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I was curious why NewPipe didn't implement SponsorBlock. Is there a story behind why it doesn't? The repo hints at "differences" but isn't specific.
They wrote about it here: https://newpipe.net/blog/pinned/newpipe-and-online-advertisi...
From https://newpipe.net/blog/pinned/newpipe-and-online-advertisi...:
Fair opinion. Also fair to fork when one does not agree. This is how the system is supposed to work.
There's an obvious catch-22 here: either you are maintaining privacy, and the sponsor has no way to know whether their segment was viewed, so you are wasting your life watching an ad to make an inanimate object happy, or they are spying on you to learn whether you watch it.
Either way I fundamentally disagree with them on the idea that push advertising is ethical in the first place, but it's kind of absurd thinking about people feeling good about themselves for watching a recording. Like did you also not fast-forward your VCR through ads in those days and instead dutifully watch attentively lest God know you were naughty? You make sure to read all of the spam in your mail, or inserts in newspapers rather than chucking them in the bin?
I actually think this is 100% the correct move practically, as someone who thinks advertising is unethical. Keeping it out of this popular option while remaining open source allows the original to be clear from "wrongdoing" here and does not put so much pressure on creating an arms race. Then, the fork just adds sponsorblock, and things are ok.
As I see it, it's similar to the situation with FOSS passkey options. Currently the big projects are complying with all of the (increasingly silly, imo) demands of the standards org. If they did not, there would be significantly more pressure for attestation, in which ultimately only Google/Apple/Microsoft-controlled options would be permitted. Complying allows a fork to patch out the user-hostile behavior.
There is no wrongdoing though, except for the people that decide to build machines to waste other's time. Imagine spending your life on that. There's no need to carry water for the people who dedicate their lives to making everyone else's lives a little worse. Like if the wealthy paid people to go around littering (which, in a sense, is basically what mailers/inserts are).
Passkey likewise is a retarded idea with no user empathy, and by going along with their demands, you still push people into monopolistic ecosystems because the only way to use it in practice is with a cloud sync service. There's likewise no need to carry water for it. Anyone advocating for it outside of scenarios where you have an IT department to maintain it is either a fool or a shill.
Also NewPipe is still niche and appeasement isn't going to do anything. They'll end you when they feel like it. c.f. the tightening of the Android software monopoly in general. At some point they're just going to block NewPipe entirely. It's not like Google is thinking "well it's okay if they block our ads as long as they allow in-video sponsors." Nor are they ever going to think "wow maybe we should have some morals; maybe our global surveillance system we've built was a bad idea. I can't believe we didn't realize that!"
Well, that's why I scarequoted it. Morally I agree with you, and for the same reason I will not support LLMs and the companies pushing them. But as it is, the techbros and the adbros will continue to move fast and break things, and nobody will check them, so if some people can divert them into breaking slightly less, it is a small consolation.
Well, there are people that actually like work in the marketing space. As scary as it sounds.
But NewPipe clearly circumvents YouTube ads so not sure how they wouldn't have faced pressure otherwise, and it's actually more so that YouTube doesn't care about sponsorship segments as they make no money from it so NewPipe would be even more in the clear if they didn't block YouTube ads but blocked sponsorship segments.
The same way they did in the past, with broadcast radio and television: they base it on audience numbers rather than tracking whether people actually listened or viewed the ad. Besides, isn't one of the major motivators of tracking to avoid fraud? (Which I find ironic, given I don't view advertisers as very ethical in the first place.)
The way I think of it: advertising doesn't have to be unethical, but it incentivizes unethical behaviour.
I would typically walk away to do something else. Same outcome though. That said, I started to turn away from broadcast media in the early to mid-1990's. I forget whether it was due to advertising, but the end result was a lot less exposure to advertising. Which is a good thing IMHO.
Considering the fact that the vast majority of YouTube sponsors seem to be some kind of scam or are privacy-invasive themselves, the word “mostly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
They circumvent YouTube ads but draw a line at in video ads? Their stance is inconsistent, not to also mention that lots of sponsorship ads can be unethical (see the outrage over BetterHelp) while normal YouTube ads don't have to be unethical.
Issue further is that sponsorship ads put the onus on the video authors themselves to make a judgement call and put their own reputation somewhat on the line. Rather it lets them creator-wash half truths and potentially misleading information.
Not that I think youtube or other ad platforms make great decisions on ads one bit either, its all just a very abusable medium.
is there an equivalent experience for desktop pcs?
Firefox with sponsorblock installed and ublock origin?
I haven't been able to watch youtube in the browser for ages. I get like one 10-20s chunk then nothing further. Do you use just the standard block lists?
Works well for me on Firefox with uBlock origin without any special lists.
Personally I use my own fork of FreeTube on desktops, though, falling back to Firefox with uBlock when there are outages.
Are you using a VPN? Youtube will be a jerk to those IPs. I need to set my exit node to either Poland or Albania to watch YT. (The latter incidentally is supposed to act as an ad-blocker due to local legislation banning some types of ads, but I have my own ad-blockers so I cannot confirm.)
