[HN Gopher] NewPipe - Lightweight YouTube experience for Android
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       NewPipe - Lightweight YouTube experience for Android
        
       Author : vyrotek
       Score  : 692 points
       Date   : 2023-11-04 19:38 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (newpipe.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (newpipe.net)
        
       | random_ wrote:
       | Amazing app, I hope it will last for a long time.
        
       | kosolam wrote:
       | Yes! Awesome app
        
       | scosman wrote:
       | For iOS users, check out "yattee" for a similar setup
        
         | comprev wrote:
         | "musi" is also a great advert-free YouTube client for iOS.
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | Highly recommend using F-Droid-capable phones/mobile support
         | systems. Perhaps one day the iOS ecosystem will recognize the
         | economic value of democratizing the platform, but until that
         | day it's better to use open source software and as open of
         | hardware as possible.
        
           | alwayslikethis wrote:
           | I think they are going to be forced to open the platform
           | soon, per the new Digital Markets Act by the EU.
        
             | tomrod wrote:
             | Once again, the EU does something right for it's citizens
             | in the face of exploitative practices.
        
           | jrflowers wrote:
           | This is good advice. If you own an iOS device you should
           | consider not owning an iOS device.
        
             | rplnt wrote:
             | I would love not to, but there is not a single human-sized
             | (as in can be operated by human hand) android phone on the
             | market that is also not a slow budget ohone. Now there is
             | no iphone either, but the last minis should last a while.
        
               | tomrod wrote:
               | Apple's moving away from them as well, to the detriment
               | of their design edge.
               | 
               | [0] https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23868428/iphone-13
               | -mini-l...
        
             | sneak wrote:
             | As a long time iOS user, I used a Pixel with Graphene for a
             | whole year.
             | 
             | Android has so many rough edges, and the Pixel hardware is
             | still a few years behind the iPhone. I switched back.
             | 
             | I miss syncthing and being able to install the apps that I
             | want, but my phone is too important a device for rough
             | edges.
        
               | lrvick wrote:
               | GrapheneOS did not meet my needs for sovereign control of
               | my own device, and iOS is worse in this regard, so I gave
               | up cell phones entirely 2 years ago. Turns out they are
               | not as necessary as we convince ourselves they are.
        
               | crashmat wrote:
               | Interesting. I'd never used an android before, and
               | recently got a Pixel 7a on which I am running lineageos.
               | Haven't found any rough edges other than that the home
               | screen sometimes hangs fixed by turning the screen off
               | and on again which takes less than 5s. What rough edges
               | did you encounter?
        
           | hxii wrote:
           | The parent comment was a suggestion for an iOS alternative.
           | 
           | Why did you feel the urge to push unsolicited advice? I
           | honestly don't get it.
        
             | tomrod wrote:
             | Currently, iOS is a substandard platform for software
             | freedom. While it has done a fairly decent job implementing
             | a good user interface, it comes at the cost of freedom on
             | mobile devices, leaving users and developers to the
             | capricious whims of a single company. When that company
             | decides to break encryption for any external group, is
             | eventually hacked, or other myriad of other single single
             | failure node situations occur, the collateral damage is
             | massive.
        
               | mixmastamyk wrote:
               | Mobian et al is the alternative, not surveillanceOS.
        
         | davkan wrote:
         | You can also use altstore to sideload uyou+.
        
         | pzmarzly wrote:
         | I am very happy with Vinegar for Safari - a simple adblock +
         | PiP + background play extension
        
       | riku_iki wrote:
       | No mentions about ads?..
        
         | spuz wrote:
         | The site mentions: "without annoying ads"
        
         | BuildTheRobots wrote:
         | No ads. Also play in background or popout window.
         | 
         | GrayJay is a new contender on the block that might be worth
         | looking at too.
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | Indeed but that also lacks sponsorblock :(
        
         | g-b-r wrote:
         | Just be careful that there are many clones filled with ads and
         | sh*t on the Play Store; Play Store where they, the real app,
         | cannot be
        
       | Nux wrote:
       | Shhhhht!
        
       | OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
       | My first install on getting a new phone.
        
         | gala8y wrote:
         | My first install on every phone of any friend who wants this
         | after a short pitch.
        
       | jaquesy wrote:
       | I've been using this for years to download YouTube videos when I
       | go on trips, it makes it super easy since you can just share the
       | link directly from YouTube to NewPipe and it'll pop up a neat
       | download UI to select quality and threads to use.
       | 
       | Really great app for that purpose, although I will say I just
       | used ReVanced for general YouTube browsing on my phone.
        
         | chii wrote:
         | I believe the one thing i see lacking for newpipe is viewing
         | livestreams. Revanced is the way to go for a good youtube
         | experience, but i use newpipe for downloading and saving a
         | video offline.
        
           | autoexec wrote:
           | I've watched livestreams in newpipe. A few hours after it
           | ended I used new pipe again to download the whole thing to
           | see the parts I missed (new pipe wouldn't let me rewind to
           | the start of the livestream after I joined)
        
           | 1una wrote:
           | v0.26.0 (the next release) should support viewing
           | livestreams. See
           | https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/10471
        
           | pmontra wrote:
           | I can view live streams in NewPipe 0.25.2 and I think I
           | airways did.
           | 
           | This is a live stream I just watched to check that it works
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydYDqZQpim8
           | 
           | It's a water pool in the Namib desert, so safe for work
        
             | argiopetech wrote:
             | Confirmed, with seeking.
             | 
             | There were times in the past where this was not the case,
             | but it was likely 0.24 or before.
        
       | DrNosferatu wrote:
       | Also, checkout NewPipe with built in SponsorBlock functionality:
       | 
       | https://github.com/polymorphicshade/NewPipe
        
         | seqizz wrote:
         | Yeah this is an absolute gem. Sad that original NewPipe didn't
         | include the functionality, even optionally.
        
           | aloisdg wrote:
           | well we tried to argue about it back in the time
        
             | wkat4242 wrote:
             | It annoyed me so much. Just let the users make their own
             | choices.
             | 
             | But anyway I had too many issues with newpipe anyway even
             | the fork.
        
         | micw wrote:
         | Honestly, I do not understand why one should use this. I have
         | recently seen some high quality YT videos, each of a length of
         | 30-60 minutes. In those videos where some sponsors mentioned
         | which took only one or two minutes. Seems perfectly OK for me
         | to support the creators. I guess if many people block sponsor
         | content, this kind of vids will die.
        
           | Bishonen88 wrote:
           | So what are we paying premium for if the creator pushes their
           | own ads? Anyhow, when I was watching TV year's ago, I hardly
           | ever stayed on a channel during the ads break. I won't
           | sacrifice my time being sold on mostly rubbish which I
           | wouldn't buy anyway (vpn, brilliant etc.)
        
           | ndriscoll wrote:
           | I see two scenarios:
           | 
           | 1. The computer doesn't know whether you skipped the ad, and
           | won't feel bad when you do.
           | 
           | 2. The computer does track whether you watch the ad segment,
           | and that information makes it back to the advertiser.
           | Personally, I wouldn't want to support "creators" spying on
           | me in this way.
           | 
           | In either case, the creator has no costs for you watching,
           | and youtube has lower costs if you skip the sponsored
           | segment. If you choose not to watch the video in the first
           | place, it can only hurt their sponsorship.
        
             | gsich wrote:
             | At least for Youtube the 2nd statement is true. You can see
             | it in videos with the spike after an ad segment.
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | > In either case, the creator has no costs for you
             | watching, and youtube has lower costs if you skip the
             | sponsored segment.
             | 
             | I'm pretty sure the youtuber gets money from google for
             | views even if you don't view their sponsored content
             | section (if someone knows better please let me know) and
             | Google makes money by collecting data on what you watch,
             | how often, when, using what device, from what IP address,
             | etc.
        
           | endisneigh wrote:
           | People want content without any inconvenience, it's that
           | simple.
           | 
           | If they use ads they will block.
           | 
           | If they ask for payment they will pirate.
           | 
           | Luckily these people are the minority or there would be no
           | content to begin with
        
             | Nextgrid wrote:
             | > If they ask for payment they will pirate.
             | 
             | If the price & convenience is right, a significant chunk
             | (enough to offset the impact of freeloaders) will pay.
             | 
             | Movie piracy used to be the norm before Netflix came along,
             | yet movies were still made.
             | 
             | Music piracy was the same until Spotify came along, yet
             | there's more music than ever being produced.
        
               | endisneigh wrote:
               | > Luckily these people are the minority or there would be
               | no content to begin with
               | 
               | The vast majority of people do not pirate, and most
               | people who pay would probably find piracy unethical to
               | begin with.
        
               | southerntofu wrote:
               | > The vast majority of people do not pirate
               | 
               | I would be happy to see a serious study about this. What
               | you call piracy has been the norm for centuries and
               | millenia for spreading culture and reinterpreting
               | music/shows produced by other people.
               | 
               | In the vast majority of the world (including in the
               | global north), the budget you have for culture is low (if
               | any) and when you have people with a computer, copying
               | stuff is very common. For example El Paquete in Cuba was
               | well documented, but even growing up in France i remember
               | so many examples of just sharing with friends (before the
               | Internet but still).
               | 
               | Even for the newer generations, Youtube & Spotify started
               | as pirate services hosting a myriad of copyrighted
               | content. I don't know about Spotify, but i still see
               | people watching whole movies/shows pirated on Youtube
               | rather often when going to places with shared computers.
               | 
               | Sharing is the norm. Restricting sharing is delusional
               | desire for control. Still, it's important that people
               | making art & science make a living, although it's not
               | _just_ them who need to make a living in this crazy world
               | and we 'd be all better off with UBI or abolition of
               | private property (one can dream). So you may find it
               | interesting that HADOPI, the law that criminalized non-
               | profit file-sharing in France actually ordered a study on
               | piracy and media consumption back in the early 2010s, and
               | their own study acknowledged that there was no economic
               | loss from piracy (as people don't reduce their budget due
               | to pirating) and the bigger pirates were also the bigger
               | buyers.
               | 
               | I dare you to find a single person who "does not pirate"
               | in any sense of the world and actively respects copyright
               | laws. If only, someone who doesn't sing "happy birthday"
               | song because that's actually copyright infringement. Or
               | doesn't watch music videos on Youtube because they might
               | be pirated. I bet that person doesn't exist, or at least
               | that they are not the "vast majority".
        
               | eldaisfish wrote:
               | this is a misleading reply because you ignore the speed
               | and scale at which the internet allows sharing to happen.
               | In the past, the speed of sharing was limited by
               | communication at the time, either word of mouth, the
               | speed of printing books etc.
               | 
               | If what you describe truly was the norm, then creating
               | any sort of content for any reason would generate
               | negative returns. This was and is rarely the case. I do
               | not see it as unfair for content creators to be paid and
               | to demand that you consume their content on their terms,
               | within reason.
        
               | autoexec wrote:
               | > If what you describe truly was the norm, then creating
               | any sort of content for any reason would generate
               | negative returns.
               | 
               | Piracy doesn't always hurt creators, and often it helps
               | them make money. The people who pirate the most, also
               | spend the most money on the things they pirate
               | (https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-are-valuable-customers-
               | not-...). Just because something is pirated that does not
               | mean there was a loss of income for the creator. I've
               | pirated things and enjoyed them enough that I purchased
               | them later, and I've purchased physical copies of things
               | and later pirated digital copies. I've also pirated
               | things I'd never have purchased at all which means there
               | was never any chance of any of my money going to the
               | creator.
               | 
               | The vast majority of people today pirate all the time.
               | Posting a meme that contains a copyrighted character or
               | image, or listening to a song on youtube from anything
               | other than an official channel, sharing a webcomic over
               | social media, creating a GIF from a movie or TV show,
               | streaming a video game playthrough, and downloading a
               | youtube video to edit into a reaction video are all
               | technically violations of copyright law. Copyright law is
               | so draconian that what most people consider totally
               | normal activities online are violations.
               | 
               | > I do not see it as unfair for content creators to be
               | paid and to demand that you consume their content on
               | their terms, within reason.
               | 
               | I agree that creators have a right for a chance at
               | payment for their work. I disagree that I have no right
               | to choose how to consume that content. Most of the
               | restrictions on how media is intended to be consumed
               | comes from the corporations who own the copyright and not
               | the creators themselves.
               | 
               | When creators make it known that they want their content
               | consumed in a certain way I'll take it into
               | consideration. Musicians who ask that you only ever
               | listen to their albums in their entirety and never listen
               | to a single track I ignore. When Dave Chappelle asked
               | fans to not watch Chappelle's Show I agreed and didn't.
        
