You might have noticed that even on Firefox (depending on your lists) YouTube may detect uBlock Origin on Firefox now
There's already a workaround (found, again, here), but I figured I would use this opportunity to tell people that projects like Piped and Invidious exist, which both allow you to watch YouTube without loading their ads, with improved Privacy and (in the case of Piped) even Geoblocking-Circumvention and SponsorBlock out of the box.
They're both great tools, and using something like LibRedirect you can even automatically go to Piped or Invidious when clicking/opening a YouTube link (and more).
Both don't load ads, but unless changed in the settings Individous may still make connections to Google/YouTube to load the video(s) themselves.
Bit of a shameless plug for these projects, but I figured this is a really good time to show these projects as I often see people asking what they are in threads on here
Unless people mass-migrate away from Chrome-based browsers (basically everything expect Firefox) Google will at one point enable their Web Environment Integrity thing, force all other browsers to enable it too because otherwise a lot of websites will stop working in them, and no alternative frontend will have access to the video streams anymore.
Web environment integrity is a non-starter because it offers avenues for bad actors to enforce "integrity" that forces malware to be loaded as well as legitimate page elements. However, that doesn't mean Google won't keep trying to stop ad blockers, alternative interfaces etc in the future.
Perhaps, but eventually there will probably ba a certificate authority alternative to Google. But I agree, we need regulation to determine to ensure that programs calling themselves web browsers will have to adhere to standards, and not be based on features that make certain websites work only on their browser. I think the backlash reaction to implementing "integrity" as a standard was really healthy. But there is still a lot of action to take on the regulatory front.
eventually there will probably ba a certificate authority alternative to Google
Which won't matter (for access from third-party apps), because to be accepted by websites they need to prove their trustworthiness, so you can't just use a different one to circumvent it.
It can be very similar to the TLS scheme we use today, where certificates are signed by regulated CA's. The only difference is that currently there is no regulation to ensure that Google will build chrimium to trust other authorities for browser integrity other than itself. That is definitely a major concern. Fortunately, I don't think that it is long term viable. First, Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple would be extremely unhappy with this scheme. That's right off the bat. So there will definitely be resistance on that front because eventually it would do something like break youtube compatibility with Firefox.
Now, I do think that it is plausible that these organizations could come to a agreement that is still ultimately bad for web browsers. There fore, this should be considered by government regulators as something to pay attention to. I'm not too pessimistic about them doing this. There us political will to preserve the open internet, especially in the EU. It looks like the US is also set to re-adopt net neutrality rules. So, im just not as pessimistic about it.
The only issue is that in the short-term, alot of these services that are free are going to degrade. This is what we are seeing with youtube. That is too bad, but I am hopeful and optimistic that it will lead to a more open internet. The fact that we are having this conversation on a decentralized social network is a positive sign.
It still doesn't matter. A website can choose which attestors to trust (if they had to trust all of them the whole thing would be useless), so Youtube can just deny access to the video streams to anything that isn't a trusted browser environment, and anything third party like Invidious, Piped, Newpipe, Freetube... won't be able to work anymore.
Well yeah. But those clients could ultimately just say they are firefox if Mozilla is open enough, which they tend to be. It ends when Google decides that stuff like YouTube should only work on chrome. That would be bad, and I think regulators would treat it as bad, especially the EU.
Just to be clear, I don't think forcing this standard down everyone's throats for naked commercial reasons is a good idea either.
IIRC the proposal includes some crypto-handshake verification to make sure the attestor is who it claims to be, so no, apps can't just fake it. Or, if some of those secret keys leak and apps use it, sites won't accept it anymore.
It's a question of trust. Google will select the certificates they trust for the services they provide, and the entities that own those certificates will decide what do to with them. If they trust a certificate from Mozilla, and Mozilla agrees to make that certificate open to everyone for instance, than Google's only choice is to stop trusting it. But if Mozilla decides that is the certificate Firefox will use, than Google has to choose kicking off Firefox as well as other third party apps. Same with Microsoft and Apple, but I think Mozilla is more likely to oppose this kind of standard rather than try to reach some kind of agreement with Google.
The other way that this could play out every browser dev makes some kind of arrangement. Very unstable when we are talking about competitors.
At the end of the day, it requires a level of co-operation with the browser developers and internet service providers that I don't think a lot of people will go for, for various reasons. Especially not regulators. I guess I am just more optimistic about the open internet.