Even on the fastest computer I got, I have to wait 2 whole minutes for the website to finish loading. I think they really hate Firefox.
I use Firefox (and Librewolf), and have no issues.
So, it must be some extension or content blocker list causing that issue?
Your experience is strange, I use the official Chrome (not Chromium) with uBlock Lite and everything works perfectly (except the 5s delay at the start).
Freetube if it's still working? I haven't tried it in a while.
It's working again.
Chrome with sponsorblock and ublock origin lite
Reject Chromium, accept Firefox
Why settle for lite?
It's not that well known, but mpv supports playing youtube videos. I think you need yt-dlp installed.
Freetube is pretty great, also you can import your newpipe subs. Http://Freetubeapp.io
Shameless promotion here but I think https://channelsurfer.tv is a good experience.
Brave browser.
I'm not sure about transferring subscriptions between Pipe and Brave...?
Grayjay I'd say. Also works great on Android.
I have been happily using PipePipe for the past few months and have been very satisfied with it. The developer seems to spend the time and attention needed to make it work again whenever youtube likes to change things and I really appreciate that.
I think it's been about 6 months or more for me and I am also very satisfied with it. I left NewPipe because I'd often have to wait days to weeks for simple fixes to get implemented. PipePipe is patched very often.
I think part of the reason why NewPipe is so slow is that they are in the middle of a rewrite/redesign. All the focus is there and the current app is in the maintainance mode.
This is the reason I switched probably mor than a year or two ago. YouTube remains a cat and mouse game. Strange things with those forks is that they always add some more streaming sources Mike BkliBili but keep the old stuft. Actually soundcloud only works very limited lately.
Same. It's also less buggy, and they've fixed long-standing navigation gripes I had with NewPipe. I did disable the SponsorBlock integration because I find it quite annoying to go back on a skipped sequence.
Same. My only issue (with NewPipe also) is that at ~50 subscribed channels, Google rate limits me when I refresh. I wish there was better logic to get new content or a way to space it out over an amount of time.
I am at 340+ subs and rate limits happen very rarely.
I have had this issue few times on a specific wifi router (different router on same line doesn't) so don't know exactly.
Crazy name
Used through all of the apps and personally there's little incentive for me not to use Firefox/Fennec. The only issue is that background playing is flaky, not sure it only works on my Poco F7 and not my S23, or if it randomly starts pausing the video when leaving de browser or even if it's a browser or OS power saving settings. But when it works it works flawlessly.
In any case, there needs to be a huge problem to justify installing an android app. I prefer to keep them to a minimum and focus solely on the browser. Browsers are the only OS-vendor-safe option which I can use to bail entirely on Google's Android or iOS and go some place else.
One of the reasons why I use an app to view YouTube is to disable suggested videos and comments. Basically, I want to have a personalized list of the channels I view as worth watching and I want to discourage continued watching outside of those boundaries.
I don't have a problem with compulsive watching, so for me the subscriptions view is good enough. I think there are be extensions for Firefox to customize the layout the way need, but it falls in the pitfall of relying on YouTube code for it to work, so it's bound to be flaky or have a short lifespan.
For the most part, I've been using the apps for so long that compulsive viewing is not an issue on my end either. That said, I do have my days and I don't want to slide into that habit. By sticking to my curated list, I am limited to a couple of hours of videos a week. Quite often it turns out to be less since I've grown much more selective about what I will watch from that list.
In a non-curated list, or one curated by the algorithm, what types of videos do you think has this potential to suck you back into this habit?
By far the easiest ones that would cause me to slide back into this habit come from channels I used to watch, then decided to stop watching. In a lot of cases, those channels produced videos I enjoyed. Yet I also found them hit-and-miss in terms of quality or the channel focussed upon long-form videos with too little content to justify the time watching them.
When I switched over to using an app, there was also a good chance that an algorithmically suggested video from an unfamiliar creator would capture my imagination. When I have looked at recommendations recently, I doubt that would be a problem today. Too much AI and human generated slop. Too many click-bait titles that barely give a hint on what the video is about, never mind why I should care about their take on it.
Then there are the days when I am both bored and exhausted. While I don't tend to watch much on those days, I have known myself to scroll through the recommendations to see if there is anything to occupy the time.
There are adblock filters and extensions for that fwiw.
YouTube does make some kind of changes significantly harder to build than simple scripting will handle though. I do definitely see some reasons for specialized apps, and video is a fairly prime example of where they're often more capable or more (power/time/whatever) efficient.
brave mobile has settings to disable youtube shorts, suggested videos, etc.
If you're not doing it already, you can pretty much get this from using RSS feeds for the channels you want to watch and yt-dlp.
I use NewPipe so I can subscribe to channels and put channels/videos into playlists, without needing to make a youtube account.