             | poink wrote:
             | > Luckily these people are the minority or there would be
             | no content to begin with
             | 
             | There is a whole galaxy of content creators who make great
             | stuff but clearly aren't making a living directly off
             | content.
             | 
             | People like making content for tons of reasons.
        
               | FirmwareBurner wrote:
               | _> People like making content for tons of reasons.
               | 
               | _
               | 
               | Pretty much yeah. Just remember back to the first few
               | years of youtube. Nobody was making any money from that
               | but they were still doing it out of passion/hobby.
        
             | matheusmoreira wrote:
             | Total nonsense. Before all this advertising nonsense, the
             | web used to be literally full of people who had enough
             | intrinsic motivation to create without compensation. People
             | used to literally _pay_ to have their own website in order
             | to get their ideas out there.
             | 
             | Open source is literally proof of this. I make software in
             | my free time simply because I enjoy it. I publish it out
             | there in a variety of licenses with zero expectations. I
             | got a GitHub Sponsors profile with zero sponsors and I'm
             | not even mad about it.
        
               | freshhawk wrote:
               | When your job depends on it you tend to work really hard
               | at believing that advertising is necessary and actually
               | it's good, actually actually relevant ads are helpful!
               | After all, if it wasn't then what am I doing with my
               | life?
        
               | autoexec wrote:
               | In the case of advertisers that'd be mostly lying and
               | manipulating people while hurting them by enabling a
               | dangerous system of surveillance that threatens
               | themselves and their families along with the rest of us.
               | If I were an advertiser I'd probably want to lie to
               | myself too.
        
             | ekianjo wrote:
             | > Luckily these people are the minority or there would be
             | no content to begin with
             | 
             | Most authors write books without making any money for
             | years. They write because they enjoy writing. Not because
             | they need it to make a living. So your statement is easily
             | invalidated by reality
        
               | carlosjobim wrote:
               | They write because they enjoy writing, but they also need
               | to make a living. Those things are not exclusive.
        
           | mcpackieh wrote:
           | Besides skipping sponsor segments, it has many other useful
           | features such as marking/skipping intros and outros,
           | filler/jokes, and marking the timestamp of the video
           | highlight which is useful if you want to skip 20 minutes of
           | filler and jump to the part the thumbnail promises.
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | If you watch YouTube enough you'll basically become aware of
           | all the sponsors pretty quickly (and may even be a customer
           | of some already!), so any exposure beyond that is a waste of
           | time for all involved - if I didn't buy the product after
           | seeing it 10 times, I won't buy it after seeing it the 11th
           | either.
        
             | charcircuit wrote:
             | >if I didn't buy the product after seeing it 10 times, I
             | won't buy it after seeing it the 11th either.
             | 
             | There is still value to the sponser in keeping a brand
             | fresh in your mind
        
               | smegsicle wrote:
               | well then fuckem
        
               | mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
               | Oh I'm so sorry, in that case I'll watch every single
               | NordVPN sponsorship spot.
        
               | SkipperTool wrote:
               | People forget that over-advertising can be more damaging
               | than no- or under-advertising. Take Ryan Reynolds and
               | Mint Mobile. I genuinely love his acting (to each their
               | own for sure) but after being constantly bombarded with
               | commercials for Mint Mobile, I legitimately am tired and
               | lately avoid not just him, but Mint Mobile, Ryan
               | Reynolds, and anything associated with him.
               | 
               | The problem with YouTube is not that they have ads...it
               | is that the platform sprays for effect while claiming to
               | care about what they are doing when any reasonable user
               | can tell that they are simply flooding the pipes with ad
               | content.
        
               | TerrifiedMouse wrote:
               | > The problem with YouTube is not that they have ads...it
               | is that the platform sprays for effect while claiming to
               | care about what they are doing when any reasonable user
               | can tell that they are simply flooding the pipes with ad
               | content.
               | 
               | From what I heard, Google's sells ad space via an auction
               | system. They collect information about a viewer then when
               | said viewer watches a video/visits a website, all the ad
               | space on the video/website goes on auction with the
               | viewer's characteristics attached in real time.
               | Advertisers will look at the viewer characteristics and
               | decide if they want to bid. The winner of the auction
               | gets the ad spot and has their ad shown. All this is of
               | course fully automated and over in just a few
               | milliseconds.
               | 
               | What this means is, advertisers have full control over
               | what ads you get. Ad space goes to the highest bidder. If
               | you have money, you can spam a specific demographic to
               | death with your ads. Google does not in anyway try to
               | protect the quality of life of its users.
               | 
               | Google's system is both amazing and disappointing at the
               | same time. It's an amazingly efficient way to maximize
               | the value of ad space but disappointing in the Google
               | doesn't do any kind of advance user behavior modeling to
               | see what ads the user would be most receptive to (i.e.
               | would not frustrate the user, high probability of
               | engagement with what's advertised, ...) instead they
               | leave it to the "free market" (i.e. the advertisers) to
               | figure that out.
        
               | dvaletin wrote:
               | It's an amazingly efficient way to maximize the google
               | profit. Google for google case, when they faked their
               | auction in order to get more revenue...
        
               | djtango wrote:
               | I'm actually relatively chilled about ads. I like to see
               | who is advertising what from a macro POV but one thing
               | online was super bad at was spamming ads at you. The most
               | egregious was Crunchyroll back in the day where you might
               | see the same ad back to back 3 times in a row for every
               | ep you watched.
               | 
               | Maybe the fix is actually to adjust and make the ad lower
               | energy and more bland to target the subliminal more,
               | assuming the online ad networks don't sort themselves out
        
               | matheusmoreira wrote:
               | Sponsors don't get to hijack the caches of our brains.
               | Our minds are ours, we alone will decide what information
               | is or isn't "kept fresh".
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | That's why when you see an advertisement and recognize it
               | you should make a deliberate effort to remember why you
               | dislike the brand. If the advertiser gets to wish for
               | awareness, I'm entitled to be the monkey's paw.
        
               | wiseowise wrote:
               | Not for me.
        
             | jlokier wrote:
             | I don't agree. I watch YouTube tech, math, and science
             | content every day and that's not my experience.
             | 
             | There are a small set of products that seem to be
             | everywhere for a while, occupying a minority of sponsor
             | segments. But in most sponsor segments I see one-off
             | products that I'll never see again on any channel.
             | 
             | On the rare occasions where they show something that looks
             | really useful to me, I'd have to take a note because it's
             | so unlikely to be a product I will encounter again.
             | 
             | I don't take those notes, so I've seen a lot of great-
             | looking products that I'll never buy due to forgetting they
             | exist by the time they would be useful to me. When I need
             | something I tend to browse for what's available and/or look
             | at reviews with a skeptical eye, as I'm sure many people
             | do.
             | 
             | So the sponsor segments aren't that effective for me. But I
             | wouldn't call them repetitive, except for a few products
             | that come up a lot.
        
           | bozhark wrote:
           | This kind of sponsor*
        
           | trolan wrote:
           | Sponsorblock can also skip theme songs, recaps, and other
           | parts of content you may not want. I also enjoy being able to
           | show my children certain content from regular YouTube without
           | having them subjected to the ads or me scrolling around.
        
           | londons_explore wrote:
           | Try using sponsorblock for a few weeks and then report
           | back...
           | 
           | I think it's one of those things like shoes... Nobody thinks
           | they need shoes till they try them, and then they tend to
           | wear them all the time.
        
           | posterboy wrote:
           | it'll lead to more hidden advertisement
        
           | poink wrote:
           | If you're not going to buy the sponsored product you're just
           | wasting time and bandwidth by watching the sponsor segment
        
           | happytiger wrote:
           | Really? They will die? Are you suggesting that long form
           | video didn't exist before YouTube sponsors?
           | 
           | Innovation requires disruption, which requires competition,
           | which YouTube has none of. If you want long form video
           | content to survive _in the medium to long term_ it needs to
           | be possible to make a living in a diversity of ways and not
           | be dependent on just one provider. So in that sense
           | supporting the existing system only serves to reinforce the
           | failure of long form content, as eventually a system without
           | substantial competition will move to reduce cost and
           | eventually focus only on the more profitable short form
           | content (which is what's happening).
           | 
           | The current war between YouTube and its users wouldn't be
           | possible _if there were any viable alternatives at all_.
           | 
           | I would think if you really cared about long form creators
           | you'd support platforms that paid properly and didn't keep
           | 45% of their revenues. Even Apple only keeps 30% and they get
           | deeply criticized, but whenever YouTube comes up people come
           | out defend them. And all of this happens before subscription
           | revenue, and it doesn't include any of the other revenue
           | Google takes off the top like landing page ads, sponsored
           | promotion, etc.
           | 
           | Long form is in _danger_ because of YouTube's shift towards
           | short form video. We should be pushing for competitors and
           | not allowing them this insanely dominant position to an
           | entire Internet content type.
        
             | darkwater wrote:
             | Are you saying that YT takes 45% of the money a YouTuber
             | negotiates directly with a sponsor to talk about them for
             | 1-2 minutes in a long-form video?
        
           | pretzel5297 wrote:
           | I have it configured to not skip ads on a few creators who:
           | 
           | 1- Makes good, useful content that I watch often. 2- Doesn't
           | abuse sponsorship sections. Sponsor segment at the beginning
           | of a video? Auto-skip. Half the video is about the sponsor?
           | Auto-skip. Constantly gets sponsorship from
           | spam/fraudy/irrelevant companies? Auto-skip.
           | 
           | For all the channels that doesn't fall into these categories:
           | tough luck.
        
           | nfriedly wrote:
           | Despite the name, it actually blocks a lot more than just
           | sponsors. It can be set to automatically skip intros, outros,
           | recaps, like and subscribe reminders, non-music sections of
           | music videos, and other "fluff".
           | 
           | It significantly boosts the signal to noise ratio, and makes
           | YouTube a much better experience.
        
             | deadfece wrote:
             | That sounds very useful on the non-ad improvements, and
             | oddly enough I might try it for these areas. The sponsor
             | mentions don't really bother me and I just skip them if
             | they're not relevant. Sometimes it's kind of neat to see
             | one and think "Oh, this creator got sponsored by <big deal
             | tech product>, that's cool, get paid!", or if they're
             | sponsored by bs snake oil companies, then I may discount
             | the creator's input a great deal on account of them not
             | having any discernment.
             | 
             | It's a small data point about the content, so it can
             | sometimes be helpful if I'm trying to decide who to pick
             | amongst forty different 2hr lectures on the same thing.
        
               | crashmat wrote:
               | Maybe they accept the bs snake oil sponsorships because
               | they need the money and assume their audience is smart
               | enough to not get tricked.
        
           | ropable wrote:
           | The human ability to rationalise blocking out sponsored
           | advertising is basically infinite.
        
             | skydhash wrote:
             | Why would people watch things they don't like?
        
             | ekianjo wrote:
             | The human ability to justify ads is apparently also
             | infinite but has much less valid arguments
        
           | matheusmoreira wrote:
           | > I do not understand why one should use this.
           | 
           | Because we don't want to be advertised to. There is no need
           | for any further justification.
           | 
           | > I guess if many people block sponsor content, this kind of
           | vids will die.
           | 
           | Let them die.
        
           | dawidpotocki wrote:
           | On my laptop alone SponsorBlock has skipped 5225 segments,
           | which equals to 1d 20h. That's a lot of time I would waste by
           | watching all of these.
           | 
           | Also, if you are fine with sponsor spots, you probably would
           | have to also be okay with watching ads, so no adblocking
           | either then.
        
