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Comment by _Algernon_ | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty trivial to write a yt-dlp one-liner to batch download all your subscriptions. You can even have it slice out sponsor segments using the SB API automatically. There's also projects like TubeArchivist which give a web ui to download and play youtube videos. There are also projects that provide alternative UIs for Youtube. The world is drowning in solutions to this problem, yet people keep whining and complaining about it.

It is obvious that anyone who still uses YT while complaining about these measures should quit their BS learned helplessness and take an afternoon to figure out an alternative.

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Yes and no. While there are ways to circumvent the issue ( including the ways you mention ), the issue itself a little more complicated than that. Some of us don't like to play cat and mouse game. At certain size, company has to realize that their decisions that attempt to extract maximum amount of dough may draw close scrutiny of regulators. And its not like Google is not in their crosshairs already.

I am definitely not going to wait for the regulators fix up YT, but rather quit watching. We already have a family premium account because my partner couldn't stand the ads. I refuse to pay them. YT music is also shit quality. I bought a new pair of headphones and thought they were defective until I listened to my own ~160 kbps opus encoded content. Yes, it's that crappy, possibly 96 kbps or below. However I still listen to it because its bundled and paid for and still sounds better than FM radio. Totally not worth even half of what they're asking for.

Here are the quality setting on YouTube Music according to Google:

     Low

        Uses the least storage on your device

        Bitrate: 48 kbps AAC and OPUS

    Normal

        Default setting

        Bitrate: 128 kbps AAC and OPUS

    High

        Higher-quality audio will use more storage on your device

        Bitrate: 256 kbps AAC and OPUS

Seems like it is automatically set to normal on WiFi and Mobile Data. It also seems like there is another option for streaming labeled "Always High" which forces 256 kbps stream over bad connection.

I typically only use Youtube Music for discovery then buy albums that I like (or rip them if they're not available for purchase). I, personally, have never experienced low quality audio on YT Music.

I've checked now and mine is set to normal. But it's still shit on mobile. I have the same song encoded by yours truly from flac to opus@160 kbps and the quality difference is audible. On the desktop I fail to see any difference at the normal setting, so it might downgrade to 48 kbps over LTE.

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=mneDuKb3BT8

It is easy, but I'm terrified of getting my Google account banned.

Do you do anything to avoid that?

You can use an invidious instance for example. It can also act as a proxy.

No. Of these mechanisms, the ones I have personally used (yt-dlp and TubeArchivist) do not rely on signing in with an account. They could ban my account on IP association alone, but that would result in massive false positives and backlash (everyone behind a VPN would be screwed for one).

What if I want my Watch for later videos, or a private playlist?

Supposedly you can do that separately from the naughty yt-dlp run with https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/docs/playlistItems/...

(I don't know what the playlist id for your Watch Later would be, and the API for listing playlists doesn't seem to work either. Fun.)

For all that is good, do not do this on an account that does anything else! Run it in the cloud, if you can on a separate IP, and stream it from there.

Step 1: Buy a VPN subscription. It's about $3/month

Step 2: Run script

I'm a lot happier to pay for VPN and hard disks than for Google's bait-and-switch games. Youtube and Google became popular based on a social contract where I gave them by content, and now that it's a near-monopoly, they're breaking that social contract. That's not illegal, but it is sleazy, and I feel dirty giving money to support sleazy.

You don't need an account unless you're commenting. I get feeds for the channels I watch via RSS and use mpv with yt-dlp to play them.

> You don't need an account unless you're commenting

Or you want to continue feeding Google via your Gmail account. Or just plain old receive email and pretend that you're not feeding Google.

> Gmail account.

You don't need an account for youtube. I have a Google account for gmail, and since I use Android I unavoidably have a Google account because of it, but there's no reason to use that account for youtube. In fact, there is (or, at least, there used to be) a good reason to never use a Google account for youtube: they have (or, at least, used to have) a "real name" policy for youtube, so if they for some reason decide that your real name is not your real name, you could lose access to your whole Google account, including more important services like Google Talk. Therefore, whenever I watch any video on youtube, I very carefully make sure that the browser is not logged into the Google account, and watch it anonymously.

I've had my Google play store account locked down for "fraud" (they never told me what it was) that caused all of my Google services to be stopped (googlefi, gmail, google domains, etc) and I could still always use their SSO to log in to things. I also make youtube comments with zero hesitation to harass Trump fans and am frequently suspended on youtube and it just stops me from being able to comment.