I use android so I'm already past that point sadly, but I'd be the first to dump my Google credentials as soon as that monopoly that's got a stranglehold on Android cracks
I'm also on Android, running LineageOS without adding google services
Indeed, but then I'd have to say goodbye to banking and thus NFC paying, which needs the banking app installed locally AFAIK to authorize the link. So yeah, it's doable but cripples the device to such a point that I'd only be able to use it at home. On the go access to banking is a must.
The block in degooglifying is usually region not lack of willingness. Some places are locked to Google by no fault of the consumer.
I use Android without a Google account and I have access to banking (bank apps through Aurora Store, and NFC works without a Google account).
Since it's been a while I last tried a degoogled android I think I'll pull my old s10e, reinstall the firmware and see how far I can daily drive it. Maybe banking is a non-issue today and I'm just outdated.
Which apps are you using for this? In the US it seems most things are routed through Google Wallet and NFC is a no-go on GrapheneOS.
NewPipe has a one-click download button. If one follows channels with mainly-audio content that one may want to listen to later, possibly away from an internet connection, that is super-handy.
NewPipe also lets you export your subscriptions (which is just a bunch of links to RSS feeds), so you aren't shackled to Android/RSS.
Can I somehow import my current subscriptions from Google into newpipe? When I tried newpipe what put me off was that I already had a list on the browser. I also couldn't sync the list between multiple devices. Also is there anything on Linux I can use to sync to newpipe and resume videos on my laptop if I'm tired of watching on my phone? Of if I saw something interest and I wanted to continue on Linux in order to take notes and make proofs of concept.
NewPipe does have a Share function for any video and there is probably some way to customize it to get the integration with your Linux laptop that you want. I believe (though I haven't tried in a while) that if one is watching a video on NewPipe and then clicks Share and passes the video to a media-center device running Kodi, Kodi will even start playing the video from that same timestamp, so Share is pretty powerful. Not sure what is available for passing vids from a Linux computer to NewPipe on the phone, though.
To add to the list, if you share the link over kdeconnect and select a linux device (mine is hyprland on archlinux) it'll open the link using the default $BROWSER. If there's a simple integration to sync subscriptions I think I'd give it another go. Fennec is good but as mentioned background playback stability would be really nice to have.
Yes https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/import-export-data/#import...
Also newpipe let you create a playlist of videos and only play the audio track in the background or play a given video in the background
It's even better with a podcast app that can have a directory read as a podcast. Have to click once more though to have the"podcasts"refreshed to get it in my playlist. Still cool for podcasts that are only on YouTube and Spotify.
Solid take, these days most apps are just glorified browser wrappers and you don't miss out on anything. In fact, you could have a separate browser with all these saving modes disabled just for the youtube use case.
Have you tried disabling the Page Visibility API? Web apps will sometimes use that to try and mess with background playing, IIRC.
Wasn't aware of this API tbh, will take a look thanks!
Your comment made me try Firefox for the Nth time right now.
And the rendering is still bad like I remembered it. Download the image locally and open it in an image viewer so you actually view the pixels 1:1, then see if you can tell which one is Firefox (I can): https://imgur.com/a/FsXuoa3
I'm staying with Chrome.
Related tangent: Brave is pretty close to Chrome, sans Google.
I mean, so is Edge. I can't say I feel more comfortable with them. Probably the most direct thing I can point to for Brave is that having cryptocurrency features in a browser doesn't give trustworthy vibes. And yes I realize there's a reason for it and there's a fairly high chance the vibes could be giving the wrong impression here, but when your entire digital life is at stake, that raises the bar for the risks you want to take. Whatever you think of Chrome or Google, the reality is that they're known quantities and I'm already using them, like most other people.
It always hurts me, when people basically say "I'm not giving up [something that has cornered the market] for the alternative, because [minor-grievance]", even though it is already clear that the monopoly is being exploited to make things worse for all customers.
I want to use Firefox, this was my Nth failed attempt at doing so. I just cited the first problem I saw again, not the only one as you're assuming. Mozilla has had years - literally over a decade - to fix such issues.
But hey, if there's one thing that's definitely going to convince people to do things they don't like, it's to diminish their grievances and guilt-trip them.
This whole debate is such a chestnut. Of course, you will do as you please, it's your right. But these choices do reveal values and priorities. Speaking personally (and, I suppose you will say, sanctimoniously), I choose to use Firefox despite its flaws because I don't want the internet to be privatized. I know what I'm missing out on. It's less important.
You're rather overconfident in your evaluation of people and not actually getting the sense of my values and priorities as you think you are. I care about these things and inconvenience myself a lot more than you realize.
When I do it it's because it is likely to make a difference in the ultimate outcome I want to achieve. I also criticize things when I think that criticism may have an impact on the ultimate outcome. What I don't care for is futility. In this particular case, it is absolutely futile to try to fight against big tech through shaming people into inconveniencing themselves for the sake of the free internet. You need to address the root causes to even stand a chance. Part of that is politics and legislation, and part technology. Getting Mozilla and other OSS to give a damn about the basic flaws in the user experience so their users actually want to use Firefox is going to have far more of an effect on the outcome you want to reach than shaming users for not inconveniencing themselves.