           | ekianjo wrote:
           | > In those videos where some sponsors mentioned which took
           | only one or two minutes. Seems perfectly OK for me to support
           | the creators.
           | 
           | There is no good reason to force ads on anyone. I dont care
           | if the creator needs to make a living out of youtube. Thats
           | their problem and they should use stuff like patreon instead.
        
           | capybara_2020 wrote:
           | In most cases sponsored content has the same problem as
           | traditional ads but because it is coming directly from
           | someone people see as more reliable viewers might fall for it
           | quicker. With the added disadvantage of those ads having no
           | real regulation and opaque quality checks, if any by the
           | creator.
           | 
           | One example that comes to mind is how a lot of financial
           | creators pushed crypto products.
        
           | Roark66 wrote:
           | I really don't care about sponsor block (I mean I don't mind
           | these parts of the videos), but adblock on YouTube is
           | absolutely essential. And these apps usually when they have
           | adblocl this includes sponsor block.
        
           | adrusi wrote:
           | _I do not understand why one should use this_
           | 
           | I don't care to sit through sponsor reads, nothing more to it
           | than that. When I'm viewing on a client that doesn't support
           | sponsorblock, I'll manually seek to the end of the segment.
           | Supporting the creator is great; I pay for YouTube Premium,
           | though thanks to uBlock Origin I wouldn't see the add if even
           | if I stopped paying. To a couple creators, I send a regular
           | donation. If I could spend another $10/mo to make up for any
           | revenue my sponsorblock usage loses other creators, I'd do
           | that, but I'm less enthusiastic about regularly listening to
           | sales pitches for the same products over and over again.
           | 
           | Also: I'm not sure how common it is for YouTube sponsorship
           | contracts to have payment contingent on the view count for
           | the section of the video with the sponsored segment, and I'm
           | not sure if the way sponsorblock skips such segments is
           | visible to YouTube's analytics. With at least some of the
           | most prolific sponsors of creators I watch (Audible,
           | Brilliant, etc) the payout is based on how many viewers sign
           | up for a trial through the affiliate link. And YouTube has no
           | incentive to make it easy for creators to share their
           | detailed analytics with third-party sponsors, since
           | independent sponsorships cut YouTube out of the deal. YouTube
           | would prefer creators replace their independent sponsor reads
           | with mid-roll ads.
        
           | Funes- wrote:
           | >I guess if many people block sponsor content, this kind of
           | vids will die.
           | 
           | Then so be it. I miss when people uploaded videos for the
           | sake of it, not to make money by way of exploiting the users'
           | cognitive vulnerabilities. I remember the days when I could
           | search for a video on how to replace my dirt bike's
           | carburetor and it was less than two minutes, didn't include
           | any ads, and was straight to the point, all first person POV;
           | you wouldn't even see the guy's face. Nobody was trying to
           | get rich off it. It was all about sharing it with other
           | people.
        
         | m-p-3 wrote:
         | There is also LibreTube that comes with SponsorBlock
         | 
         | https://libretube.dev/
        
           | karlzt wrote:
           | And PipePipe
           | 
           | https://codeberg.org/NullPointerException/PipePipe
        
             | BJxdr wrote:
             | And Clipious
             | 
             | https://github.com/lamarios/clipious
        
           | rjzzleep wrote:
           | LibreTube has a feature that no other piped/invidious client
           | has, which is to have one auth instance and one view
           | instance.
           | 
           | Sometimes videos are not viewable on a specific instance, but
           | this way you can keep all your subscriptions and other
           | settings even when switching to a different instance.
        
             | mastazi wrote:
             | > that no other piped/invidious client has,
             | 
             | If I understand what you are saying, Piped has this. For
             | example I can stream from instance-1.com but at the same
             | time I'm logged into instance-2.com so that I can keep my
             | favourites and settings. See "Instance" section here
             | https://piped.video/preferences particularly the option
             | "Use a different instance for authentication"
        
               | kaliqt wrote:
               | Currently, I think for many users Piped is completely
               | unusable due to errors that consistently occur preventing
               | the video from loading.
        
               | mastazi wrote:
               | In my case at least, I can solve this by changing
               | instance in the settings, as explained in my previous
               | comment. Based on my experience, it seems that the less
               | popular instances tend to have less frequent errors. Your
               | mileage may vary though.
        
           | k8svet wrote:
           | Huh, quite a choice to not include screenshots.
        
           | microflash wrote:
           | LibreTube also allows you to directly stream from YouTube
           | without any Invidious or Piped proxy which might be handy
           | when these proxies are slow.
        
           | IMSAI8080 wrote:
           | And FreeTube for desktop (just has regular adblock). It's an
           | alternate client with a nice UI with a similar layout to
           | YouTube.
           | 
           | https://freetubeapp.io/
        
             | mrln wrote:
             | FreeTube also has SponsorBlock built in, actually. I highly
             | recommend it!
             | 
             | Also, I would not call it "adblock". It just comes without
             | ads out of the box, just like most comparable apps.
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | Yeah this is the best version. I liked newpipe but their
         | attitude to sponsorblock is tiring.
         | 
         | But I moved to libretube now. Newpipe kept throwing up errors
         | when I jumped around a video.
        
           | bisby wrote:
           | I use sponsorblock on desktop, and sometimes I find the parts
           | that they skip annoying. I don't fully agree with where and
           | when they skip things. Watching Hot Ones today, they had a
           | segment about how they have Hot Ones Hot Pockets now. and it
           | skipped over it. But also, the hot pockets were a big part of
           | the episode. For LTT videos, they skip the entire segue,
           | instead of leaving the segue and then skipping the sponsor.
           | The segues are a meme. They aren't sponsorship. Another
           | channel I watch tests microphones and uses ad read to demo
           | demo different mic quality. At that point skipping the ad
           | read is skipping the actual content of the video. There's a
           | few channels that mix the ad read into the context of what
           | they are doing, and skipping those sections skips over
           | important context for the rest of the video, and then i have
           | to rewind into the sponsor part to see what is going on.
           | 
           | I actually agree with newpipe to some degree. There is very
           | bad sponsorship, and there is light mentions of sponsorship
           | or sponsorship adjacent content. not everything is black or
           | white. Sponsorblock makes it all or nothing (they have
           | different categories but I often disagree with what they put
           | into the categories).
           | 
           | I wish I could turn it on per channel. because some channels
           | I hate the 2 minute long brilliant ads, but on other channels
           | Im fine with a 5 second "we're building this thing using X
           | company parts because X company is sponsoring the video"
           | 
           | I still use it, but i find it just as frustrating as it is
           | helpful sometimes.
        
             | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
             | You can configure sponsorblock with various options. End
             | credits, sponsored sections, lots of things
        
               | bisby wrote:
               | Right. My issue is that I disagree with what they
               | consider "sponsored sections" sometimes. "Only skip
               | sponsor segments longer than 30 seconds" isn't an option.
               | Long ads that make up most of the video: bad. A brief
               | passing comment about "And thanks to our sponsor for
               | supporting this video" dont need a cut.
        
               | 2Gkashmiri wrote:
               | that entirely depends on the user contributions. you know
               | its people manually submitting these snippets of what to
               | skip and not automatic?
        
               | bisby wrote:
               | Yes, I'm aware. I suspect the users who contribute tend
               | to fall into the category of "The host saying 'and now a
               | word from our sponsor' or explaining that 'today we are
               | using product X so don't be surprised when the video is
               | different' is part of the sponsorship" because I expect
               | that people who contribute self select into people who
               | are very anti-anything sponsor related ... I prefer
               | having that left in, so that the sudden cut is at least
               | expected.
               | 
               | My issue is less with the tool and more with the user
               | contributions. But until there are alternative sources
               | for sponsorblock that fit my preferences, it seems like
               | the options are "don't use it at all" or "use it and be
               | frustrated from time to time". I don't really care who is
               | at fault, I'm not trying to point fingers, I'm just
               | saying that I understand where NewPipe is coming from.
               | Not everyone has to agree on whether all sponsor spots
               | are good or bad.
        
             | DoktorDelta wrote:
             | Sponsorblock does allow you to whitelist specific channels.
             | Should be in the settings somewhere, I've only ever done it
             | via the ReVanced app but it should still be an option on
             | desktop.
        
               | bisby wrote:
               | By "on desktop" I mean FreeTube (and simply not via
               | NewPipe or on mobile). It has options for the different
               | types of things to skip, but my issue is with disagreeing
               | with how overly strict they can be about flagging things
               | as sponsor segments.
               | 
               | Some of it is per channel settings (some channels have
               | way too long of sponsor segments), and some of it is just
               | disagreement about how granular to be (on LTT they cut
               | out the entire segue to the sponsor, and not just the
               | sponsor spot, i dont want the LTT sponsors, but not being
               | serious is their whole thing, I don't mind watching the
               | segues)
        
               | crashmat wrote:
               | users mark the segments to be skipped.
        
             | ryncewynd wrote:
             | What's the channel that does ad reads to demo microphone
             | quality?
             | 
             | That's such a simple and genius idea
        
               | addandsubtract wrote:
               | Not the channel that OP meant, but Tom Scott recently did
               | a video on decibel and loudness, where he reads a sponsor
               | message during a mic check: https://youtu.be/Is_wu0VRIqQ
        
               | bisby wrote:
               | The tom scott one was one example I was thinking of...
               | With the sponsor segment clipped out, that video lacks a
               | LOT of context.
               | 
               | The main one I was thinking of was Senpai Gaming. He does
               | reviews of microphones and streamer equipment. He just
               | released a video of the new Shure SM7dB mic where he does
               | the sponsor read on the new mic.
               | 
               | Recently, he reviewed the new Elgato teleprompter. During
               | which he read the ad read from the teleprompter as a
               | means of demonstrating how the eyecontact looks/feels
               | while reading text from the prompter. It feels like a
               | legit test for a teleprompter to be able to demo it as
               | such. The problem is. He says that he is going to demo 4
               | things about the prompter and the first one is simply
               | reading text. And then he starts to say "And we're going
               | to do that by sharing the sponsor of today's video"...
               | But it sponsorblock cuts it as "And we're going to" and
               | then it cuts to point 2. Had sponsorblock cut that after
               | he said "sponsor" I would have at least known what was
               | going on, but a random mid sentence cut... I feel like
               | the Sponsorblock contributors self select to be the most
               | rabid anti-sponsor people out there. Sponsorships are
               | pure evil and we shouldn't have to even hear words next
               | to the sponsorship. I understand why NewPipe disagrees
               | and wants to differentiate between good and bad and not
               | just "everything bad".
        
             | wkat4242 wrote:
             | Sponsorblock depends on the users specifying which parts
             | are which of course. It's not some kind of AI.
             | 
             | It's not perfect but I want to have the choice.
        
               | bisby wrote:
               | Wasn't trying to suggest it was AI. I'm aware it's crowd
               | sourced. But in the end, I disagree with the crowd
               | sourcing most of the time, so regardless of if it's a
               | single person, crowd sourced, AI, or anything else... it
               | doesn't cut things where I want it to in a lot of cases.
               | 
               | And I'm pretty sure that the type of person who would
               | spend time submitting the timestamps is probably a person
               | who also is aggressively anti-ads/sponsorships, so is
               | probably aggressive in their timestamps, which is fine,
               | but it makes me gravitate towards agreeing with NewPipe
               | on "not everything is pure evil" more than the
               | sponsorblock submitters.
        
             | Rastonbury wrote:
             | I actually like it being aggressive, the fewer minutes of
             | my life I spend on content of questionable value the
             | better, I already watch too much youtube for my own good
             | and never find rewinding back through a skipped section
             | worth it
        
               | echelon wrote:
               | This is a good perspective.
               | 
               | What did you actually miss? Is your life worse for it?
        
               | Rastonbury wrote:
               | Realised this when Reddit removed 3rd party apps I never
               | installed the official one, my life is no worse and they
               | lost a user. We are just animals driven by brain
               | chemicals, I never thought app timers were for me but I
               | use them now
        
               | weeblewobble wrote:
               | Might as well skip the whole video!
        
