[HN Gopher] YouTube: Google has found a way to break Invidious
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YouTube: Google has found a way to break Invidious
Author : CHEF-KOCH
Score : 57 points
Date : 2024-03-31 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chipp.in)
(TXT) w3m dump (chipp.in)
| ruined wrote:
| this happens every few weeks. wait for the update, or contribute
| lagrange77 wrote:
| This is the first time i witnessed, that every single instance
| doesen't work. Did that happen before?
| boarush wrote:
| Going through the linked issue, it seems that the fix has
| already been merged and should be part of the next invidious
| release.
|
| But it still is a fact that Google is trying to limit access to
| YouTube through alternatives like yt-dlp and invidious by
| constantly trying to break stuff.
| userbinator wrote:
| _by constantly trying to break stuff._
|
| It's long been known that Google's weapon is change; they've
| been doing that with web "standards" too. For YouTube, I
| guess the next stage in the cat-and-mouse game is to automate
| fixing it, and I even dare say that this new AI stuff might
| come in handy for that.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > by constantly trying to break stuff.
|
| > > Google's weapon
|
| The culture I find myself in, in 2024, is one of war;
| unrecognisable from anything I've seen in "peaceful
| civilian life" before. It has no resemblance to business,
| to markets, to value, to a lawful society of fairness,
| utility and cohesion. What happened to us?
| miki123211 wrote:
| My hypothesis is that Invidious is small, unimportant and
| unprofitable enough that Google just does nothing to care for
| it. It's not being tested, there's no QA, and the impact on
| Invidious isn't considered at all when planning API changes.
|
| If you're taking a walk in the forest, you don't care if
| you're crushing insects under your feet. You do nothing to
| deliberately crush them, but you don't walk extremely slowly
| all the time in case there's an insect nearby.
| rwmj wrote:
| yt-dlp is still working for me, and when/if Google ever break
| that, I'll stop watching youtube.
| RamRodification wrote:
| How are you using it? If you come across a youtube link, do you
| run yt-dlp on the command line and then watch the downloaded
| file in a media player? Asking because I'm too lazy for that,
| and interested to know if there is some fancier way.
| eptcyka wrote:
| mpv $youtubeLink
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| I often use mpv with a yt-dlp hook, which means I can
| basically just do ``mpv youtube.com/watch/whatever``, and
| stream the video in mpv.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Browser extension
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| If you are too lazy for that, try the New Pipe app. Works
| really great. You can also have subscriptions without an
| account.
| Y_Y wrote:
| I usually like to promote cool FOSS that I use, and Newpipe
| is a masterpiece, but I do feel reluctant to increase the
| popularity of something that relies on unpopularity to
| survive.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| This is very true, if everyone used it, no one could use
| it soon enough.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I use it two ways.
|
| 1. A desktop application call yt-dlg/youtube-dl-gui.
|
| 2. Metube, which is a selfhosted application and there is a
| plugin for the browser to send things to it.
| myself248 wrote:
| Yes, exactly that. So much stuff just vanishes, it's prudent
| to simply download everything by default. Whether that's a
| video with yt-dlp, or a webpage with singlefile or other
| tools, save it all.
|
| I wish I had better tools for simply saving everything I see
| on the internet at all times. The disk-space cost would be
| trivial in the era of terabyte drives, and simply never
| worrying about link-rot would be huge.
| rwmj wrote:
| Yes, I prefer to download them and watch them using vlc, it's
| a much better experience than using the website.
| wazoox wrote:
| yt-dlp and NewPipe still work though.
| GTP wrote:
| Yes, the problem seems to only affect public instances, the
| Invidous' developers suggest running an instance locally to
| avoid the issue.
| lagrange77 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > It is likely that existing alternatives and new alternatives
| will see huge user jumps when that happens.
|
| I've heard that often and i'm pessimistic about it in general.
| Although there might be some hope, because the channels Invidious
| users might prefer (nerd stuff) are more likely to move to an
| alternative, than others.
