cross-posted from: https://lemmy.org/post/1872634
So, starting now, Google started mandating full JS for YT, effectively breaking all third-party clients and locking the site to their official client.
This reeks of DRM.
UPDATE: Installing Deno and installing yt-dlp through PyPi fixes yt-dlp but the very idea that Google is mandating JS to lock down YT in an attempt at pseudo-DRM is still crappy.
UPDATE #2: inv.nadeko.net is working again for now.
Holy shit I did not realize how complex of a project yt-dlp has to be to do something as simple as download a video… Kudos to the devs
This post’s title is just completely incorrect and it looks like 700+ people didn’t even read the comments or the actual issue for one minute.
Good job guys!
I mean sure, OP’s title is somewhat clickbaity but it’s kind of true though. YouTube have broken compatibility with all existing unofficial clients. It’s good that yt-dlp are managing to work around it. I expect many other clients will follow suit but some of them may be unable to install additional dependencies and remain broken.
Ultimately, what is the last straw that will break the camel’s back? Every client/consumer will have their breaking point.
I mean sure, OP’s title is somewhat clickbaity but it’s kind of true though.
Somewhat? Did you read the issue? Here’s a recap: yt-dlp will introduce a proper JS runtime in the future to better cope with YT’s JS. That’s it… that’s the issue.
YouTube have broken compatibility with all existing unofficial clients.
Yup, Grayjay still worked for me as of this morning, and that’s on a build that’s a month old. So either I’m not impacted by the A/B test, or it’s actually not a big deal.
Just to give a second point of confirmation: newpipe is working.
Plugins update independently from the app.
They’re going to keep enshitifying it until they kill it completely. Them blackholes, I mean shareholders, will never have enough money.
Overheard at the last shareholders conference. “Until everyone empties all their ecoin & change jars and the only things left to eat are those mysterious Budding’s sandwich meats with some shit ass processed excuse for a loaf of bread.” This is where we want the average American citizen to be living/existing/panicking.” I dunno his name, but it was for sure a rich, old, white dude. A real Montgomery Burns type looking MF’er. I dunno? They all look the same to me. EDIT: Apparently I fit that demographic according to the young ‘uns visiting us. Although they think I look like “The Dude” from “The Big Lebowski”.
The Dude abides.
They won’t kill it, just like it hasn’t died so far. The content, viewer demographics, and algorithm continue to shift. There’s too much money with all the ads and subscription fees. Most people view some content on it by default.
Its gonna be the new cable TV in a way. Kinda sucks, some good stuff on it, but mostly slop filled with ads. And everyone will still use it. Even if they block all 3rd party access, people like me are still going to use it to some limited degree. There will be a video about how to fix a random plumbing fitting that is leaking in my house, or how to fix some random thing on my 15 year old car.
The market that accesses YouTube from a PC or Mac is shrinking rapidly.
They would prefer you use one of the apps and at some point that will be the majority, if it isn’t already
That is by design.
With an actual computer, you have a lot more options in terms of how you can handle the content. They don’t own your PC (yet) but they do own the mobile market and the operating system entirely.
You don’t have any form of root/admin access on a mobile device of any type nor any other device (tv box, game console, tablet, etc). For the handful that have jailbroken or rooted their phones, many apps don’t work (by design of course). You can do it, but you’ll break a ton of stuff in the process. That’s enough to keep causals from doing it and leaves the tiny group of hardcore dorks that are willing to live with the complexities that are required.
I’m going to put on my tinfoil hat and say this is what keeps any real attempt at a Linux phone in the gutter. If people had a choice for their mobile operating system and the freedom to do what they want with it, the big tech companies would shit a brick. They’ve already removed the ability to block ads on mobile devices for the vast majority, they’re finally getting what they wanted (save the handful of Firefox users left).
Linux phones won’t be a thing until there is hardware for them. With apple/google phones, the manufacturers will not release the necessary software so that is needed for a 3rd party OS. Google and Apple will make sure that anyone who makes hardware for them are legally tied to keeping that software tightly closed. Even if someone did manage to reverse engineer it, it would be a herculean effort and would break as soon as a new release is out (or if one of the manufacturers “accidentally” released some exploit code for the reverse engineered drivers).