               | echelon wrote:
               | In the limit: might as well tune out everything and skip
               | life.
               | 
               | The other limit: all things must be consumed exactly as
               | delivered, and we must consume everything we can. (I'll
               | disregard selection / filtering algorithm.)
               | 
               | The healthy medium is to consume, analyze, and synthesize
               | how it makes sense for your particular style of
               | traversing the information topology. Climb the gradients
               | you want. Go as deep or as shallow as makes sense to you.
               | 
               | If you can derive value from skipping video played at
               | double speed, good. If you want to or need to watch the
               | whole thing twice, also good. You do what you need to do.
               | No one prescription fits the bill for all people and all
               | circumstances.
        
             | Tams80 wrote:
             | While they are aggressive, it is optional and you are
             | trying to avoid their revenue source. So there's reason to
             | be so picky.
             | 
             | I just fast-forward or the the sponsorship segments out if
             | they are too annoying.
        
               | prmoustache wrote:
               | which is exactly the same wuth sponsorblock.
        
           | ekianjo wrote:
           | > I liked newpipe but their attitude to sponsorblock is
           | tiring.
           | 
           | What do they mean? They dont even want to provide it as an
           | option?
        
             | WithinReason wrote:
             | Yes, also including the "restore downvotes" functionality
        
         | WD40forRust wrote:
         | Also check out BraveNewPipe, which is NewPipe x SponsorBlock
         | with proper search options NewPipe also refuses to implement as
         | nofix!
        
       | chasil wrote:
       | I use Skytube; I wasn't aware that Newpipe had a download
       | feature.
        
         | jakeogh wrote:
         | skytube is nice for search since you can ban chans, and
         | therefore skip the spam.
        
       | ForHackernews wrote:
       | This is the default player on https://e.foundation/e-os/
        
       | noman-land wrote:
       | NewPipe is the best. Dunno how people watch YouTube without it.
       | You can also subscribe to channels from it without a YouTube
       | account.
        
         | grudg3 wrote:
         | Agree, but unfortunately I still can't use it to stream to my
         | Chromecast so I need to go to the YouTube app when I want to
         | play stuff on TV
        
           | Zambyte wrote:
           | Can't you just display your screen using chromecast? I use
           | newpipe on my tv all the time by juat plugging my phone in
           | via HDMI.
        
           | m4rtink wrote:
           | SmartTube supports Chromecast/Android TV:
           | https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube
        
             | actf wrote:
             | To be clear, it doesn't support casting, which is what the
             | previous commenter was asking for.
             | 
             | It runs directly on android tv. The app even says that
             | there is no support for phones or tablets so casting isn't
             | going to work.
             | 
             | I also agree that casting is the major missing feature from
             | all these apps. Mirroring might be a substitute for some
             | but, again to be clear, it isn't the same as casting and in
             | most cases the quality is going to suffer significantly.
        
               | m4rtink wrote:
               | Sure, but I think thats still a viable workaround -
               | especially as SmartTube plays the video natively on the
               | device with maximum available quality.
               | 
               | Sure, if you have the video link in your phone, you might
               | need to get it to the TV/Chromecast somehow, but I think
               | that is usually manageable.
        
         | endorphine wrote:
         | I'm watching fine on Firefox with uBlock Origin. I mean, I
         | don't get ads. What else am I missing by not using NewPipe (I
         | don't care about downloading videos).
        
           | fwn wrote:
           | The parent wrote
           | 
           | > You can also subscribe to channels from it without a
           | YouTube account.
           | 
           | This means that losing your Google account does not mean
           | losing your playlist.
           | 
           | Big tech accounts can be surprisingly fragile.
        
             | ceuk wrote:
             | FYI Google takeout lets you set regular, automatic exports
             | of any of your Google data (e.g. you can have a backup of
             | your YouTube subscriptions, playlists etc emailed to you
             | every month).
        
           | mxmbrb wrote:
           | One can't switch to a different tab, out of the browser or
           | lock the phone while continuing listening to the
           | video/podcast/music.
        
         | winwang wrote:
         | It's extremely simple: I pay for Premium.
        
           | yard2010 wrote:
           | How can you disable tiktok on youtube? I've been a paying
           | customer for years and I would happily pay more to remove
           | this cancer.
        
             | docmars wrote:
             | Do you mean their Shorts feature?
        
       | tux3 wrote:
       | If the war on ablockers continues things may escalate, and the
       | next step will soon mean deploying stronger DRM, in the same way
       | that was tried in the fight against piracy.
       | 
       | There's a real parallel between the two. Streaming killed piracy
       | for a while because the service was easy and convenient, with
       | everything in one place. Then, streaming added more and more ads
       | all while it became more fragmented. Now if you pay for a
       | service, you will still see ads, and you have an increasingly
       | limited catalog (even on Youtube, as creators move extra content
       | on Nebula or Patreon)
       | 
       | The more Youtube squeezes and pushes ads, the more demand there
       | will be for adblockers.
        
         | vbezhenar wrote:
         | The end game is encrypted DRM stream (which is decrypted in the
         | display) with encoded ads (so you can't block it tinkering with
         | JS).
         | 
         | I guess that only abundance of devices without DRM is stopping
         | this scenario.
        
           | ethbr1 wrote:
           | Only general purpose computers are stopping this scenario.
        
           | richwater wrote:
           | > encrypted DRM stream
           | 
           | Widevine already exists and is increasingly difficult to
           | crack, especially the key levels required for 4k content.
           | 
           | > encoded ads
           | 
           | Only a matter of time before hardware encoders can do this on
           | the fly
        
           | tomrod wrote:
           | > The end game is encrypted DRM stream
           | 
           | That's not the endgame -- Digg:Reddit::YouTube:Vimeo is the
           | end game, IMHO.
        
           | alkonaut wrote:
           | How are the ads even skippable on YouTube? I have never
           | really had a good answer to that. I mean, why is the ad even
           | a different stream or detectable on the client? Shouldn't the
           | ads just be spliced into the videos if you really want to
           | make sure people watch them? Is it because it would be
           | prohibitively expensive to do that kind of live encoding for
           | each viewer?
        
             | jack_pp wrote:
             | You wouldn't even need live encoding because every YouTube
             | video is normalized and if you have two streams that were
             | encoded with the same parameters you can cut and
             | concatenate without re encoding
        
             | meindnoch wrote:
             | Because you could just seek over them?
        
               | alkonaut wrote:
               | Yes, but the server knows exactly what frames it has sent
               | you and when. If you don't want to watch the ad frames
               | there's nothing the server can do, but it can make sure
               | to not send you the frame that comes after the ad, until
               | the 10 seconds of the ad has passed since it sent you the
               | last frame before the ad.
        
               | tux3 wrote:
               | That works for pre-roll ads, forcing the client to
               | silence them and wait at best (I believe the Twitch
               | streaming service does this)
               | 
               | For mid-stream ads, that doesn't work. You could pre-
               | fetch the ad and surrounding video early, so that you can
               | watch buffered content while the server thinks an ad is
               | playing.
        
               | alkonaut wrote:
               | The server would need to not allow buffering further than
               | the next ad.
        
               | ethbr1 wrote:
               | Multistream client, continually skipping around, and
               | stitching together buffers?
        
               | meindnoch wrote:
               | Ok, but now you see, it would be a bit more involved than
               | just splicing together static byte streams that even a
               | dumb CDN can accomplish.
        
               | meindnoch wrote:
               | So basically you would disallow pre-buffering more than
               | an ad's worth of video? I'm not sure about that...
        
             | vbezhenar wrote:
             | Right now (or few months ago, when I tinkered with it) ads
             | are different streams, so to skip them, ublock intercepts
             | and alters API responses, stripping ad info. Why they're
             | not embedded into video stream, that I don't know.
        
           | m-p-3 wrote:
           | And with Microsoft pushing TPM requirements with Windows 11
           | it's just a matter of time before thing are locked down even
           | further.
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | What is it with the disdain for paying for services people use?
         | People often don't feel like paying for it even if they use
         | YouTube more than other streaming services combined.
         | 
         | Maybe the issue is that people got so used to a decade of
         | unlimited high-quality videos for absolutely free?
        
           | arcbyte wrote:
           | Actually I'm very predisposed to paying for YouTube. My
           | experience with it however is that it presented me with ads
           | for YouTube premium every 5 minutes and put ad screens in my
           | way that were waaayyyyy to easy to click dozens of times a
           | day. It wouldn't take a hint that I was interested but not
           | ready to buy. I was trying to show someone a quick video on
           | my phone, not revisiting my financial relationship with
           | Google. After being treated like that, as much as I have the
           | money and willingness to pay, I don't want to give them my
           | money for a purely emotional reason. Some product manager
           | somewhere at Google needs fired. Probably a lot of them.
        
           | lapinot wrote:
           | What is it with the disdain for mental health, privacy or
           | political mindfulness? Big tech don't feel like paying
           | attention to people even if people use Youtube more than
           | other streaming services combined. Maybe the issue is that
           | big tech got so used to a decade of unlimited high-quality
           | tracking for absolutely free?
        
           | friend_and_foe wrote:
           | It's not disdain for paying. Netflix proved that. It's
           | disdain for getting nickel and dimed and fleeced and losing
           | access without warning.
        
             | ertian wrote:
             | Well, and there's a difference in usage. When I use
             | Netflix, I'm usually either at my desktop computer or
             | sitting on my couch, selecting a movie for myself to watch.
             | It feels like a good old traditional media experience.
             | 
             | YouTube pops up everywhere, on every system I use.
             | Sometimes I'm sitting down to watch something longer, even
             | a movie, but often it's just links from friends or
             | coworkers, or from news articles on Reddit or Hacker News.
             | Sometimes it's lessons, sometimes it's breaking news,
             | sometimes it's 5-second meme videos. I use it at work and
             | at home. I might be on my wife's iPad, or my work phone, or
             | some library computer.
             | 
             | I'm not viewing all those videos on my personal devices
             | logged in using my own personal account. I don't feel
             | _comfortable_ logging in with my personal account
             | _everywhere_.
             | 
             | And there's something especially annoying about constantly
             | seeing ads on a service I'm paying for.
             | 
             | On top of that, logging in everywhere lets Google track
             | everything I view--every random Reddit click--and Google's
             | the single biggest data collector & exploiter I know. I'm
             | _paying_ them to let them track me.
             | 
             | All told, paying for YouTube feels kinda icky in a way that
             | paying for Netflix does not. I _do_ pay for YouTube
             | Premium, but I still prefer to watch videos without logging
             | in, (ed:) _with_ an adblocker.
        
             | radicality wrote:
             | What I do have a disdain for with Netflix, is paying for
             | the version with 4k access and then struggling to actually
             | get the service I paid for.
             | 
             | Around two years ago I wanted to watch Squid Game on my
             | MacBook Pro + external 4k monitor, and iirc still couldn't
             | get it working in 4k after various yak shaving. Perhaps
             | it's now supported, but it felt pretty ridiculous to me
             | that I can't even access the full service I'm paying for.
        
           | k8sToGo wrote:
           | I don't mind paying. I do mind paying $15 and then see still
           | ads (Thanks to NordVPN for sponsoring this comment). Plus the
           | algorithm keeps getting worse and worse.
           | 
           | I'd prefer to pay like $5. I don't need YouTube music.
        
             | shric wrote:
             | Sponsorblock is 95%+ effective against these
        
               | Bishonen88 wrote:
               | Whole point of youtube premium is getting rid of ads on
               | mobile/tvs
        
               | shric wrote:
               | Sure, and there are sponsorblock solutions for both
               | mobile and TV
        
             | mulmen wrote:
             | The hilarious thing about all the VPN ads is that they are
             | collecting all the same tracking information as Google and
             | Facebook and aren't even protecting you from that existing
             | tracking.
        
             | davkan wrote:
             | $5/mo without YouTube Music would be an easy buy for me.
             | I'd gladly pay that to support creators, remove ads on my
             | tv, and to stop having to sideload uyou+ on my phone. I
             | have zero interest in YouTube music as Apple Music has
             | great offline support on the watch for my backcountry
             | rides.
        
             | endisneigh wrote:
             | I don't understand this logic. Why do you think it would be
             | cheaper without YouTube music? YouTube music literally is
             | just YouTube. Every song on there can be found on YouTube,
             | the only reason it's even a separate app and included in
             | premium is due to the lack of ads facilitating a better
             | music listening experience.
        