I wish PeerTube gained enough traction to be the competition of YT. I hate that Google think they know you better than yourself and uses that broken algorithm to send you thing you don't want to see. If I tell 5 times I don't want something a correct algorithm would say "I'm not sending you any more of this" instead of trying other 100 times to make you swallow the videos they want.
I'd also like to point out that mpv has youtube-dl built-in (and can also use the cooler fork, yt-dlp). You can open YouTube links directly in mpv and they will play with no bullshit. It can even pull 4K streams.
There are browser plugins that let you open links directly in external programs like mpv, although they are a bit of a hassle to set up (especially if you are on Ubuntu with their godforsaken Snaps).
If you really want to kick mpv up a notch you should check out the uosc UI for mpv: https://github.com/tomasklaen/uosc
Ooh, never heard of this before and it looks super cool. Thanks for the tip!
It doesn't use the APIs at all, which is also why Google can't Cease & Desist them for not complying with API terms
started using FreeTube (the installed version) - after importing my YT account data it's basically the same thing as YT just outside the browser - but without ads/etc
I was having really bad time with the constant adblocker warning pop-up yesterday so I disabled all other extensions, restored uBlock Origin to the default settings aswell as cleared the catche and updated filter-lists. Then I cleared all Firefox cookies and restarted it. This morning I did not get the warning unlike the few past days, so far so good. I'm sure this isn't a permanent fix, but for those of you still struggling with it, these are the steps you might want to try.
I run my own Invidious instance on my local network and its not bad, but you really aren't able to endlessly doom scroll Youtube recommendations with it. That sounds like a non-issue, but its more difficult to find new content you like without that algorithmic aspect. Technically, Invidious will load playlists, but the UI is designed to maximize the video presence without the other add-ons, so scrolling is a pain. Also, history is unnamed so its just a thumbnail with no other info.
You can change UI of Invidious with Stylus (ex. https://userstyles.world/style/6850/invidious-all-instances-player-and-tabs-v-3), but that won't run in qutebrowser and I love my native vim bindings.
Ever since I disabled every recommendation in libretube I don't watch anything on youtube anymore because I have no fucking clue that it even exists.
I've been relying on yt-dlp and hint links to pipe video from Youtube to mpv. Its not a bad solution, but isn't quite the doom scrolling I want. Here's an example: https://files.catbox.moe/688xbo.png
Yeah, as good as Youtube's algorithms are at pushing hardcore right-wing content on completely fresh accounts in like 3 clicks, my accounts have been around for so long that my recommends tend to be on the money most of the time.
I discover multiple new channels each month from my recommends whereas 10 years ago I'd occasionally check a channel that a friend recommended or was embedded on a forum post
Hah, it still tries with the right-wing conspiracy garbage though every so often though. Its like "Hey...you wanna watch some hate crimes? No? Uh... uh... ok, here's the 37min of LOTR facts you asked for..."
Oh, definitely but it's shockingly bad when using YT without logging in
No, but subscriptions can be imported manually.
The point is to not load tracking tech YouTube ships with as well as staying relatively anonymous.
Libredirect is really nice. Question: Can it bypass the front page without being turned off, then back on for links opened in tabs etc? Can't work out if it can.
The extension menu has "redirect" and "back to original" buttons (or something similar, can't check cuz I'm on mobile rn)
You could use this to visit the homepage and then let new tabs/videos redirect
What is your process for watching a video? For me to do it like this I currently have to copy the link, open a terminal, download the video with yt-dlp, navigate to the file, open it and then watch it. And then usually delete it. I'm curious if there is a faster or simpler way..
Do any of Piped/invidious/freetube work in 4k? Every time I try these out the quality options seem quite bad. I would be happy to self host if it meant working 4k videos. Are there instances that do 4k, or is this just a limitation of the tech?
It proxies content, so whatever it can get from YouTube should be displayable, my guess is that its possible but most instances do not enable it for bandwidth and performance reasons
I'm all for this post, but I feel like someone needs to ask: What features from Youtube am I losing out on by using these alternate front-ends? (instead of just continuing the cat-and-mouse game between uBlock Origin and Google while at leat preserving the same features and UI that we're already very mu ch comfortable with)
You lose:
- Your existing YouTube account, which can only be manually imported (subscriptions)
- Account-Based/Algorithmic Homescreen recommendations
- Some higher resolutions (e.g 4K) (very dependant on instance, I don't have a list of instances with their max resolutions)
- The UI will be somewhat different, but not necessarily hard to navigate
- probably more random stuff idk