It’s an ugly world these greedy fucks have made for us.
I will set my fucking phone on fire before i install a google app on it
They don’t own your PC (yet)
MS pretty much owns the desktop PC space with Windows though, and even though there’s nothing stopping you from installing an alt OS on PC generally, Win11 not supporting anything older than Zen+ or Coffee Lake and flat-out refusing to run on anything older than Bulldozer or Nehalem even without support because everything before those arches lacks the POPCNT instruction, isn’t a good sign to say the least.
Hopefully MS don’t start acting like Google and start breaking WINE/Proton and DXVK/VKD3D and crippling Linux gaming and even general desktop use on Linux, or even forcing Pluton to be enabled platform-wide blocking the ability to install alt OSes.
It’s an ugly world these greedy fucks have made for us.
We EAGERLY helped them. We walked into the cage and clasped the manacles all by ourselves.
Who’s “we” though?
I see the largest two camps here as (1) casuals that don’t have the know how to protest via alternatives and (2) the tech literate that are willing but ultimately limited by the larger forces at work.
I think it’s fair to blame the people with the power that exploited the first group and left the second without choice.
Yeah last I’ve seen even smartphones and tablets are decreasing quickly relative to smart TVs.
What??? Where did you see this? I would assume the mobile market is still skyrocketing.
As someone who is listening to a video on NewPipe as I type this very comment, no they did not
Came here to say this after giving it 24 hours in case it was just lucky timing
However, now if I try to watch a YT vid in Firefox, I get the “Oops something went wrong” right when the Ad should have popped up
I’ve gotten that occasionally, it usually fixes with a refresh. Was it persistent for you?
yeap… happened again after the refresh
I had almost given up on youtube since they blank out your home if you do not allow them to track history so this may have started a bit back. I only went on it because someone sent me a link and I just opened it directly… all in all, just another reason to not use YouTube
Well, that’s super lame! I wish there was a good alternative. I’ll probably stick with it as long as ReVanced works.
Haha I actually love having a blank Home (and especially blank Shorts) since as it has significantly moderated excessive YT use for me. I’m honestly surprised that was their course of action as it ultimately had reduced my use of the app.
Google doing everything they can to anger everyone.
I cancelled YT Premium after paying pretty much since Google Music was a thing. The price keeps going up ($14/month now here in the US), and Lite is meh even for the discounted price (e.g. no background play I think?).
They just keep building the wall higher and higher, while they survive only because creators keep filling it with content. Nobody is watching “YouTube Originals” or their first party content. YouTube exists solely because of third party creators.
Not only that but I can survive with Brave or Firefox with UBO or whatever. It’s not that hard to avoid the ads, even if it’s a little inconvenient vs being able to use the app.
If you’re using your phone, definitely check out YouTube revanced. Or if on a tv check out Smart tube next. No ads, sponsor block baked in. It’s all the perks of premium (plus more) without the cons of supporting an evil company
You can either revance your yt music app, or use Firefox with an extension that keeps videos playing while your phone is locked.
It’s annoying but I guess they’re just evolving their anti spam mechanisms, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.
JS is one of the most popular scripting languages anyway so having it as a requirement shouldn’t hinder anyone.
And not to throw shade at the people who designed yt-dlp, but designing a tool to “scrap” the content of an evolving platform in a different language (with different tooling etc) than the one said platform is expecting to be consumed by might have been a mistake
anti spam? on the video player? you cannot think is seriously.
JS is one of the most popular scripting languages anyway so having it as a requirement shouldn’t hinder anyone.
except any of the clients that care about not running whatever untrusted google code in an unrestricted environment.
You should remember to send all YT videos that you watch to archive.org
There are browser extensions to do this conveniently
Which extension are you referring to? Is it the standard Wayback Machine extension or a youtube specific one?
Didnt want to name specifics because they might not exist for certain browsers, but you can search “archive” and there will be many
!remember 8 hour
I am so glad I had the foresight to use yt-dlp to back up most of my favorite videos. Not all of them, but I just thought we’d get more time.
But yeah, I knew this would happen. The age verification thing was really controversial, so Google would have had to expect that people would try to find other ways to access YouTube. They won’t stop here and will go after Deno and NewPipe.