Use whatever, but that screenshot posted of your grievance is pretty telling. Whatever difference you're citing as unacceptable really puts the 'b' in subtle.
Also, no one is out to get you. You complained about failing to use Firefox, and folks are trying to explain to you that you can use it if you want to. But you assert that you fail to do so, despite wanting to, but for unspecified reasons. It makes it hard to assist, which I think is all people want to do. You keep bringing up guilt and shame, but you're the one that said you wanted something you keep failing at getting, so folks naturally want to help.
If you don't want to use Firefox, just use Chrome and move on. That's what everyone else does.
For how long have you tried daily driving Firefox, if you don't mind me asking
Thanks for asking. Depends what time period you're asking about. My memory's faded so there may be inaccuracies here or things may be out of order, but this is what I remember.
There was a long era (years) when I loved Mozilla and used Firefox -- and then even Waterfox, IIRC because it was 64-bit -- exclusively. (As well as Thunderbird.) I did not like Chrome. IIRC at some point they started feeling like every update made them more bloated, broken, and unbearable in various ways. I forget all the exact issues but I distinctly remember rendering was a big one for all of them (I think it happened around the obsession with GPU rendering), my extensions constantly breaking or getting disabled because of "compatibility" issues forcing me to keep toggling flags in about:config being another, my toolbar styling/customizations getting constantly messed on every damn update up being another, the tab bar getting moved up like in Chrome when that was very much one of the reasons I liked Firefox being another, and slowness/bloat being another. I wasted too much of my time into finding workarounds, but eventually I couldn't take it anymore. Giving up everything including extensions like Greasemonkey and Stylebot and having the ability to customize everything just so I could have a better experience was painful, but I bit the bullet and switched to (I think Chromium first? and then) Chrome.
After that I basically stuck with them though I kept a Firefox around and updated it once in a while to see if maybe they would come to their senses and start improving the UX. They removed support for old-style extensions which immediately was like a punch in the gut. Regardless, a few years ago I figured maybe times have changed so I spent probably weeks on it (if not longer) and even sank quite a bit of time into manually porting porting my custom local Chrome extensions to it just to make sure I was giving it a fair shot. The snappiness was maybe better than before but overall I just felt like they didn't give a damn about longstanding UX issues people have been complaining about for years, and were too focused on other priorities. So I've stopped wasting more of my time on it until it passes a couple litmus tests, which it failed again today.
And don't get me wrong, Chrome has had its own issues and frustrated me too (MV3 being the most recent and frustrating), but at least it's not completely defeating the very reasons that drew me to it in the first place.
But the point being: I believe I've given it a fair shot enough times in the past, but I also have better things to do than fight with a browser vendor over the very things that drew me to their browser. For Chrome the speed was probably the biggest factor, and for Firefox it used to be UX/customizability. One of those companies understood that and never compromised on their core strengths, but the other never seemed to get the memo.
agreeable argument. I am also running towards firefox, but keeping the firefox open, juggling between the tabs, especially the quirks YT poses on Firefox, these apps poses a usecase. Yes, download/subscribe/SB support etc. Currently using libretube mostly.
I'm with you here, it's a degraded user experience running stuff on mobile browser, intentionally so I'd risk saying. Best of both worlds would be to have an android app but it's just a webserver I connect using the browser, you know, like we've always done in linux haha, this way we could have newpipe-like apps targeting the browser running locally.
but for some reason google knows better and there is no efficient way to run local containerized web services.
Have you tried the Firefox extension "Video Background Play Fix"?
This has worked flawlessly for me on every phone I've used.
Who do you want to operate the app for you on their server at their expense?
Sorry I don't follow, which app on which server at whose expense?
PipePipe
Using alternative apps consumes less of YouTube's ressources than watching videos on their website directly. These wrapper apps download only the videos, thumbnails and texts - not the other resources, so the impact is actually less on their servers.
Mobile Firefox with background playing is really bad, do they just stop everything "to save battery?" I use Brave only to stream web radio while in the kitchen.
From time to time I get blocked by YouTube and both NewPipe and PipePipe become unusable. I wonder if it has something to do with my internet provider putting me behind a CGNAT proxy
totally...
Funnily what I found was to install 1.1.1.1 from cloudflare. Enable that. PipePipe works perfectly.
Yes, it happens quite often recently. I think, their approach is "dominate and tolerate" in a controllable way, so they know quite a bit about who is actually using NewPipe, yt-dlp, etc. and they tolerate it in order to have a kind of leverage to preserve their monopoly. Then if number of out-of-official-app views becomes like above certain point, they aggressively block with "bot detected" message.
Anyone know how PipePipe compares to SmartTube? I recently got a Google TV, and I’m looking for the best alternative YouTube viewer.
Been using pipepiple since December of last year, very happy about the app. The developer seems to care about the project and introduces a lot of quality of life improvments.
Why use this over Morphe? You can download from Morphe and it'll skip sponsorship segments too as they all use yt-dlp underneath.
