things my way, I'd probably have paid them for a premium app experience.

What are you going to do though? Apple forces you to use their web browser, any apparently 3rd part web browsers are using apple's actual browser as a plug in.

There are no viable options for smart phones that are not fascist.

PinePhone + mainline Linux. Obtaining freedom isn't easy - it requires hard work and sacrifice - but it's absolutely possible.

I used invidious for a few weeks. Actually getting the videos once I connected was fine, the issue was that invidious instances were constantly going down and I had to keep searching for a new working instance.

I also use libreddit and teddit and almost never have a problem with those. Are there any equivalent invidious servers?

Invidious is fairly easy to self-host, see https://docs.invidious.io/Installation/#docker-compose-metho...

I don't believe it's very resource intensive (though the recommendation is at least 3GB of RAM), so you may be able to run it on localhost on your laptop, or you could run it on some cheap VPS.

How do I use Privacy Redirect on a mobile browser? I can't seem to install arbitrary browser extensions in Firefox on Graphene, just a little allowlist of a halfdozen "blessed" ones.

In iOS, certain apps can register for certain URL domains and protocols to open the app instead. Maybe Android has something similar and you could leverage that in an app that implements something similar.

How do you use the extensions on mobile, where Firefox doesn't allow non-curated extensions?

I think Firefox Nightly gives you access to the full selection of extensions.

It doesn't.

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