My NAS has been using yt-dlp to download various Warhammer 40k videos from youtubers for 3+ years, I'm around 10TB.

My working theory is there is no way to actually get banned from using google services permanently unless perhaps you do a charge back or something I haven't tried.

I also do everything I can to not use google services after my "fraud" lockdown. I've made longer comments about it here before in my history if you want the full story.

is your time that cheap though?

I already have docker / docker-compose installed for development purposes, so in my case it was literally running git clone ..., then docker-compose up -d.

Considering this is about losing 5 seconds lost for every video being watched on youtube, I am pretty sure this time investment would amortize in <1 month of yt watching.

Do you show the same concern for how cheap the time is for the people spending their time bitching on reddit / HN / twitter about this issue for weeks on end?

A lot of people seem to think so, consider how they will spend hours trying to avoid paying $30 a month or whatever to get rid of the ads and support the creators.

It’s amazing how much time corporate white knights spend jumping into every adblock thread. This used to be Hacker News.

Yep, Hacker News in past. Now it is more like Freeloader News by Ethical Champions of our times.

I often post the same complaint ("What happened to all the hackers?"), but endlessly posting "Script X doesn't work with browser Y, now I'm forced to view ads, somebody do something," isn't hacking.

I think money is the root of all evil.

I think money ruins things that it touches, and the things that are made in pursuit of money, especially in today's computerized world, will be predatory and exploitative.

The Internet used to be for hobbyists, making content out of passion in addition to having actual jobs (sort of like free software).

But then they made content creation their jobs. Then the platforms got "professionalized". Now, content creators have to be professional eggshell dancers while the consumers are trapped in mind prisons where advertisers have the keys. We're now cattle in some corporate money printing machine, of which the creators are hapless contractors.

That's never what I signed up for. I didn't ask the creators to do this for money. I never opted into the game their playing (I also didn't read the EULA ;D). I also wouldn't pay money for Asmongold's 500th "IS THIS THE NEXT POGGERS MMO?" video (but I will watch it for free for like 15 seconds, then question my life choices and close it before watching some better video for free). So I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, they should go back to being hobbyists, get real jobs for their livelihood, and the Internet should be demonetized.

Money itself does not do anything. Required is a human’s ego and desire to compete, possibly to improve probabilities of landing a specific mate? Or maybe just securing certain resources?

Saying that money itself does not do anything is a truism.

Money is a tool to get people to do something that they don't want to do otherwise. That's all it is. All trade is fundamentally a person who has a thing and doesn't want to give it up giving it up in exchange for money. Labor is the same with a persons time.

There are plenty of instances where the thing you get someone to do is "evil": bribes, assassinations, creating and distributing propaganda, having people fight in unjust wars, etc.

While it is unlikely that most money is used to cause "evil" acts, it is very likely that most "evil" acts occur due to money changing hands.

> All trade is fundamentally a person who has a thing and doesn't want to give it up giving it up in exchange for money. Labor is the same with a persons time.

I disagree. What is a farmer going to do with 100 bushels of wheat? What is an oil producer going to do with 1 million gallons of oil? Trade happens (much of the time) because a person who has Thing A would rather have Thing B and is willing to give up Thing A for it. And person with Thing B would rather have Thing A and is willing to give up Thing B for it. And money is the technology that enables this exchange to happen more quickly and easily.

>While it is unlikely that most money is used to cause "evil" acts, it is very likely that most "evil" acts occur due to money changing hands.

This has nothing to do with money or trade. A bushel of wheat or barrel of oil could have changed hands instead of money. The evil act occurred because someone wanted it to occur, and it could occurred with or without a trade.

You actually save time by being purposeful about what videos you watch and not getting sucked into algorithmic addiction cycles.

Well, that, and probably also by not watching ads.

I set up an Invidious instance and cannot believe how much less garbage content I consume.

It depends on ones experience, but a script which runs yt-dl shouldn't take much time. And as a side note I'd argue that constantly counting your time as money loss may lead to neurosis. Some digital housekeeping can be pleasantly distracting from work, while also making your computer environment more comfortable.

Get a little dopamine hit everytime one remembers what a sweet deal or setup they have. Conversely, feels bad to pay for convenience on conditions one objects to. It's like when deal hunters spend undue effort to save some money on frequently used items or services that will get used for years. Does dollar equivalent in effort to save get amortized over time? Frequently, but not always. But the satisfaction of knowing you got one over the dealer keeps on paying for itself.

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