Morphe just patches the YouTube app no? Then you need to still use that abomination. NewPipe/PipePipe is fast, lightweight and I couldn't care less about any "features" other than watching a video.
Morphe/revanced with good configuration makes the official app super nice. Swipe controls, full OLED, no shorts, Sponsorblock.
Default app for sure is an abomination and so are most Androids straight out of the box before debloat + clean rom + root.
Maybe I'm different because I actually like those features like the AI summaries, saves time on watching videos I don't think are worth it. In contrast NewPipe is quite buggy comparatively or simply not as clean in my experience (it queries each subscription and can take a while rather than streaming each subscription's new video one by one as in the regular YouTube app).
What's the benefit of Morphe over Revanced? I've been using Vanced or Revanced for years, but I'm willing to change.
Bad name though, first few results for "Morphe" is a well-known make-up brand.
Revanced has some issues with developer drama where the lead banned other devs so they moved to create Morphe. Also Morphe can patch a lot more apps than just YouTube.
Quick search makes it look like there were some politics and ReVanced devs left and created Morphe. Seems more active but I'm also just learning about it
I just use ReVanced. I like shorts and recommendations and don't really care about privacy when most of my feed is football highlights, K&P sketches, gaming channels and random bullshit comedy videos. But having a full open source alternative is still important.
Why don’t you care about privacy specifically in this context?
He thinks privacy is for dodgy things.
Because the algo, despite everyone's objections, is pretty good at recommending videos.
Yes , with the caveat that you need to be aware of it, guide it, and watch out for its tendency to recommend weird propaganda if you touch certain non political subjects.
Personally, I struggle to find an upside in the galaxy of downsides. I don’t want to trade my agency for convenience, regardless of the topic or venue.
What exactly are the downsides?
I would like to define my own thresholds for exploration/exploitation so that I can shape the person I want to be, thanks.
Then dont use Vanced
Oh? I recently stopped using revanced when updates stopped and my older revanced stopped working correctly. Is it back?
Morphe [1] seems to be the one carrying the torch.
[1] https://github.com/MorpheApp/
https://github.com/revanced Download the latest revanced manager and it works fine. I've had no issues but the account I use is on a friend's family YouTube Premium plan so I don't need to rely on the ad blocker.
you gotta repatch every 4~6 months, its always breaking due to yt changes
Morphe is the new app made by the old Revanced developers
Does it auto-update now? I like its UI better than PipePipe, but I got so sick of hand-updating Vanced (including hand-downloading the correct apk and waiting several minutes for the patches to run against it) every time Google breaks Youtube again. There was a period of Warfare last year where Google would make breaking changes more than once a week...
PipePipe is so nice with the fast auto-updates. If I ever even catch it breaking, I just have to use Firefox for a few hours and then F-Droid ships the fix and PipePipe works again.
It doesn't, sadly. The new kid on the block, Morphe (there was some classic open source drama) directly gives you the link to the correct apkmirror page, don't know if revanced also did this. But it makes things easier. Tbh, I only update every few months, it's bearable
This app and previously NewPipe is the main thing I miss after moving to iOS. I really can't stand ads (including organic ads that SponsorBlock deal with).
Yep, it’s pretty much the reason I don’t use Youtube on my iPhone almost at all.
It’s probably a good thing, actually.
Although not a direct equivalent, but check out Unwatched [1].
[1]: https://github.com/fer0n/Unwatched
Get https://github.com/yattee/yattee
I've been watching youtube without ads on all Apple hardware for years.
I use invidious as backend.
https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
Absolutely fabulous.
i had a look at yattee, but it looks like there is only the possibility to sideload it to ios devices, which you would have to do every 7 days, or am I missing something? The repos is unfortunately very sparse with installation instructions
Sign up to the TestFlight.
https://yattee.stream/beta2
Super easy.
The installation instructions are here
https://docs.yattee.stream/docs/app/getting-started
I’m using https://github.com/Tonwalter888/YouMod on my iPhone and I’m very satisfied. It has integrated adblock, sponsorblock, and despite being modded stock YouTube app it has tons of features, like completely removing shorts from the app, customizing the UI, and more.
Connect to VPN in Albania and you will get ad free YouTube experience. You are welcome.
Why?
Google does not monetise Albania or something like that
Killer feature!
If you want music I've found Metrolist to be the nicest frontend.
https://github.com/MetrolistGroup/Metrolist/releases
Limusic on desktop has been good for me too
After trying all the alternatives in the end I settled on self hosting https://github.com/Materialious/Materialious
All the YouTube alternative frontends are so privacy focused that they do not even offer video history in your account.
Having video history is a must for me as I might start watching a video in my computer and then continue on my phone.
Also as it is just a web (and includes support for SponsorBlock) it works everywhere, no need to patch apps or install extensions.
I have watch history in NewPipe just fine? And I find it very convenient to know what I've already watched. All local, Google doesn't need to store it for you / you can't lose access to it
I think OP meant cross-device.