| tomrod wrote:
| Google really needs to revamp their YouTube model. I'd sign up
| for an embedding API with a low user fee (~$0.50) and generous
| low volume (free) and reasonable high volume (>50k requests/month
| at $0.01/1k). Ad free, of course, because YouTube ads are
| probably not great money makers for small businesses, hence the
| awful commercials we see pushed and successful creators reliance
| on in-video promotions.
| izacus wrote:
| Why would that make sense for them?
| PBnFlash wrote:
| They are artificially suppressing the api value by banning
| uses people want. If people want to opt out of the
| recommendation engine and ads that makes hosting cheaper and
| easier for YouTube. They only do it to leverage market
| position and imo that's bad.
| lokar wrote:
| What factors do you think drives their cost? I doubt it's
| recommends. The ads help fund payments to top creators
| which in turn drives usage.
| mike_d wrote:
| YouTube streamed 21,885,984,000,000 minutes of content in 2023
| and made $31.5 billion, which works out to an average of
| $0.0014 cents per minute.
|
| If you'd be willing to pay more than that to watch videos I am
| sure they'd take your money.
| nielsole wrote:
| Given your numbers, you are off by 100x. 31.5 billion /
| 21,885,984,000,000 minutes is 0.14 ct/minute.
| mike_d wrote:
| You are correct, thank you. I've updated the post.
|
| Wolfram Alpha helpfully formatted it as "0.14" and I missed
| the cent sign. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%2431.5
| +billion+%2F+21%...
| tomrod wrote:
| All good! Thanks for your intellectual honesty!
| tomrod wrote:
| Perhaps you didn't catch my comment's assertions. I stated
| the model and approximate values I'd be willing pay, given
| that most creators take in in-stream paid promotions already
| (above and beyond YT ads) and that general YouTube ads have
| poor power/are garbage/have low signal to noise ratios.
|
| I don't really care what Google attributes to YouTube
| indirect or direct revenue and costs on their P&L in the
| context of average revenue, costs, and approximate minutes
| streamed, since the marginal costs are ridiculously cheap.
|
| There is a lot of value in Google adopting the first mover
| advantage in a Bernoulli market. I'd imagine shareholders
| care about that a lot.
| mike_d wrote:
| > Perhaps you didn't catch my comment's assertions. I
| stated the model and approximate values I'd be willing pay
|
| No I understood it perfectly, it is just absurd. You lack
| power, leverage, or influence over Google so the only lever
| you have to make a better deal is by offering more money
| than you are currently to get the terms you'd like.
| tomrod wrote:
| I don't need power, leverage, or influence to state level
| of willingness to pay. That's independent of whether
| Google chooses to service the market segment I belong to.
| I'm part of the demand side, not the supply side.
|
| They should still rethink their model, regardless.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > $0.0014 cents per minute.
|
| 0.0014 cents per minute is $0.000014 per minute.
| mappu wrote:
| It's already fixed - https://github.com/iv-
| org/invidious/pull/4552
| politelemon wrote:
| Someone says the fix is very clever but what did they do? I
| just see CgIIAdgDAQ%3D%3D
| mike_d wrote:
| A parameter was changed from '2AMBCgIQBg' to
| 'CgIIAdgDAQ%3D%3D' which is just the correct base64 encoding
| they should have been using the entire time.
|
| I don't think this was a hostile action by Google. An
| engineer probably just fixed a bug with input validation
| which broke the malformed requests Invidious was sending.
|
| https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/#recipe=URL_Decode()From_Ba.
| ..
| nneonneo wrote:
| https://github.com/LuanRT/YouTube.js/pull/624 has a bit more
| information - looks like this is just updating an internal
| parameter (maybe to match what the real client does)
| xyst wrote:
| I wonder how long it took G to push out this breaking change. I
| wonder if there will ever be a point where G will just give up.
|
| The fight between G and alternative front ends reminds me of the
| over engineered solution by NYC MTA to prevent people from
| hopping the turnstile.
|
| They invested some millions of dollars into building and
| deploying the system. Only for the system to be a very mild
| deterrent which can be easily fooled.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39882455
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(page generated 2024-03-31 23:02 UTC)