               | lazycouchpotato wrote:
               | Because YouTube themselves considers Music as an add-on,
               | and was willing to have a cheaper Premium tier without
               | Music in certain countries before they discontinued it.
               | 
               | https://9to5google.com/2023/09/26/youtube-premium-lite-
               | shut-...
        
           | month13 wrote:
           | I was happy paying for YouTube Premium, but they just doubled
           | the price in my geo. So yeah, i'm considering not paying.
        
           | rglullis wrote:
           | I don't mind paying for services.
           | 
           | I mind paying to get the privilege my data exploited.
           | 
           | I mind paying to a company that use its infinite bags of
           | money to outspend any competition unfairly.
           | 
           | I mind paying after getting blackmailed to accept a new deal
           | when they made sure they left no other choice in the market.
           | 
           | I mind paying for a service that is optimized for
           | "engagement" instead of my own well-being.
           | 
           | I mind paying to a company that doesn't know the time to stop
           | growing and wants to crawl into every aspect of my life.
        
             | BiteCode_dev wrote:
             | +1
             | 
             | And I mind that paying forces me to give my credit card to
             | a companies that have proven to work against me.
             | 
             | I mind that google will take over my entire phone if I
             | connect to any service with a google account because I paid
             | for it and not just login to that single service.
             | 
             | I mind that it will collect all that data if I don't have
             | an adblocker anyway, just not show me ad, and then give it
             | to gov entities (see PRISM).
             | 
             | What I don't mind is paying. I pay for spotify, for neflix,
             | for dynalist, for kagi, for chatgpt, for codepilot, for
             | github...
             | 
             | But I do mind that many people like you on HN accuses us of
             | being dishonest.
        
             | spuz wrote:
             | > I mind paying for a service that is optimized for
             | "engagement" instead of my own well-being.
             | 
             | > I mind paying to a company that doesn't know the time to
             | stop growing and wants to crawl into every aspect of my
             | life.
             | 
             | It's worth recognising that as an ad-supported service,
             | YouTube has an incentive to maximise the watch-time of its
             | users and that this incentive goes away when a user starts
             | paying monthly. But until they begin to earn more from
             | subscriptions than ads I can't see how this changes. Maybe
             | there's a universe in which the adblock crackdown actually
             | accelerates the decline in ad-viewership and YouTube
             | becomes incentivised to stop cramming cheap ad-friendly
             | content down our throats and becomes a platform for actual
             | high-quality content. For now, it's probably better to
             | support platforms that actually already work on this model
             | such as Nebula.
        
           | mulmen wrote:
           | Google has dumped so many gallons of urine into my cheerios
           | over the years that I will never, ever pay them for a
           | consumer service. They have spent literally decades now being
           | absolute assholes to consumers. If they charged for Youtube
           | from day 1 then maybe. But at this point the reputational
           | harm is permanent.
           | 
           | I do pay for Patreon and Nebula. But Google will never get a
           | cent from me.
        
           | colordrops wrote:
           | The person you are replying to answered in their comment:
           | even the paid service has ads, and a lot of the premium
           | content has been moved off of the platform.
        
           | swayvil wrote:
           | Digital media can be copied infinitely for free. Thus
           | delivering any benefit to infinite consumers. Thus
           | multiplying that benefit infinitely.
           | 
           | They want to choke that? May as well tell the wind to stop
           | blowing.
        
           | gaganyaan wrote:
           | Lack of trust. Google will find ways to enshittify YouTube
           | even if you pay for it.
           | 
           | I spend a lot of money at Bandcamp because in exchange I get
           | bits that I do what I want with. For some reason that's not
           | as popular for video, but it would solve this issue pretty
           | well.
        
           | asimops wrote:
           | I have zero issues with paying in general.
           | 
           | What I don't see, is me paying for the worse service.
           | 
           | Youtube Premium is 12.99EUR a month for me. For that small
           | price I get to create a Google Account, accept their TOS, let
           | them track and profile me, keep logging in everywhere
           | (because I delete all local storage in the browser routinely)
           | and replace the small and efficient NewPipe with the Youtube
           | app. Futhermore I cannot download a video now and play it
           | next month without connecting to the internet, or move it to
           | my small dedicated video player that doesn't even have
           | connection to the internet.
           | 
           | What is Googles CPM (revenue per 1000 clicks)? I don't think
           | it comes down to more the a low cent amount. I do not watch
           | enough video to justify the price of premium and I will never
           | watch ads, because those are psychological warfare and
           | completely underregulated...
           | 
           | If Google and all the others make a nice micro payment
           | platform for the browser, which work anonymously and without
           | much hassle, I will by all means pay them the amount of money
           | which me watching the ads would have generated plus 10%
           | service fee since they build the platform.
           | 
           | But not like this!
        
             | judge2020 wrote:
             | Those are the terms YouTube sets out when providing you
             | with the service. You can either pay for it (as the terms
             | set out), watch with ads (as the terms set out), or not
             | watch it. All other use is effectively piracy, and they
             | have the legal and arguably moral* right to block you for
             | not following it.
             | 
             | * Yes, it does cost them money to serve and store videos,
             | and no that doesn't disappear with scale. YouTube ingests
             | hundreds of thousands of hours of video a day, and chances
             | are every single video is on at least 2 continents at any
             | given time. They don't get some insane volume price on the
             | enterprise HDDs they use.
        
               | etedor wrote:
               | What terms? I don't recall agreeing to any?
        
               | judge2020 wrote:
               | > Your use of the Service is subject to these terms, the
               | YouTube Community Guidelines and the Policy, Safety and
               | Copyright Policies which may be updated from time to time
               | (together, this "Agreement").
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
               | 
               | Even if you don't think you have to follow them, they can
               | still ban you for not following their terms, or not
               | agreeing to them. They are not under an obligation to
               | serve you video unauthenticated and/or without receiving
               | what they expect to receive in return (agreeing to their
               | terms and thus paying via ads or money).
        
               | etedor wrote:
               | There's a terms.txt on my desktop that says by sending me
               | data my browser can choose whether or not to render it.
               | By sending me video data you agree to these terms.
        
               | judge2020 wrote:
               | And they're blocking you from receiving video? That's the
               | whole point of this post.
        
               | etedor wrote:
               | Not sure what you mean. I can view them just fine.
        
               | judge2020 wrote:
               | I mean them blocking you from viewing it due to using an
               | ad-blocker (or otherwise not using an official client).
               | The OP comment was about "the war on ad blockers", which
               | is what this thread is about.
        
               | eur0pa wrote:
               | I haven't agreed to any of that; don't remember signing
               | anything. This stuff does not hold up in EU. My device,
               | my rules.
        
               | judge2020 wrote:
               | This is in the situation they block you from watching if
               | you don't watch are. They are under no obligation to
               | serve you/your device, so they can institute any amount
               | of technical requirements to gain access to the content
               | it hosts, those requirements being plainly laid out in
               | the terms.
        
               | wkat4242 wrote:
               | Of course they get insane volume discounts. All big tech
               | companies do. It makes me cry to see how much we pay for
               | a ThinkPad. I wish I could buy one for that :')
               | 
               | Regarding morals I don't don't care. Not worth a
               | discussion :)
        
               | rglullis wrote:
               | > watch with ads (as the terms set out)
               | 
               | There is nothing there forcing me to watch the ads, or
               | that forces the _user agent_ (aka the browser) to behave
               | in the way that server running the application wishes to.
        
           | endisneigh wrote:
           | People will always rationalize their not paying. Tracking,
           | ethics, whatever. Anything other than abstaining from use,
           | lol.
        
             | InCityDreams wrote:
             | Nope. Thanks to this site i (finally, and only about an
             | hour ago) got newpipe from fdroid, subscribed to all my
             | channels, and sod youtube, I'm not going back. An
             | appropriate ad occasionally, no problem. But recently??
             | With newpipe there's a way out: i will happily contribute.
        
               | endisneigh wrote:
               | Using New pipe is not abstaining from YouTube, lol.
        
             | xigoi wrote:
             | I'd gladly not use YouTube if the creators uploaded their
             | videos somewhere else.
        
               | judge2020 wrote:
               | YouTube is too lucrative of a platform to pass up. It's
               | not just hosting, but literally sending droves of viewers
               | their way, and making sure those viewers are paying to
               | watch in a way that enables those creators to earn a
               | living. Take any large creator and 95-100% of their
               | regular fanbase probably wouldn't follow them to another
               | platform (unless it's so big that all/most of their
               | favorite creators also go to the same platform).
               | 
               | Any other platform not only needs to offer cheap/free
               | video hosting, but also send tons of users content
               | similar to their interests in a way that enables new and
               | up-and-coming creators to grow, and it needs to provide a
               | way to pay out those creators, or there's a negative
               | incentive to send any viewers to the other platform that
               | strictly makes them no money.
        
               | occz wrote:
               | Plenty of creators upload their things both to YouTube
               | and Nebula, and I choose Nebula for the ones that do. The
               | app isn't perfect, but it gets the job done.
        
             | zlg_codes wrote:
             | Youtube's free to block whoever they want. People will gain
             | access to what they want, independent of economic or
             | governmental forces.
        
           | ndriscoll wrote:
           | > Maybe the issue is that people got so used to a decade of
           | unlimited high-quality videos for absolutely free?
           | 
           | Or the videos aren't that high quality, and are just barely
           | at the level of value where people feel like the time spent
           | watching (or leaving it on as background noise) was worth it,
           | but not at the level of value where time spent+ads or money
           | are worth it.
           | 
           | Like I've watched a LTT video before. I suppose I was very
           | bored. Would I ever pay to watch it? No. Do I even think it
           | was worth the time I spent watching? Probably not. It's like
           | listening to some stranger at the pub tell a story. You might
           | listen if it's interesting, but you probably wouldn't pay
           | them for it.
           | 
           | There's tons of low quality, low effort stuff on there like
           | vlogs, clean/cook/shop with me, hauls, etc. It's a hobby for
           | the creator. People don't want to pay for it because it's not
           | worth anything.
        
           | nfriedly wrote:
           | I think part of the disdain is that YouTube was ad-free until
           | they ran all the competition out of business.
        
             | jsnell wrote:
             | YouTube hasn't been ad-free for over 17 years.
        
           | zlg_codes wrote:
           | Did you consider there's a population of people outsdide HN
           | who don't make 6 figures and have to budget?
           | 
           | I'm sure there will be lovely things this community has to
           | say about that demographic.
        
       | lacrimacida wrote:
       | Anything like this for Ios? Im now downloading vids or sound
       | files from youtube for offline use with invidio.us
        
         | haunter wrote:
         | Yattee, needs a bit more tinkering to setup though (it's a
         | general network videoplayer not an alternate YT client like
         | NewPipe)
         | 
         | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629
         | 
         | https://np.reddit.com/r/Yattee/comments/13d3lj7/how_to_set_u...
        
         | eur0pa wrote:
         | Sideload uYouPlus / uYouExtra with Altstore
        
       | bkm wrote:
       | Newpipe is great for background listening and PIP (window can be
       | resized/moved). For downloading, Seal reigns supreme. You can
       | 'share' a video to the app and it downloads the video right away.
       | 
       | Link: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/
        
       | Gerard0 wrote:
       | Awesome app. I send them money from time to time when possible!
        
       | sigmar wrote:
       | I've been using this on android for more than 6 years. Love being
       | able to quickly download a local copy of video or music as I'm
       | boarding a flight or train. Highly recommend getting it using
       | fdroid instead of apk because there have been points when youtube
       | made changes that break the app and you'll need to get the latest
       | update
        
         | clort wrote:
         | Highly recommend the NewPipe upstream repository within
         | F-Droid, they usually fix breakage right away whereas F-Droid
         | repository version can be a few days behind.
        
         | fariss wrote:
         | This is exactly what I used it for last time; downloading
         | videos before boarding a flight.
        
       | tomrod wrote:
       | We use it daily. We love quietly streaming music during meals. It
       | supports subscriptions (though no account integration to Google,
       | obviously).
       | 
       | Well done NewPipe, you're showing how web applications should be
       | done.
        
