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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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.

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[-] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 139 points 1 week ago

Yep, yt-dlp has already been fixed. Those devs are really awesome.

[-] Scrollone@feddit.it 11 points 1 week ago

I mean, if you can display it on your screen, there must be a way to also save it.

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 78 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Slightly over dramatized. This happens basically every month or so. They break it, we fix it. For me newpipe and yt-dlp havent even stopped working despite not updating anything.

[-] christian@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago

I'm relieved because I saw this post and assumed it meant in a more serious way than normal.

[-] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 68 points 1 week ago

invidious, yt-dlp, and freetube have broken so many times for me over the last 6 months, I've fallen out of the habit of using YT lately anyway.

It sucks because there is content there that I want but I'm not going to whore myself for it.

[-] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 1 week ago

Thank you! Ffs, I was just sitting here thinking, I am not paying ticketmaster a damn dime, even if I have to miss my childhood heroes before they die. People whore themselves out and it fucks all of society constantly. Can't watch videos because of content monopoly, can't see a concert without getting fucked on exorbitant fees, can't go to the hospital because holy fuck, can't go to school without crippling debt, can't watch TV without supporting terrorists, etc. Like bloody hell the corpos have monopolized and ruined everything. They can go to hell. I'll play my shitty guitar, sing to myself, do home surgery, and go outside or stare at a wall. Fuck this shit!

[-] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 20 points 1 week ago

You still have alternative platforms to Big Tech though, PeerTube and Odysee like have been mentioned umpteen times in this thread and on Lemmy at large, and not to mention Lemmy itself, and Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Bsky among others.

[-] 0xtero@beehaw.org 24 points 1 week ago

Bsky is just another VC financed grift though.

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[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

Sure but they don't have the content and don't have staying power. If peertube became popular who is going to pay for the bandwidth.

[-] SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Its users, in part because it uses web torrent which means the traffic of videos is shared peer-to-peer, thus the host doesn't have to pay for a lot of bandwidth.

Also, just like mastodon servers are paid by its users for service I'm sure admins that build up a good reputation with their users or make them aware that they need more to pay for it will pay, or not and they'll just disappear which is really how the web should work, not all these tech oligarchs who have lots of money from exploiting their users and workers.

Edit: Was incorrect, it uses HLS with P2P support:

At the beginning of PeerTube, we only supported Web Video (previously known as "WebTorrent") streaming. Due to several limitations of the Web Video system, we had to add HLS with P2P support.

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[-] 418_im_a_teapot@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

I whore myself out and pay for the family plan, but I have a good reason.

My dad watches YT almost exclusively so I told him if he shared his password with me I can add him to my plan so he doesn’t see any ads. He fell for it. Now I login into his account ever so often and mark “not interested” on any red pill bullshit I see. It seems to be working.

[-] kugmo@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

Stop saying content and just say videos ffs

[-] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 week ago

Reminds me of when people say "product" instead of "shampoo" or "conditioner" or whatever it is they're actually putting in their hair. Capitalism-coded language.

[-] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

I’m on iOS so my options are rather limited, but I’ve had decent luck using Brave. Is there anything that the others do that a browser wouldn’t?

[-] princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago

Vinegar works really well, and hasn't been affected by this change: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303229

[-] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

I don't think Brave has any special magic that other browsers don't.

My understanding is, all the workarounds in use recently work or fail depending on the IP address you have.

I don't know anything about this change but it seems to simply require a JS engine in your client. Any browser has that, so the browser addons probably aren't effected by this change.

However, it's clear that YT is waging an incremental campaign here. Today it's yt-dlp, next week... who knows.

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[-] fedislug@lemmy.ml 66 points 1 week ago

God damn it Google. Moves like this are such an insult to the free and open net that made YouTube popular in the first place

[-] tuff_wizard@aussie.zone 57 points 1 week ago

I applaud your belief that Google isn't 100% against a free and open internet these days. They know exactly what they are doing.

[-] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 49 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I don't know about the OP, but Google admitted recently to breaking the open web. By their own admission, and their own words, Google is against an open web. https://lemmy.org/post/1689081

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[-] fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago

This is literally the company that tried to implement WEI

[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 24 points 1 week ago

May this be the hoped-for token of enshittification that will spring Peertube and other platforms upwards!

[-] 0xtero@beehaw.org 24 points 1 week ago

I doubt it. Bandwidth and storage costs for distributed video on the scale of YouTube isn’t going to happen without some kind of monetisation beyond stray donations.

Places like Nebula have better operating models but they’re also very niche.

[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 1 week ago

on the scale of YouTube

That's precisely the trick. Don't try to copy Youtube. You're gonna lose. And it's not the Peertube intended use case anyway.

Instead, Peertube and other such platforms should work as cross-indexing domain-specific, configuration-specific video galleries. A retro videogame video archive does not need 4K 120fps Dobly 14.3 audio; they can just encode most of everything in 480i 30fps and their storage costs will go down significantly. A news report / news reel archive can save some costs by encoding as SDR (or even lower) with ~80kbps mono MP3 audio or somesuch, since most of everything past the intro jingle is human voice.

