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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

The legislation required is allowing reverse engineering for interoperability. If there was a legal, alternative Youtube frontend that everyone used and didn't do this crap - YouTube's UI would be forced to compete. As it is, writing such a client/frontend (even if you preserve the ads) will probably land you in legal hot water.

See also: how reddit shut down superior competing UIs by changing their API terms.

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It depends on the country. In some, reverse engineering a proprietary product for the purpose of interoperability is explicitly allowed.

In the US, as far as I know, there hasn't yet been a precedent about this.

One can publish their client/frontend pseudonymously, using Tor if necessary. Not like one is gonna profit off it anyway, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

That massively limits your audience. And without something like the EU's Digital Markets Act locked down platforms like iOS would be a non-starter as well.

I don't think YouTube is going to feel compelled to change their UI if 1% of users are using some alternative UI off of Tor.

No, I mean the developer publishes under a pseudonym, and said developer can use Tor if needed to hide their tracks so they can't be served legally, as no one knows who they are in real life. Joe Public isn't risking going to prison or being sued to bankruptcy because they downloaded some random YouTube client, so they don't have to use Tor.

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