       | wg0 wrote:
       | If you tube blocks their API, would it be game over for such
       | clients? Or how does it work?
        
         | sigmar wrote:
         | iirc it loads the page as if it were a browser, then scrapes
         | and downloads the video.
        
           | alok-g wrote:
           | What prevents YouTube from sending ad and the actual video in
           | a single video download/stream?
        
             | master-lincoln wrote:
             | Probably the cost of creating that stream realtime while
             | ads spots are being bidded on
        
         | lapinot wrote:
         | They don't use official APIs (if you do you need to register a
         | dev account and this sort of thing would most likely be against
         | the TOS), just like yt-dlp they reverse engineer all sorts of
         | apps youtube has (the webpage, the mobile webpage, the TV app,
         | the android app, ...) and thus get all sorts of undocumented
         | APIs to scrap from.
        
       | anoncow wrote:
       | I can't find a source which has all the financial figures for
       | YouTube, but YouTube had a gross revenue of 29 bn USD in 2022.
       | Alphabet had 55 bn USD in net income in 2022 of which how much
       | was YouTube's share in the net income is unknown (or at least I
       | couldn't find it).
       | 
       | Let's use some assumptions to get to a number.
       | 
       | 1. Let's assume that out of the 29 bn USD revenue that YouTube
       | brings in 55% is shared with creators. Thus we are left with 13
       | bn USD.
       | 
       | 2. We know that YouTube's share in the overall revenue of
       | Alphabet was 10.5%. Let's assume that all of Alphabet's
       | properties were proportionately profitable (highly incorrect
       | assumption). If the properties were proportionately profitable,
       | YouTube's would have bought in a net income of 5.75 bn.
       | 
       | 3. In the past it has been reported that YouTube has been
       | breakeven from a profitability perspective.
       | 
       | This means that YouTube's net profit is in the range of 0 to 5bn
       | USD. This is at best a gross profit margin of 17% which is not
       | good for an internet services company.
       | 
       | I strongly believe technology like NewPipe should exist and
       | companies shouldn't push for more DRM. But end users should not
       | misuse open technologies so much so that companies end up with no
       | other option but E2E encryption for video.
        
         | namrog84 wrote:
         | I wonder if a torrent style equivalent for bandwidth sharing
         | for things like YouTube content creators could work. Like you
         | get ads unless you seed enough and then no ads when you
         | consume.
         | 
         | I think it'd only work as a near seamless ui experience and not
         | actually using torrents or any extra setup or complications.
         | Probably branded a bit differently.
        
           | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
           | Bandwidth costs money, YouTube can probably do it cheaper
           | than end users at scale. But this isn't about reduced
           | bandwidth expenses, this is about maximising profit
           | extraction.
        
             | chii wrote:
             | > But this isn't about reduced bandwidth expenses, this is
             | about maximising profit extraction.
             | 
             | Arent these goals one and the same?
             | 
             | Profit maximization is required under a capitalist system.
             | By optimizig bandwidth expenses, you are achieving profit
             | maximization.
        
               | hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
               | No, the cost of bandwidth is less than their subscription
               | value, presumably providing this option would result in
               | less profit despite lower server costs, but they already
               | have a global CDN so I assume it's cost is relatively low
               | anyway. I imagine if this was a path they wanted to go
               | down, they could crowdsource it via chrome directly,
               | without providing any positive value for users.
        
           | davkan wrote:
           | The problem with p2p for video is that the storage and
           | bandwidth requirements are enormous most platform consumers
           | are using mobile devices with limited storage and bandwidth
           | which would have difficulty contributing to the network.
           | 
           | Maybe some type of appliance one could run out of their home
           | to buy in or something? But a lot of home users have terrible
           | upload or no internet at all.
           | 
           | Peertube is great but could never keep up with the sheer
           | volume of data uploaded to YouTube.
        
           | wolfskaempf wrote:
           | Exactly what you described exists and is called PeerTube.
           | 
           | https://joinpeertube.org
           | 
           | https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
        
         | AnonHP wrote:
         | > Let's assume that out of the 29 bn USD revenue that YouTube
         | brings in 55% is shared with creators. Thus we are left with 13
         | bn USD.
         | 
         | That's a very poor and totally off assumption to start with,
         | and makes it seem like YouTube is extremely generous. I'd guess
         | YouTube shares, at best, 20% of the ad revenue with the content
         | creator.
        
           | drbacon wrote:
           | It's 55%. This is the first non-Google result from a Google
           | search:
           | 
           | https://www.yrcharisma.com/the-youtube-revenue-split-who-
           | kee...
        
             | crashmat wrote:
             | Yes but this is only for creators who are large enough.
             | Smaller creators still get ads on their videos, but dont
             | get paid for it
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | Installable via F-Droid, always a good sign.
        
         | FrenchyJiby wrote:
         | Absolutely, though the default F-Droid repo is a little slow to
         | update (in case of the twice-a-year "Youtube changed their UI,
         | breaking the world" update), so Newpipe team recommends their
         | own (third party) F-Droid repo[1], where the updates are fresh
         | off the press.
         | 
         | [1]: https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-fdroid-repo/
        
         | globalnode wrote:
         | f-droid website says "This app promotes or depends entirely on
         | a non-free network service" -- whats that all about?
        
           | maxhille wrote:
           | Because YouTube itself is non-free as in proprietary software
        
             | globalnode wrote:
             | right, i knew that -- thanks max :D
        
           | bluGill wrote:
           | You should use peertube instead. Saddly there isn't much
           | content there, but try to look there first and reward those
           | who post there with your eyeballs.
        
             | Animats wrote:
             | Peertube is useful, but so little used that I have 3 of the
             | top 20 videos on Hardlimit, and they're tech demos of a
             | rather obscure program. The most popular has 2,500 views.
             | 
             | What might be useful is some way to use PeerTube
             | distribution on any .mp4 file. Peertube is only a caching
             | system, not a replicated hosting system like BitTorrent.
             | You have to host one copy of the file somewhere. You should
             | be able to put that master copy on any low-end web server,
             | generate a Peertube URL for it, and let Peertube spool it
             | out. Peertube works by mooching bandwidth off the people
             | watching, so as viewership goes up, so do serving
             | resources.
        
           | rekado wrote:
           | I disagree with f-droid on using the term "non-free" for
           | network services, because it conflates the issue of software
           | freedom with SaaS.
           | 
           | See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-
           | really-s...
           | 
           | > Many free software supporters assume that the problem of
           | SaaSS will be solved by developing free software for servers.
           | For the server operator's sake, the programs on the server
           | had better be free; if they are proprietary, their
           | developers/owners have power over the server. That's unfair
           | to the server operator, and doesn't help the server's users
           | at all. But if the programs on the server are free, that
           | doesn't protect the server's users from the effects of SaaSS.
           | These programs liberate the server operator, but not the
           | server's users.
        
       | scotty79 wrote:
       | I had trouble switching to alternative clients because I rely on
       | algorithmic feed for new content. However I have a perfect
       | application for NewPipe. I like to run it quietly in the
       | background as I fall asleep. Murmur of a voice too quiet to
       | understand helps me sleep. Ads were making that use case
       | impossible.
       | 
       | Another use case is downloading music I like. I used YouTube for
       | music discovery an ingestion. Now after I find something good I
       | go to NewPipe and dowlnoad it as local audio file and enjoy it
       | like it's good old times of napster and mp3-s.
        
       | Unfrozen0688 wrote:
       | Another reason why Android is the superior phone OS.
        
         | miki123211 wrote:
         | iOS has Yattee[1].
         | 
         | It's technically a personal video-watching app, not a Youtube
         | app, which you're supposed to link with your own personal video
         | server, but the server APIs it is compatible with are the same
         | APIs that are exposed by Invidious and Newpipe instances. This
         | is not a coincidence.
         | 
         | I'm sure Apple is going to delist it from the App Store at some
         | point (App Store guidelines are just that, guidelines, and
         | there's no getting around them with a weird loophole like you
         | can do with actual laws), but it works for now.
        
           | ggrelet wrote:
           | [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yattee/id1595136629
        
           | lolinder wrote:
           | > I'm sure Apple is going to delist it from the App Store at
           | some point (App Store guidelines are just that, guidelines,
           | and there's no getting around them with a weird loophole like
           | you can do with actual laws), but it works for now.
           | 
           | Hence F-Droid, which cannot exist on iOS.
        
             | lxgr wrote:
             | Not yet! The EU's Digital Markets Act will go into force
             | soon.
        
               | lolinder wrote:
               | True! Unfortunately, I fully expect Apple to keep
               | alternate app stores locked out in other locales. I'll be
               | happy if I'm proven wrong, but they've been so determined
               | in fighting this that it seems likely they'll consider it
               | to be worth the extra work.
        
               | chii wrote:
               | a 30% profit margin business for barely any real
               | work/capital investment, this is a business they will
               | fight for.
        
               | miki123211 wrote:
               | We don't know how the DMA will actually be interpreted.
               | 
               | There are three aspects that people often conflate, the
               | ability to install apps from outside Apple's App Store,
               | the ability to install apps that Apple hasn't notarized,
               | and the ability for developers to skip paying a
               | percentage of app sales to Apple.
               | 
               | We might get all three of these, but we might also get
               | just one or two. I can imagine a world where you'll be
               | free to install a .ipa from any website and pay for in-
               | app purchases with your credit card, but where the .ipa
               | will have to go through App Review and the developer will
               | be audited to ensure that the necessary fees go to Apple.
        
           | idle_zealot wrote:
           | Does this actually work? I've tried a couple of times but it
           | nearly always hangs on loading videos, and when it does load
           | it gets stuck buffering every few seconds. Perhaps the Piped
           | instance I'm connected too is overloaded?
        
           | ufish235 wrote:
           | Any hint on how to actually do this? For those of us who are
           | comfortable with Insidious or Newpipe.
        
       | falcor84 wrote:
       | It's almost perfect, except for the fact that I really like being
       | able to thumbs-up videos I like, to support the creators. I feel
       | really uncomfortable not having that option.
        
         | Aachen wrote:
         | - So long as they give their sole custom to Google/Youtube and
         | don't support other platforms in any way, even though it's
         | trivial to upload an mp4 onto another platform and set the
         | title and description same as yt, I don't feel too bad being in
         | a tiny fraction of a minority that doesn't want to have a
         | Google account in order to 'smash' the like button. There's no
         | least evil to be picked here, no market forces at play, it's
         | using google or bust. On the whole, I feel alright not
         | supporting that choice, though part of me also feels as you do
         | of course.
         | 
         | - It's also not as though you're upvoting/liking videos other
         | than theirs, so they won't rank lower because you didn't
         | support them.
         | 
         | - I'm sure the folks at google figured out that watching a
         | video is already a sign of the content being interesting. When
         | using the official (web) player, it clearly uses this to
         | generate recommendations (to many people's frustration)
         | 
         | - You can always share videos with friends or on Mastodon etc.
         | where appropriate, that draws more eyeballs than a passive
         | thumbs up button anyway and thus helps the creator more
        
           | nine_k wrote:
           | What is the other platform you suggest for video uploads?
           | Vimeo? Facebook? Twitch?
        
           | lolinder wrote:
           | > It's also not as though you're upvoting/liking videos other
           | than theirs, so they won't rank lower because you didn't
           | support them.
           | 
           | The math doesn't work like that--if you can't Like any
           | videos, then all of the videos you watch have an
           | infinitesimally smaller Liked ratio and count than they would
           | if you could. Any given video isn't competing with all the
           | other videos you watch, it's competing with all the other
           | videos _anywhere on the site_.
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | The big benefit of newpipe besides skipping ads is that you
         | don't need an account. Which you need for those upvotes anyway.
        
         | MBCook wrote:
         | How does giving a thumbs up "support the creators"?
         | 
         | I'm sure they'd rather you watch the ads or pay for premium.
        
           | savingsPossible wrote:
           | OR, hear me out... Subscribe to the patreon or other non-
           | google revenue stream
        
           | wkjagt wrote:
           | Not my comment, but maybe support isn't the right word. One
           | person I watch on YouTube says something like "if you enjoyed
           | this video, give a thumbs up. If you didn't, give a thumbs
           | down. It helps me understand which topics you find
           | interesting."
        