I’m pretty much done with YouTube. It’s just not what it used to be. All my favorite YouTubers are either gone, have changed for the worse, or are on Nebula. It’s mostly just slop, and I won’t miss it.
Nebula is just a better experience most cases too. It just shows you what you’re subscribed to in chronological order, which is how YouTube used to work when it was less annoying.
It also shares more revenue with creators and doesn’t force feed you ads. I really hope it continues to grow and never betrays its roots.
Sadly there’s so much good music from the 2000s on there that I can’t find elsewhere. Small bands that never really broke through.
Inaccesible because of autocratic morons.
I wish there was a place that had agdq and speedrunning clips. Then I could leave.
Twitch is atrocious for archived content.
New pipe and smart tube both working for me.
My self hosted downloader similarly didn’t skip a beat.
Which one?
YoutubeDL-Material. It works great and I’ve found it downloads videos from other sources too.
huh well seems like i should go on a yt-dlp binge on the wcw vault just in case for archival and historical purposes of course
Not that I’m trying to criticize you for it, but we all should have been on that a long time ago
Library of Congress should be mirroring the entire site.
oh i mean i have been doing it just sporadically whenever i get a moment :)
Honestly surprised YouTube hasn’t just required DRM yet
Well… the only available option to them for DRM that will work on all devices is Widevine L3 which is entirely bypassable. Spend a few hours on the net and you can figure out how to do it too.
Well, if they want to make everyone either buy Rokus or watch YT either in Edge on Windows (the official way to watch Netflix on PC currently) or on another Android device than a Roku with the official YT app, they could just implement a full Widevine L1 lockdown, and sadly, just buying a Roku to watch YT on or watching it on a pre-existing Roku along with the paid streaming services, is probably what most people would actually do if they locked it down like that.
Basically, Google would win the ad blocker and third-party front-end war by locking YT into pre-approved apps or devices, and as an added bonus (for them), they’d snuff out any competing platforms as Widevine L1 would also kill the ability to mirror one’s YT channel to one of the alternative platforms, and I guarantee most people who just post any random thing on YT don’t store their source video files locally to be able to to re-upload on PeerTube, Odysee, or Rumble, if anything, they’re likely just filming and posting straight from their phones.
Now, the people with nice studio setups probably do have a local copy of their source files stored somewhere that they could re-up on their alternative platform of choice, but average Joes filming from a phone outnumber them.
I don’t think L1/PlayReady SL3K will happen. Imagine Google telling people that in order to view content on their website they need to use a competitor’s browser. Sure, technical people like you and I understand what’s happening behind the scenes, but average joe will just think Google fumbled it and can’t make it work with their own browser, it’s bad press for them. I also think that at least for now there’s too many desktop users to be able to pull it off. They’ll have to tell all the desktop users to go fuck themselves in order to do that, and that will get a good amount of people pissed off.
You know YouTube Revanced?
The only pre-baked option to them…
If they require a full JS implementation, they could crap out different algorithms and rotate you through them. I’m afraid they’ll eventually use a coding LLM to generate daily algorithms.
Imagine YT-DLP needing to adjust to code changes daily.
Could you briefly summarize what’s needed to make it happen? Not asking for a step-by-step just very rough overview
There are a lot of thorough guides on vidhelp along with dumped L3 keys.
You’re basically just saying go get a guide like you could have just not said anything LOL
Not sure what’s up with the self-entitlement but I got shocking news: I don’t own you anything. You asked for a brief explanation and I told you where to go find it. Instead of writing that snarky comment you could’ve instead used the web for its original purpose and conduct your own research and not bug strangers on the internet to do your bidding.
Instead of writing that snarky comment you could’ve instead used the web for its original purpose and conduct your own research and not bug strangers on the internet to do your bidding
You’re not the only one they’re doing it to (I went to their profile to see if this is a pattern, and it sure is).
sleep-pc: a .NET Native AOT tool to make Windows sleep after a timeout
Seems like one of them bad apples. Hopefully the admins of their home instance deal with them soon.
This reeks of same shit different day or at least different month. Last time if I recall you had to include a valid cookie with yt-dlp.
