Personal Website & Blog

Stop gifting your personal data to Google without needing to!

        • Ephera
          3·
          4 years ago

          Well, crap. And thanks.

          I had to type it, because my all-experimental phone and/or browser makes my tabs unload at random, if I switch to another tab. And if it does that, I have to type the comment again.

          • abbenm
            5·
            4 years ago

            It’s a super helpful link that I hadn’t seen before. I am really excited that their roadmap has livestreaming as part of it! The peertube-index link was also an excellent tool I hadn’t seen before.

            Right now, to navigate the fediverse, I think it’s good to have this collage of tools all bookmarked, that are kind of scattered all over the place. Here’s a list of all the different tools on the fediverse, there’s a good frontend that makes mastodon nicer, here’s a list of instances with good block lists, and there’s a place that rounds up android apps, etc. etc. And despite having bookmarked a lot of these I didn’t know about the global peertube search.

        • Psychemar
          3·
          4 years ago

          Peert

          Can you explain what MX and NS means? Probably basic questions but I got to ask.

            • Psychemar
              2·
              4 years ago

              OK that is completely out of my depth but as someone who follows the project they have been moving away from Google for a few months. Last week they even added their android app to F-Droid. No trackers, no bs.

  • sseneca
    7·
    4 years ago

    nice. combining the RSS feeds with youtube-dl is my favourite way to watch YouTube right now. I’ll probably write a blog post about it (eventually)

    • kujaw
      2·
      4 years ago

      My way is RSS feeds + smplayer. However I tend to use yt less and less every year.

    • Ofosho
      1·
      4 years ago

      I’ve got a fish alias to pipe the clipboard contents into MPV. I keep a file around with unlisted playlist links, and only open YT to curate those lists. Much smoother without the browser overhead.

  • onlooker
    7·
    4 years ago

    I’ve been watching youtube this way for about 18 months now and it’s really nice. No ads, invidious seems to load faster for me than youtube and you can download the video or just the audio without having to use a plugin for your web browser. And as far as I can tell, age restricted videos are not blocked!

    There is a catch, however. Every so often, invidious WILL break. This is no fault of the project itself, but whenever Youtube changes something in their API, Invidious has to play catch-up. The devs are usually very quick to remedy this, though. Another thing to note is that some videos will just outright not play, at least for me, regardless of the invidious instance being used. An example would be any music video on a VEVO channel. youtube-dl, on the other hand, will still happily download them. No idea why this is.

    That said, I’m still willing to put up with all of the above and keep using invidious, because it really is a wonderful service, rather than use youtube. Random breakages and unavailable videos notwithstanding, it’s still a far better experience than Youtube’s own.

    • Ephera
      3·
      4 years ago

      Every so often, invidious WILL break. This is no fault of the project itself, but whenever Youtube changes something in their API, Invidious has to play catch-up.

      Hmm, the explanation that I’ve heard for this, was that every so often, Google will block their IP address, because that much traffic from a single IP looks like a bot or crawler to them. And I have had luck in the past by temporarily using a different Invidious instance, but of course, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be both.

      Another thing to note is that some videos will just outright not play, at least for me, regardless of the invidious instance being used.

      I’ve had luck with changing resolution. The default setting for Invidious, 720p, seems to often be encoded in WebM (the others usually in MPEG-4), which might be the reason why it’s causing more problems. Similarly, I’ve heard others suggest setting the resolution to “dash” to fix these kinds of problems. You can also do this via a URL parameter, if you want to include that in your RSS reader.

      Presumably, YouTube itself might be less troubled by certain resolutions not working, because its player will automatically switch to another resolution.

      • onlooker
        4·
        4 years ago

        I’ve had luck with changing resolution. The default setting for Invidious, 720p, seems to often be encoded in WebM (the others usually in MPEG-4), which might be the reason why it’s causing more problems. Similarly, I’ve heard others suggest setting the resolution to “dash” to fix these kinds of problems.

        Ah, I did not try changing resolutions yet. Will keep this workaround in mind the next time I encounter an unplayable video. Thanks!

    • Future Me
      1·
      4 years ago

      Youtube itself also has no ads if you use an adblocker.

  • Alex1138
    6·
    4 years ago

    Youtube drives me insane becaue they just do not listen to their users, it used to be sane with a good recommended system but in the last few years it’s like they had a contest of “How can we shove as much bullshit down people’s throats before everybody leaves? Bet you 5 bucks it’s this much”

  • Beholder
    6·
    4 years ago

    On the linux version of VLC you can drag an drop youtube links right in. Works on windows too but you have to edit the youtube.lua in vlc settings.

    • karlOP
      1·
      4 years ago

      I agree! I am planning to set one up soon myself alongside a SearX instance.

    • xvf
      1·
      4 years ago

      it just doesn’t work, anyone else?

      This can mean so many things… Do they load, they get stuck? Its choppy? Errors?

  • Psychemar
    13·
    4 years ago

    So people don’t want to give data to Google. They also want to watch YouTube videos without “paying” for them. I’m sorry but I can’t take this kind of activism seriously.

    Either you use YouTube and accept their term of service and/or start using alternatives. Maybe even contribute to their development/growth (I’ve been “investing” some time into LBRY for example)

    Using tools like Invidious is basically stealing. Including from the content producers we all love to watch.

    • Kamui
      3·
      4 years ago

      Huh… I never thought about it that way. Though, doesn’t Google (and other Internet giants for that matter) take your data even if you opt out of their services? I coulda sworn that many don’t even honor the “Do Not Track Me” option you pick on Firefox.

      • Psychemar
        1·
        4 years ago

        They probably do. But to me that is irrelevant on the point of stealing from the people who make the videos. A discussion could be had about if 2 bads make good. I don’t care about that debate that much in this context.

        • Kamui
          1·
          4 years ago

          I see. The real loser here is the creator… Thank you for pointing that out.

      • Psychemar
        1·
        4 years ago

        Not wanting to see ads is not stealing. Removing ads from a platform that is paid with ads is stealing.

        You didn’t explain what adbuster is but from what I understood its a collection of “magazines” that aren’t funded by advertisements. That is great and I would like the system to move in such direction. However I fail to see what that has to do with the YouTube case.

        Whenever you watch a video on YouTube there is a contract that is implied: you can watch the video and we data mine you and show you the ads that make us the most money. If you don’t watch the ads, you just stole content.

        This reminds me of the piracy debate. I still haven’t heard a convincing argument for how pirating media is not stealing. But boy do people try to argue (and very fiercely).

          • Kamui
            2·
            4 years ago

            I agree, it’s almost like a type of… manipulation. Especially targeted ads.

          • Psychemar
            1·
            4 years ago

            From time to time I do think about the advertising industry taking into account humanity’s interests. I’m not sure if it’s a net positive.

            However, if you don’t agree with advertisement, the ethical decision to make is to not watch YouTube. Because you disagree with the “price” it doesn’t make it OK to access it for free.

            I honestly think that the future of content funding will be a mix of ads, donations and subscriptions. LBRY is moving in that direction. With PeerTube it’s kind of a mess because an instance can have ads and even trackers so I’m a bit skeptical of that alternative. You will end up with many “YouTubes” if you don’t kill surveillance capitalism in its roots.

            Ultimately I think alternatives to platforms like YT need to have good principles from the ground up if the internet is to improve.