         | camel-cdr wrote:
         | That made me think of an interesting feature idea: Selectively
         | enable ads on certain channels you'd like to support a bit
         | more.
        
       | WaffleIronMaker wrote:
       | I also recommend GrayJay https://GrayJay.app
        
         | kim0 wrote:
         | I use it daily, has been amazing so far
        
         | Ruthalas wrote:
         | What are your experiences with it? Interested to hear a review
         | from a user.
        
           | curvilinear_m wrote:
           | I use it as my main YouTube app on my phone, it's working
           | nice. One drawback for me is the failure if you have too many
           | YouTube subscriptions (>200-300). I removed some creators and
           | it's working fine. You see Grayjay's likes and comments on
           | videos but there are very few of them (you also see YouTube
           | comments and likes). I wish the community around it grew, it
           | has potential.
        
         | beretguy wrote:
         | Louis Rossmann had a video introducing this app, but I can't
         | find it. Did YouTube force him to take down that video, anybody
         | knows?
        
           | nickorlow wrote:
           | Yes... youtube gave the videos a community guideline strike
           | and removed them. You can watch the videos in this thread:
           | https://x.com/futo_tech/status/1719468941582442871?s=46
        
             | beretguy wrote:
             | Wow... that's... dystopian.
        
         | dawidpotocki wrote:
         | Just a small note about it: it's not open-source and their
         | excuse is... pretty poor. They don't give you modification
         | rights at all, so you can't even legally contribute to the
         | project.
         | 
         | The platform support is implemented inside "plugins" and they
         | are under AGPL-3.0, so... can you even distribute the
         | application, considering that the licence of the application
         | and plugins seem to be incompatible at my non-lawyer first
         | glance?
         | 
         | Their excuse for their application licence so that they can
         | legally prevent people from uploading ad-infested versions in
         | Google Play and similar platforms under their name... but
         | that's why MPL 2.0 and Apache 2.0 have trademark exclusion
         | clauses.
        
         | wing-_-nuts wrote:
         | I tried that, and wanted to like it but the lack of video
         | recommendations killed it for me. I couldn't even see videos
         | from my subscriptions. Major disappointment.
        
           | SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
           | Subscriptions work perfectly for me. Better than on YouTube
           | tbh.
        
       | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
       | There is also Grayjay[1] from Futo[2] now too.
       | 
       | [1] https://grayjay.app/
       | 
       | [2] https://futo.org/
        
       | jeena wrote:
       | The main reason why I don't use it is that I can't log in into my
       | PeerTube instance and watch the Internal and Private videos for
       | which you have to be logged in. But this kind of goes against the
       | privacy stand against giving google the information about who you
       | are they have. Which in my case is a bit different because I'm
       | the admin of my own PeerTube instance.
        
       | levitate wrote:
       | how long until this gets nuked like youtube vanced?
        
         | Hikikomori wrote:
         | There's revanced, just installed it today.
        
       | j1elo wrote:
       | Does anyone else have the experience of next queued videos always
       | going wild with longer and longer videos of the same stuff? I had
       | a screenshot prepared to report as an issue, but in the end
       | didn't feel it would be worth it.
       | 
       |  _Absolutely every time_ I 'll start with a song, and 3 next
       | videos after, I'll be facing a 10 hour long version of the same
       | fkng song, if not a loop of the same 2 or 3 videos.
        
       | bArray wrote:
       | I use an old Android device for watching Youtube, but Youtube
       | recently dropped support for it. Immediately downloaded F-Droid,
       | installed this, back up and running better than ever.
       | 
       | One thing to note is that the Google export for Youtube is
       | completely broken and I've been manually importing subscriptions.
        
       | monadINtop wrote:
       | It will never be as good as Youtube Vanced (god rest it's soul)
       | but it gets the job done, despite the occasional bug
        
         | lazycouchpotato wrote:
         | If you didn't know, there is YouTube ReVanced [1].
         | 
         | https://github.com/revanced
        
           | ranguna wrote:
           | Just a small correction: it's not "YouTube" ReVenced, it's
           | just ReVenced. ReVenced is a group dedicated to patching
           | apps, but the group itself doesn't provide any patched apps.
           | 
           | It does provide this app to patch other apps:
           | https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager
        
         | earthling8118 wrote:
         | The app functionality definitely isn't as good, but the
         | installation process for Vanced was abysmal. NewPipe just
         | installs itself and is good to go. That has a lot of value.
        
       | deadfece wrote:
       | Newpipe tip for people studying via YT videos: use the speed
       | adjustment and enable skip silence.
        
       | linuxhansl wrote:
       | Been using this one forever. It's pretty good. Every now and then
       | Youtube changes something in their API, then Newpipe usually
       | needs to a day or two to adjust.
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | Sometimes it's been several weeks (partly the fault of
         | F-Droid's repo), but it's worth waiting. I refuse to watch
         | youtube using youtube these days.
        
           | themk wrote:
           | Newpipe publish their own f-droid repo. No need to wait.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Anything new here?
       | 
       | (2022)
       | 
       | Some previous discussion last year
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449570
        
       | m1keil wrote:
       | Honestly, if there is one reason to use this app is because it
       | allows you to share video with timestamp unlike the official
       | Youtube app that is still unable to do that in 2023.
        
       | dukeofdoom wrote:
       | I wanted to listen to youtube videos while working out. Couldn't
       | figure out the default youtube player to let me do that. This
       | worked first time I tried. Supper happy. Thanks.
        
       | Justsignedup wrote:
       | I found NP was having trouble keeping up, meanwhile youtube
       | revanced has been amazing.
        
       | smrtinsert wrote:
       | I need a replacement for baconreader if there's something in the
       | vein
        
       | aantix wrote:
       | I'm looking for an iOS client that will allow me to block certain
       | keywords from being displayed as recommendations?
       | 
       | E.g. Minecraft, mrbeast, etc
       | 
       | I want my kids to watch something other than their hundredth
       | Minecraft walkthrough, screaming YouTuber video..
        
         | krupan wrote:
         | Just block YouTube, your kids will find other things to do. If
         | you find a good video then watch it with them on your device
        
           | aantix wrote:
           | Feels like an opportunity lost.
           | 
           | I want them to explore on their own, including online
           | content.
           | 
           | I just want the topics for videos to be more diverse.
        
             | sannysanoff wrote:
             | been there. If you block something, they downgrade to
             | something even worse, each bloody time.
        
             | mixmastamyk wrote:
             | YT is built to pigeon-hole, profile, and surveil the user;
             | diversity of content is not a goal. Despite the wide
             | library.
        
       | coldtrait wrote:
       | Things like these are what keep me from switching to iOS. And
       | apps like Instander for Instagram etc.
        
       | qwertox wrote:
       | Is there somewhere a curated list of good YouTube channels, since
       | the recommendation engine of YT won't work with these apps (or at
       | least I guess that they won't work with them)?
       | 
       | Like a RSS with a channel list containing channels like Jeff
       | Geerling, Code to the Moon, Jon Gjengset, Everyday Astronaut and
       | the like?
        
       | maxglute wrote:
       | Best part of new pipe is setting up channel groups, which default
       | youtube really needs. But annoyng you can't play channel as
       | playlist.
        
       | flowenworld wrote:
       | Ok
        
       | Roark66 wrote:
       | Don't forget about android TV :-)
       | 
       | There is SmartTubeNext with ad/sponsor block and most importantly
       | it let's you remove shorts, news, games, music, transmissions.
       | And it is open source.
        
         | _joel wrote:
         | I use this daily and it's been an absolute breath of fresh air,
         | making youtube actually watchable.
        
       | iamflimflam1 wrote:
       | It's surprising how many people in the comments don't want
       | adverts, don't want sponsorship AND don't want to pay anything
       | for content.
        
         | eimrine wrote:
         | I would like to pay YT/creators with my own PC with several TB
         | disk space and 100Mbps connection (even 1Gbps inside country)
         | which might host some videos by the network's choice.
        
         | piaste wrote:
         | Nonsense. Blocking internet ads is simply the 21st century
         | version of changing channels during commercial breaks.
        
         | r0ckarong wrote:
         | It's the old problem of I don't care about anything that you
         | advertised to me, don't care about most of the content that is
         | eating your budget and simply won't stand for being called a
         | criminal after being the reason you are a thing in the first
         | place. You're trying to get my money, I'm trying to get your
         | content. We both cheat. That's always been the game.
        
           | 5ersi wrote:
           | So if a store is trying to sell products, and you try to
           | steal them, you are both cheating?
        
             | gobip wrote:
             | If I come to your house, destroy your door, steal your
             | mom's dinner for 4 ppl, are we both cheating?
             | 
             | How about we compare with something actually worth
             | comparing for? For example switching channels when there's
             | the ad break, or turning the sound off, etc.
             | 
             | When I download something, I'm not "stealing it". When I
             | block an ad, I'm not stealing either. I didn't remove 10$
             | from Google's bank account that was there before.
        
               | HeavyStorm wrote:
               | If you don't pay your electric bills you never removed
               | money from where it was before. Does it now applies?
        
               | CivBase wrote:
               | I signed a contract with my local power company, which I
               | would be breaking if I did not pay them. I signed no such
               | contract with Internet Historian.
               | 
               | That said, I appreciate it when content creators provide
               | alternative ways to support them. I support dozens of
               | creators with monthly donations and I occasionally buy
               | merchandise when they're selling something I'm interested
               | in. Just don't waste my time with ads.
        
             | tcfhgj wrote:
             | the store is donating me products with an ad flyer
        
             | _heimdall wrote:
             | This a a very different situation. Stores are selling
             | products or services, and they explicitly put prices on the
             | products.
             | 
             | Content available freely online is much different, as there
             | is no price and at best the hope is that the consumer sees
             | an ad or sponsorship and that the content creator has
             | accurate analytics as to how many saw the ads.
             | 
             | Your analogy would be more akin to someone stealing access
             | to paywalled content somehow. In that case a price was put
             | on the content and someone took if anyway, much like
             | shoplifting.
        
               | Dlanv wrote:
               | Video streaming sites have a cost to create.
               | 
               | The price is ads or paying for a paid service like
               | YouTube premium.
               | 
               | So you're still stealing, you just convince yourself it's
               | ok, and that's fine.
        
               | _heimdall wrote:
               | I'm not saying that ad blocking isn't stealing, there
               | could be a case for that especially if T&Cs specifically
               | require that ads aren't skipped, blocked, or avoided.
               | 
               | My only point there was that shoplifting and ad blocking
               | are very different things. Stores don't make their
               | products freely available to anyone willing to walk past
               | enough ads along the way.
        
               | erremerre wrote:
               | If you go to the store on summer to enjoy the aircon, but
               | you dont buy anything, because you just go there with a
               | book and read your book and leave.
               | 
               | Are you stealing?
               | 
               | The aircon have a cost. Cold fresh air cost electricity
               | that costs money.
               | 
               | The price is to buy stuff from the shopping centre, that
               | gives money to the stores that pay a rent price for the
               | local that pays for the aircon bill.
        
               | zlg_codes wrote:
               | Stealing, ie theft, requires that you deprive another
               | person of the benefit of their property.
               | 
               | This is precisely why we cannot compare copying to
               | stealing.
        
             | r0ckarong wrote:
             | Ah the old "physical objects work the same as digital
             | copies" argument. Yes I would download a car. You can still
             | drive yours. I was trying to pay you for use of the car but
             | you insisted I drive around your deadbeat family and pay
             | for the drive through that I don't eat.
        
             | zlg_codes wrote:
             | What is being stolen in the case of a Youtube stream
             | without an ad?
        
         | globular-toast wrote:
         | Why would I want to pay for anything? Consumers generally seek
         | the lowest possible price. That's how economics works.
         | 
         | YouTube wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't "free".
         | 
         | I do pay for my internet connection and bandwidth. But
         | obviously I found the best possible deal.
         | 
         | There is the busking model and I do choose to contribute a
         | small amount to a small number of creators that I can tell put
         | a lot of cash and effort into their uploads. But YouTube
         | premium would cost more than all of those and I'd be paying
         | into a monopoly, paying for MrBeast and other worthless crap
         | and no longer paying the aforementioned creators.
        
