You should be able to do that with a ublock origin filter.

Maybe ask on the community: !ublockorigin@lemmy.ml

How did he prove he was actually himself? Seems like anyone could have done it with a bit of AI.

Duckduckgo's version is so much better. Unlimited aliases for free.

Fair enough, that's interesting. I assume this only applies to the non-web clients. On the web, it would not be possible. You can verify by looking at the outgoing network requests on this random video for example: https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=qKMcKQCQxxI

Smarttube next doesn't require rooting the device, it can be sideloaded. Sideloading is not very complicated. Google is not trying to block any sideloading (at the moment, at least).

You can download videos and cut off sponsored moments in the video with sponsorblock.

GrayJay is pretty good!

They already support manifest v3, but with less restrictions than Chrome's implementation.

There is no way a DDoS on the website in affecting the crawler. Also, running a DDoS attack of this size costs a lot of money (if you rent the network, if you own it it costs money as lost sales). No one is giving AI control over a DDoS network to just fuck around.

You can configure it per app. And choose your own block lists.

Some developers will publish their apps on github, you can download it, and use a different app to get the apk file from the app you get from the play store, and compare the hash of the file. If they're identical then Google didn't meddle with it. If they're not, either Google did, or the developer releases a different version to Google Play.

Beehaw defederated with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works because both of those instances allow(ed?) registering without email verification/captcha. They said it is bringing bots and spams. Haven't seen this issue personally. I recommend being a member of an instance that still federates with both lemmy.world/sh.itjust.works and Beehaw.