I’ve never had to “include a valid cookie”, though there’s been various problems and they can vary from video to video.
Any IP on the local ISP requires a google login to work. Very few work without the cookie generated from it.
I downloaded this morning with yt-dlp and American rented mullvad servers (seal for android)
Never have logged in
Weird. I haven’t downloaded anything for a month or so (other than running into a different issue on somesomething), but I haven’t had to do that for any video for the several years I’ve been downloading.
Is this maybe much more common on common VPN IPs? Not what I think you meant by “local ISP”, but would make a lot more sense to me.
It wasn’t that way until earlier this year. I switched to a vpn to get around it. I’m using non US VPS in a country that is less tolerant of googles bullshit.
To be clear the cable IPs are a /20 block that was routed to the cable companies predecessor in 2016. I’m the one who put in the request with ARIN. The new company that acquired this system was bought out by yet another company before the sale went through. I just looked and Cable one has purchased a large stake late last year. All in all it still works okay. Their support though is clueless due to flowchart ignorance. The plant OPs guy stayed the same and he knows how to keep the levels balanced and noise out.
It is definitely more common on VPN IPs, since Google likely identifies the outgoing address as a datacentre, and gets suspicious. I’ve had multiple issues with the bot sign-in screen when using a VPN for it, whereas not using a VPN doesn’t have those problems.
You don’t need to afaik.
The only time i’ve had to include cookies is if i was trying to download something that was a premium feature like enhanced bitrate.
I use Seal. It works fine. It has trouble downloading from “official” pages though (e.g. Vevo or Universal or whatever). It’s like those pages, since they’re owned by corporate entities, have some extra protection on them or something. It’s been like this for years, across Android, Windows, Mac, etc – doesn’t matter what I try to use to download, it’ll fail on those pages/accounts.
Someone please find the Steins;Gate Wordline, I’m not really enjoying the worldline convergence, everything is turning to shit.
Do you mind to elaborate?
My friend, you need to watch Steins;Gate 😅
The day smart tube next stops working is the day i stop using youtube. I will NEVER watch a shitty youtube ad and I’m sure as shit not paying google any money whatsoever.
What I don’t understand. Like, they know people hate shitty ads.
If they had like, literally any level of vetting on the ads, people might actually watch them. But its all fucking scams or podcasts of lies pretending to be ads etc.
I know it costs money to have people but sales people serve a purpose.
They have a bank of companies that are paying to have their ads shown.
The companies dictate who they want to market to.
Google originally pitched scanning your things for relvant ads and delivered on it, but that’s not where the money is at.
Yeah, and we have led to a race to the bottom in a war against ads that everyone hates.
Short term bull shit for long term death.
It’s so weird hearing about YouTube ads. I can’t recall ever seeing one. I know one day they’re going to finally ruin it and I won’t be able to consume it any more, an event I try to prepare for, but I haven’t really done anything special to avoid ads except all the stuff you have to do just to be secure on the web in the first place. Like just using librewolf out of the box works fine?
I’m gonna start listening to podcasts, they’re more informative and less bandwidth heavy anyway.
Yeah have been using https://inv.nadeko.net/ as FreeTube broke for me. Unfortunately there seems to be some kind of bandwidth throttling as I’m getting 720p videos only (my internet is fine for 1080p and I was getting 1080p on FreeTube).
The limit is 1080p, because there is just a lot of traffic. Allowing more than that, will lower the capacity of people that can watch at the same time
Have you made an account? I think doing so makes a new “watch-id” that gets around the throttling.
Can’t you just set inv.nadeko.net as the default instance? I thought Freetube was an invidious client, no?
No, FreeTube is its own thing, but it can fall back to an invidious instance. Idk why it fails for me with inv.nadeko.net as my default instance though.
Newpipe still working for me now?
Not with a VPN…
Get this: YT will not be working on any known/popular VPN without signing in because it will always display: “Sign in to confirm that you’re not a bot”
This behavior is also completely unrelated to the above mentioned issue and is unchanged for a very long time.
I’m watching YouTube using new pipe, and free tube, on a VPN, right now. It works right now. So I don’t know what this very long time you’re referring to is
Sometimes you have to change your VPN location to get newpipe to work.