Play to your advantages. Trying to break into a monopoly game where the rules are broken, the only other player is broken, and the entry fees are broken is self-defeating.

[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

Exactly.

When the game is rigged, literally, the only winning move is not to play that exact game.

Adapt. ~~Imprevise~~ Innovate. Overcome.

[-] 0xtero@beehaw.org 3 points 1 week ago

should work as cross-indexing domain-specific, configuration-specific video galleries

Yes indeed - this is great idea and probably the only way a "web scale" distributed video service can work - unfortunately this doesn't quite exist yet. Even mature implementations like Mastodon have hard time dealing with "global" free text searching (or any kind of taxonomy). But maybe that's the idea that starts a truly free web!

[-] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

A news report / news reel archive can save some costs by encoding as SDR (or even lower) with ~80kbps mono MP3 audio or somesuch, since most of everything past the intro jingle is human voice

  • Opus would have MP3 beat for speech at lower bitrates as per the HydrogenAudio KB, Opus is transparent for speech at 32kbit/s with stereo speech being transparent at 40kbit/s. Beyond that, a typical bitrate for Opus audio on YT is something like 150kbit/s and that codec is transparent for music at 160-192kbit/s. Point being if one works in spoken word and they want to save as much space and bandwidth as possible while still sounding reasonable, 40-48kbit/s Opus would be the ideal audio codec for that as it would give transparent speech at half the bitrate of the 80kbit/s MP3 that's quoted here.
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[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

Sell ads, pay for storage and transmission fees, pay a pittance to the creators.

Vs

Require a single person to finance everything and hope for enough donations to keep running, no incentivization for content creation.

Peertube is missing a couple of things to even be reasonably viable.

[-] hobovision@mander.xyz 17 points 1 week ago

Smart Tube never broke. So not all clients.

[-] veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 week ago

Needing a full JS engine to run on your user account for Youtube? What are the privacy and security implications here?

[-] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's probably more about control than security. Mandate JS, force people to watch their shit on their proprietary front-end.

I bet ad blockers and even manually blocking related cookies in FF browsers are probably going to break the site and force Chromium browser use too.

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[-] xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 16 points 1 week ago

Fucks sake.

[-] cows_are_underrated@feddit.org 16 points 1 week ago

Newpipe works just fine (Germany)

[-] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Same here (USA). I haven't updated my newpipe in a month at least, so it simply never broke. Not a big fan of these unverified headlines.

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[-] pfr@piefed.social 14 points 1 week ago
[-] other_cat@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

Android only? Desktop client stopped working last night. Did you do anything special?

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[-] RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago

I have a program for download yt stuff, will that also break being a full program or is it going to have the same flaw?

[-] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 9 points 1 week ago

Yeah, the lockdown is a YT thing.

[-] RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago

Rip my preferred downloader I guess, new version that would update is subscription based.

[-] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Tartube uses yt-dlp, until Google implements real DRM ala Widevine on YT, which I fully expect them to if they're locking things down this drastically, I mentioned how you can get yt-dlp working again-for now.

[-] forrgott@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

I actually doubt it will go that far. They're far more concerned with those precious ad views, and the slowdown from encrypting/decrypting every feed everywhere would almost certainly cause a noticeable downward trend in those ad views.

[-] DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org 8 points 1 week ago

It's Google, I wouldn't trust them any further than I can throw their Pixel phones. They straight-up admitted recently to breaking the open web, they'll do anything.

[-] Kernal64@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

I don't know, man. Pixel phones are pretty light, so I bet you could throw one pretty far.

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[-] Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone 10 points 1 week ago

Pipepipe is still working, as long as you are not logged in, and obviously aren't trying to watch age verification gated content.

For how long though who knows.

can't wait until we get webrips of heyyeyaaeyaaaeyaeyaa (10 hours)

[-] ohshit604@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

I’ve been trying to maintain Invidious for months, eventually google blocks my IP or ASN which leaves me troubleshooting for hours until the realization settles in.

[-] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 week ago

As of today at least, I can still download video/audio from YT on my android phone with NewPipe...

[-] cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

I just downloaded MKBHD's iPhone Air review, and it played perfectly. 1920p whatever that means (somewhere north of 1440p but not quite 2160p... or 2160p/4K but slightly letterboxed). AV1 (Ay-Vee-Wun, not Ay-Vee-Eye), 30fps... looks and sounds great.

Glad to see the community fixed it fast.

I use jdownloader2 which probably uses yt-dl on the back end. But it also downloads from a metric fuckton of other sites, too. It's like the Swiss Army knife of downloaders. And it's Java, so it runs just as well on my Mac as it did on Windows back when I used that. (Wish they had an official dark theme that was easy to set up though. I know how to do it manually but can't be arsed.)

[-] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago
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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
355 points (97.3% liked)

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