Is it a problem for you that YouTube's watch history is littered with videos you didn't watch, but got recorded as being watched because the mouse pointer moved over one of their suggestions for a moment.
I use the better YouTube preview browser extension that moves preview from mouse over to long click just for this reason
I just use skipvids.com rather than installing an invidious fork that constantly breaks
I want these things to implement peer to peer caching, so that when 10 people are watching the same video, only one downloads from youtubes own servers.
Then it's just a matter of letting people add their own videos directly to the service and it can become fully independent of YouTube.
The problem with P2P video is that it's expensive to host and most of the people using it are going to use it for child abuse. It makes it not realistic.
This is deeply unsubstantiated and does not help contribute to a constructive debate. Please consider thinking more carefully.
“Most” is hyperbolic but it’s a real problem in any system designed for peer to peer hosting or sharing.
If the system is truly distributed it means you might not be able to participate without hosting or transmitting CSAM.
It’s also been used as a deliberate attack, which is known as “pissing in the pool.” Flood the system with CSAM and copyright infringement.
Most P2P video system make you seed only the video you started watching, thus making the point about transmitting csam moot.
If I search for The Best of Both Worlds but open the video to find it's csam and not st:tng then I've unwittingly started watching, and thus potentially seeding, the csam.
But even simple checks like the number of seeders on a torrent will defeat a vast majority of this problem. I would not expect a torrent with 1k seeders to be csam for e.g.
I understand the worry, and it is a difficult problem worth thought but the alarmist virtue signalling helps absolutely no one, victims included.
That's pretty unlikely. P2P can have moderation systems. Also that can be solved by only seeding videos you kept watching.
Depends on the P2P architecture. With something like bittorrent / webtorrent you will be distributing CSAM only if you download it yourself first. Otherwise there is no way for any CSAM content to appear on your device. The fear that an algorithm may spread CSAM on the network by making you view one accidentally is a legitimate concern though.
yes, will you also be providing the caching server? Because that's the main blocker I think, nobody has the resources to cache them.
there exist distributed alternatives like joinpeertube.org but they never really take off. Consumers like centralization, look at twitter.
I tried using Peertube but finding an instance whose content policy fits what you're meaning to upload and responds to sign-up requests isn't trivial. It's basically perpetual storage they're offering for free so I get it, maybe the real surprise is that youtube makes so much money off of us that they can afford this
Found one in the end when I didn't have a choice anymore and put renewed effort into it (Google's algorithm won't let me into my account anymore, saying they don't have enough information to verify it's me (username, password, recovery email.. not enough apparently, but there is nothing else), so I'm a Peertube exclusive now) but iirc I can't use it for everything, like if I wanted to upload something in Dutch I'd have to find a new server that allows my language
That would put users at risk of being sued/punished for copyright infrigement.
Delivering the bits is not the hard part of making a successful video platform. It's other stuff like recommendations and content discovery that is actually useful, allowing creators to monetize enough that they want to be on your platform, navigating legal issues, fighting spam and abuse, and getting enough users to sign up and start using your service.
Delivering the bits is a part of it though. When youtube changes its api in a way that forces NewPipe to change its algorithm, they have to push out a change that forces users to update the app. This is annoying because naturally you won't find NewPipe on the app store so updating the app is tedious for users who use it. The parent's workaround fixes some or all of this nuisance, depending on how implemented
still less tedious than ads or no background play
I don't find ads tedious at all. In fact, since I grew up with ads on tv, I miss them. The commercial break was a scheduled time to get a snack, go to the bathroom, get a snack, etc. Today's platforms put the ad breaks in such awkward spots that doing those things is a lot less natural. IMO, it's not the ads that after the problem; it's the way they are used.
So you don't miss ads, you miss a scheduled break. You literally said you walk away when they happened, so you didn't even see them.
That's fine and there are tools to get that scheduled break back - even the official YouTube app has options to remind you to take a break every X min of watchtime and there are some very advanced general screentime limiting apps out there.
As you say YouTube ads aren't scheduled well and they're too short and unpredictable to even go to the bathroom during. Integrated ad reads are even worse in that regard.
There's an extension for Firefox enabling background play.
It not being on the app store doesn't meant that there can't be low friction updates. FFUpdater, for example, is plenty convenient.
Can't you just do "ota" updates like codepush used to do? ie shove a JavaScript asset with whatever is needed and allow the app to pull it at runtime?
Smarttube on Android TV just pulls its own APK so you just need to click Install after it downloads and opens it.
Delivering the bits might not be hard. Storing the bits is hard. Or at least expensive.
You could have local caches of the users recently watched videos on their machines as available seeds. bittorrent now also supports http based init seeds so you could create torrents with a verified sha of a youtube mp4 downloaded once or something like that.
if someone is seeding that video cause they recently watched it and it remains on their local cache, you could get the bits from there vs hitting youtube servers
That works if you fix everything to a single quality and codec. YouTube videos tend to have something like 20+ variants that can get dynamically switched between while the video is playing (adaptive streaming).