           | _joel wrote:
           | | YouTube wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't "free".
           | 
           | People forget Gopher was around before WWW and wanted to
           | charge for commercial entities. If they'd not done that then
           | the outcome of the internet would have been different (imho)
           | 
           | https://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/vms/networking/gopher/gopher-
           | so...
        
           | cjmcqueen wrote:
           | Hiding behind theories of consumer behavior is not an excuse
           | for immoral actions. Open source was never meant to be the
           | place where open theft and piracy should thrive. And, the
           | Robinhood sentiment isn't really applicable here because
           | you're stealing from creators. YouTube may be owned by a
           | multi billion dollar corporation, but it does support and
           | bootstrapped a vibrant creator community. The more time we
           | spend stealing content that should be supported by ads or a
           | paid subscription the less effective we make that economy. If
           | we want to do good here, pay some of your favorite creators
           | with a tip, or merch, or specifically sub to their channel.
           | Or, even better, come up with ways creators get paid more.
           | Subverting ads is a downward spiral for things to work better
           | for consumers and creators.
        
             | zlg_codes wrote:
             | Ads are not an important part of society. They're a crowbar
             | cooked up by companies to barge into your daily life, as if
             | they deserve to be seen and heard just because they want
             | your money!
             | 
             | We need to cut middlemen out of the problem. 'creators' and
             | 'influencers' and shit should find ways to make money from
             | their fans directly.
             | 
             | Patreon, Flattr, gittip, etc are ways to achieve this.
             | 
             | Companies have no more right to communication than the rest
             | of us, and they don't deserve any social or legal
             | protection for the time and attention they waste in society
             | daily from their incessant marketing.
        
         | yread wrote:
         | If you get people hooked by being free you can't be surprised
         | they want it to be free
        
           | HeavyStorm wrote:
           | It's still free, you're not paying for anything.
        
             | Difwif wrote:
             | I would rather not watch anything than watch ads. The cost
             | of watching ads is my sanity.
        
               | Dlanv wrote:
               | Then pay for ad removal
        
               | lrvick wrote:
               | Paid ad removal is not possible without signing up for
               | more tracking. Pass.
        
               | crashmat wrote:
               | But why would i pay when i could get it for free?
        
               | zlg_codes wrote:
               | Youtube is not entitled to money. If they want money,
               | they can provide a service worth paying for.
               | 
               | Are you guys sure you understand business and economics?
               | So much entitlement among corporations. The money doesn't
               | belong to them.
        
             | high_5 wrote:
             | Time (I watch the ad) is money.
        
         | sh79 wrote:
         | YT went too far from being fair for consumers personally.
         | Google cuts off monetization almost randomly at times, creators
         | then have to embed the ads directly into their video, bypassing
         | Google's ad platform and inconsistent monetization terms, the
         | consumers now have to watch through Google's ads and creator's
         | ads. I'm paying Google for YT premium to get rid of its ads,
         | there's no alternative to get rid of shit the creator decides
         | to sell out for. And there should be no sponsorship deals in
         | the first place, since Google should be paying them. So I feel
         | justified to use SponsorBlock.
        
         | adonese wrote:
         | Yes, absolutely fair tbh.
         | 
         | Bit of context: grew up in Sudan, with embargo and us sanction
         | (also Cuba and Iran and lately Syria), there was not even a
         | possibility to pay for these subscriptions, torrent and modded
         | apps were the viable options (also economical factors).
         | 
         | Another benefits to that: while I was in Sudan, I didn't even
         | have to use so many ad blocks, major ads providers (Google and
         | fb) blocked Sudan and that was absolutely great!
         | 
         | I don't mind paying to services, but it should definitely
         | factor in economical status per each country
        
         | severus_snape wrote:
         | I don't want ads all over my screen when I browse the web. It
         | doesn't mean I don't want to pay for content (I do pay). If ads
         | were all blocked, websites would charge for content, and I
         | believe people would pay. I would. I'm glad to pay for a better
         | quality of life and less consumerism. Meanwhile I use NewPipe
         | and uBlock Origin which I believe have a good impact on this
         | society.
        
           | cjmcqueen wrote:
           | It's easy to pay for YouTube premium and remove ads. So why
           | not do that?
        
             | lrvick wrote:
             | I for one do not because I do not have a Google account,
             | and do not want one, because I do not consent to their data
             | harvesting practices or give money to surveillance
             | capitalism corporations.
             | 
             | When I can pay creators directly with anonymous
             | microtransactions, I will.
        
         | wg0 wrote:
         | Isn't that... Bit selfish?
         | 
         | Also, let's start a competing service. How to pay for...
         | Bandwidth alone? Forget about talented engineers or anything
         | else.
         | 
         | Maybe it's a strong word but choking the revenue stream but
         | still getting the fruits of it - there's another word for it.
         | 
         | One way to choke the revenue stream would be not to watch at
         | all.
         | 
         | I don't pay for YouTube but it's the most useful web property.
         | Arguably alongside Wikipedia.
        
           | lrvick wrote:
           | Download bandwidth can be paid for by re-sharing content with
           | peers via upload bandwidth. It works for millions of people
           | torrenting content right now.
           | 
           | Once you remove ads and the ability to track and target
           | people, peer to peer works. Add anonymous microtransactions
           | to creators and you end up with LBRY.
        
         | lrvick wrote:
         | There are zero payment methods available for those of us who
         | opt out of surveillance capitalism, and we refuse to be
         | excluded from culture either, so we consume content for free
         | and without ads until alternatives emerge.
         | 
         | LBRY has the right idea with microtransactions.
        
         | AussieWog93 wrote:
         | I don't mind LTT-style sponsorships that are relevant and
         | neatly presented as part of the video, but randomly jump
         | cutting to a car insurance ad just ruins the experience and
         | it's easy to see why people would block these.
         | 
         | My (at the time) 2 year old daughter actually cried the first
         | time she saw an ad on the YouTube app.
        
           | 14 wrote:
           | Not to mention the content that many teens and kids obviously
           | watch is being bombarded with ads for all sorts of things.
        
         | red_admiral wrote:
         | There's at least three kinds of videos on Youtube and friends.
         | 
         | The first are ones not related to making money in any way,
         | someone doing their thing "for fun" or similar.
         | 
         | The second are ones where it might be someone's "day job" but
         | the money isn't coming in through youtube ads. For example, a
         | band putting their songs online for essentially free because
         | money comes from fans going to concerts, buying CDs, or
         | merchandise. Having the videos available essentially for free
         | means that more people can discover the music and maybe become
         | paying fans. Or a cook who's brought out their own book showing
         | some of the recipes online hoping that people will buy the
         | book. Or a martial arts school putting videos of some training
         | or contests online hoping among other things that people will
         | join up for real.
         | 
         | The third are the "content creator" ones where the author's
         | whole business is the videos themselves and the ads are their
         | primary revenue stream. It's not that there aren't some really
         | good offerings in this space - there are - but if the choice is
         | Youtube with the full ads/tracking/targeting soup or not at
         | all, my life will carry on without this category.
        
         | cwassert wrote:
         | The fact that you find this noteworthy shows how deeply
         | ingrained capitalism is in your thought process. You are unable
         | to think anything outside of it is possible.
        
         | qweqwe14 wrote:
         | People click on the video for actual content and will always
         | try to remove other stuff.
         | 
         | It's not shocking, it's not surprising, it's pretty rational to
         | do that if you think about it for 2 seconds. This is a solved
         | topic, I really don't understand why people keep bringing this
         | up.
         | 
         | If you are mad about people skipping your boring sponsorship
         | segments -- paywall your stuff already or stop complaining. Or
         | better yet, find non-intrusive ways to monetize your content
         | instead of relying on same old methods that became
         | unsustainable years ago.
        
         | zlg_codes wrote:
         | Do you have a better idea? The service isn't worth paying for
         | and they'll STILL spy on you and serve ads, after taking your
         | money.
         | 
         | Ads do nothing but waste the viewer's time and piss them off.
         | Sponsorships are fine, but what moral or ethical right does ANY
         | business have to force any terms on visitors?
         | 
         | Sure, use whatever technical means you want to control your
         | site, but it's not a moral failing of others that a business
         | can't put together a healthy and mutually beneficial business
         | model.
         | 
         | It turns out modern tech businesses are just shit. I wouldn't
         | buy basically _anything_ on offer in this market due to the
         | total obliteration of trust in the market.
         | 
         | You literally cannot trust a Western or US tech company to not
         | try dragging a net over everything you do to gleam some psych
         | data to manipulate.
         | 
         | The best way to get my money is offering a solid product to me
         | that you cannot take away after the fact with cheap parlor
         | tricks like DRM.
        
       | jiffygist wrote:
       | I enjoy using newpipe for streaming music and podcasts on a
       | phone. However I feel like nothing has changed for a while. My
       | wishlist: viewing replies, after clicking on a timestamp it
       | should stay in background mode (now it switches to popup), do not
       | stack videos (back button should return to main page), searching
       | within history, incognito mode.
        
       | b3nji wrote:
       | What do you guys think to GrayJay? Following the creators, not
       | the platforms. I'm told sponser block is in the works too.
       | 
       | https://grayjay.app/
        
         | lrvick wrote:
         | When it is open source and available on Linux I am sold.
        
       | harvie wrote:
       | Youtube seems to be quite efficient with blocking all opensource
       | players. They change the API regulary on purpose. Never had such
       | app working longer than few weeks.
        
         | lrvick wrote:
         | Been using FreeTube daily for the last few years. They stay on
         | top of it.
        
       | randomdev3 wrote:
       | Paying $1 to a creator earn them more than all the ads you would
       | watch during your lifetime. Applies to websites also.
       | 
       | But noone wants to pay.
        
         | severus_snape wrote:
         | I pay. People pay, stop saying no one wants to pay, it's wrong.
         | One example that comes in mind is Wikipedia: no ads, people
         | pay.
        
           | cjmcqueen wrote:
           | Google and other companies that use Wikipedia pay a lot more
           | than "people".
        
         | szszrk wrote:
         | That's just plain lie.
         | 
         | There is A LOT o f creators supported by pure money donations
         | from individual creators, or mostly by those. A lot of them
         | support themselves by selling merch. Which is nothing new, as
         | nowadays a lot of small/medium size bands live of selling
         | merch.
         | 
         | When a major Polish radio, legendary 3rd national radio
         | channel, went to shit after several decades (fired important
         | staff and dummed down offer) people literally crowdfunded a
         | full successor, with same famous presenters and so on. When
         | that one started to push weird agenda to much and diverged from
         | original goals... There was another one crowdfunded, pulled a
         | lot of other major famous personell, and runs as a huge project
         | successfully from Patreon donations.
         | 
         | These examples are not even unique.
        
       | OOPMan wrote:
       | If you want this on PC there is FreeTube.
        
       | holysantamaria wrote:
       | Being cheap can ruin your life. Stop it, get some help.
        
         | qweqwe14 wrote:
         | Enjoy paying for stuff you don't need, I guess
        
       | BigElephant wrote:
       | I prefer to use revanced. I noticed that newpipe sometimes had
       | issues playing videos while revanced can play the same video with
       | no problem
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | Now that Google is cracking down on adblockers, are any 3rd-party
       | apps like this going to survive? I'm assuming Google's going to
       | do things to break them.
       | 
       | Which makes me worried about yt-dlp as well -- sometimes I
       | download educational videos and other useful content I'm worried
       | might get deleted, and with the crackdown on adblockers, I'm
       | worried the ability to download videos will just completely cease
       | to exist.
        
         | t0mk wrote:
         | This. Newpipe is great, but I'm surprised every month to see it
         | working. I can't imagine Google pushing out adblockers and
         | allowing apps like newpipe to work.
         | 
         | Maybe it's not used as much as adblockers yet.
        
       | jpereira wrote:
       | I would love an alternative client that works with a YouTube
       | Premium subscription. I'm happy to pay for no adds, I just want a
       | UI that respects my attention and intentions as well.
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-05 23:01 UTC)