The client can pick the optimal encoding and quality which makes that quite a bit more difficult. A user on a modern device that can hardware decode HDR av1 will have a file cached completely useless to a browser that can only do SDR h264.
I think there is a sort of network effect needed to make it become reasonable.
SDR 1080p AV1 can handle 90% of YouTube views.
You are correct, but in this scenario reducing the number of available qualities to cover the most reasonable use cases would be the right tradeoff.
Newpipe isn't trying to be a video platform
this is exactly why i worked on webtorrent ~13 years ago https://github.com/webtorrent/webtorrent
Peer to peer died because (1) a lot of the world, especially outside the US, has terrible upload/bandwidth, (2) HTTPS CDNs got _really_ cheap, far cheaper that p2p technologies like BitTorrent+WebSeed.
There are a minority of users who care about being able to host videos that violate YouTube/TikTok/Instagram policies. Unfortunately, a significant part of that minority is working with infringing or illegal content, which both prevents ad networks from working with you and attracts attention from law enforcement.
don't forget 3) mobile phones exist and 4) anyone watching PeerTube over BitTorrent is publishing their watch history to the Internet
Minor correction on (1): upload isn't worse "outside the US" as a rule. A lot of Western Europe (Portugal, Spain, France, the Nordics) has widespread FTTH with symmetric or near-symmetric plans, often better uplink than typical US cable. The weak-upload argument holds more for mobile-first regions and for DSL/cable-heavy markets. But I agree the conclusion probably stands either way: most viewing is on phones behind CGNAT, and that kills P2P regardless of how good home fibre is.
The CGNAT problem is solvable in the majority of cases via multiple solutions (tailcat/DERP, for example), but that certainly doesn't make a mobile connection's upload any better for sure.
Most of Europe has IPv6
Federated caching then
Oh no think of the poor advertisers /s
I honestly don't see how those two things are related.
Pretty much worse user experience guaranteed, plz no.
How do you verify you get the right data from your peers? With torrents we know the correct hashes for each block. YouTube probably doesn't do this.
How do you ensure people upload the original video and do not tamper with it?
With no end in sight to the increasing cost of storage I can't imagine a worse time to put the burden of video storage onto users.
Even forgetting that issue, the last thing I want is to use some unknown, unpredictably changing residential connection for my videos. Google has invested in a powerful edge network so they can server my videos lightning quick.
The economy is collapsing, be patient. The administration has ended all of the main ways liquidity was created and now there's a liquidity crisis.
At current prices, pledging $5 worth of storage while the app is installed is enough to cache 20 hours of video. It's not too bad.
YouTube only buffers a handful of seconds. Let's say other users would only be used to buffer 30-60 seconds in the future and if it drops below 15 a fast server is used. Does that solve your worries?
No. I don't want to stream a video from some dude on a mobile connection heading into a train tunnel. There's simply no upside for me.
Can you give a reason you don't want data from that dude? Because the design I outlined can only make your buffer bigger, never smaller. The absolute worst case of phone guy dropping out still leaves you in the same place youtube puts you by default. So there's no downside.
As for upside, is fewer ads enough to tempt you? That's the easiest one to do if the fast servers need much less bandwidth.
I've been using Tubular which was a NewPipe fork that implemented SponsorBlock. Works really well, and I was going to see what the differences are. Just noticed, now that Tubular is no longer maintained.
I'll move over to PipePipe now.
How have you just noticed that when Tubular reliably broke every single month when YouTube changes something and you had to wait for weeks for it to be fixed? It was barely maintained for a long time now
Still no good solution for Apple TV? Running SponsorBlock container, on the same network appears to be the best solution but that only mutes ads and skips them when permitted.
Fundamentally against stealing from creators.
I respect your stance. A couple counter points from personal experience: even if I can't skip the ads, I'm not paying attention - I immediately mute/tune out. And the ads are typically so obnoxious that the reflex to ignore/avoid is only magnified. Is that so different from having a mechanism to auto skip/mute?
it is. yes
Posting YouTube videos can just be a hobby - it was in the beginning, and that was fine. It's OK if posting a video isn't a profitable career path. Enthusiasts > "creators".
And in-video ads like these are even less defensible given that they still show up when people are paying YouTube (and creators by extension) to not display ads.
You’re free to put ads and I’m free to not watch them. What the issue ?
The contract (TOS) of you watching my content, is you pay. You may pay in ads, or you may not watch. Anything else is theft.
I've never seen a TOS like that, and it's extremely gross to try to control someone's attention.
Out of the options "creators released content only behind paywalls", "users steal from creators", and "creators incentivised platforms to lobby to remove user freedom so users can't steal from creators", what actually happened was, by far, my least preferable option.
How is blocking in-video apps stealing from creators? If the advertiser pays them per view, your view still counts. If they pay a commission per purchase, it doesn't matter if you skipped the ad if you wouldn't have bought the product anyway, and I doubt you buy every single advertised products to support creators.
Nowadays I use Morphe for Youtube and Reddit. Seal Plus for downloading and VLC to play downloaded videos.
NewPipe was so buggy for me in the past, I've avoided it. Did it get better? Any reason to use it over Morphe?
Just a heads up, this includes support for Return YouTube Dislike, which tells a third party service what videos you click on and has no measures to ensure anonymity like SponsorBlock does. The option for disabling it doesn't seem to do anything.
token controverial comment that all good stuff needs to be sustained with money somehow. always good to find alternatives if/when/for can't afford/appreciate. but there has to be sustenance. nothing against a cheeky freeride, of course. but when it becomes the main source something has to give.
No (realistic) amount of money can protect an app like this from Alphabet. It's their service, and clients like NewPipe are always at risk of being depreciated forever.
If this is in reference to sponsorblock: I see this argument often but it's never made sense to me. There's no world in which not using sponsorblock leads to me spending money on the advertised product. It simply saves me 4-5 presses of the "skip forward" button.
It's like when a telemarketer calls, I tell them, there's zero chance of me buying anything, so save us both some time and don't call again.
for sure. but if everyone did this, then there wouldn't be a point for sponsorships and creators would be less incentivised to make content. and at least it's an ad they can control. believe it or not, ads work, and sponsored bits even more. and tbh i do watch some of the sponsored bits if they're fun and creative. i invite you to watch any wulff den video.
Sponsorblock is still super useful even with sponsorships left on. It's more like a "cut everything except the core content" tool.
Ref https://watchwithmira.com/blog/sponsorblock-categories-expla...
Cutting intro/outro/preview is nice if you're watching a bunch of videos on the same channel in a row.
Chinese developer. I'd love to see Tubular be revived
Looking at YouTube shorts on my cellphone (iPhone with hacked https://github.com/NeonKokoro/KiraTuno hacked yt client) was becoming a problem. So I got rid of the app. Too many shorts too much brain rot.
My only real complaint with NewPipe was always the in-video ads. This fork solves it elegantly; definitely checking this out.
Thats why i stopped using youtube and all since last 7 years. I do regret it daily not able to explore new content. Content from different countries, anyway that was'nt even possible without vpn as youtube don't allow to set country in a straight forward way.
I keep listening to my old collection, though repeated songs and videos, but atleast i got peace offline.
Nice! Have installed it now. I have been using NewPipe for a while, but was missing SponsorBlock and had read that the NewPipe developer didn't want to add it. So this seems great!
My desktop browser has SponsorBlock, and I've sorely missed it on NewPipe. This makes my ad-free mobile experience complete.
Is this really a thing people want? I use Pipepipe, but auto skipping content is the one thing I turned off pretty fast. It can be pretty annoying (I think it was on the latest Tony Iommi video where it wanted to skip large portions).
I don't mind the channels I like having sponsors, and if I do I just double tap forward a couple of times to skip the minute.
Tried the autoskip youtube apk, and the default assuming one would prefer autoskip is intriguing; yes that's among the first feature I change to just show skip button on all of detected segment. Another is tap to seek.
I love sponsorblock, it feels like adblock felt the first time I installed it.
Every time I see a creator I like do a "smooth transition" from content to ad, it makes me feel betrayed. Not only are they about to read words someone else wrote for them and which they don't really believe, they spent an extra 15 seconds pretending it was part of the video in order to keep my full attention when they throw the sponsor name in my face. It's scummy behaviour.
Creators need sponsors to pay the bills, just as they do ads, I get it. I don't fault them for the industry basically forcing them into these kinds of "integrated ad reads", as well as the fact basically all the sponsors have huge ethical problems. But I will not subject myself or the people who watch videos with me or on my devices to this brain rot.
That's why I try to support them in other ways (YouTube Premium, Patreon, etc.) and run adblock and sponsorblock on everything. By my napkin math, they make more this way anyways.
We're talking about content where the primary motivation for creating it is displaying ads in between in order to make revenue. For instance: I'm watching some video about repairing an old car, and suddenly there is a sponsor segment where the mechanic talks about branded supplements for 5 minutes. Why would I take health advice from a car mechanic? I think this is dishonest advertising and I would actually prefer to skip these videos altogether, but yt doesn't offer that in a search filter. So i use Sponsorblock.
For comparison: say you're getting a haircut. And halfway they stop cutting to promote their new book, for 5 minutes straight. Telling you they would not be able to provide you with the haircut if they cannot promote the book.
Yes, people want this.
This is such a weird take, sorry. The only argument against it you bring up is that it feels annoying; which would be valid in theory but then you say you "double tap forward a couple of times" instead? Notably, you never know how long an ad is so you have to tap a few times, check, tap again, maybe tap backwards because now you accidentally skipped too far and missed actual content...
How is that LESS annoying?
Less annoying because it didn't randomly skip stuff while I'm watching.
If I notice they are starting to again mention that VPN client or whatever I can just decide to skip (and the visuals often change as the "ad" is often prerecorded). But I remain in control.
It always says that your IP is blocked by YouTube, but the native YouTube app works fine with the same IP.