I am not close the project, but have been following its twists and turns. This Freetube article, while citing past relations with Omar seems borderline inaccurate and a bit grave-dancery. The invidious announcement said that the main instance would be shutdown and he would roll off the project, but it also said other instances could carry the torch, not that “the project is shutting down”. Maybe there is close collaboration between the author and Omar and this is the message he wants crafted, but that was not clear from his initial communication.

This is the part I specifically object to:

I hope that FreeTube can be the Invidious replacement that everyone is looking for moving forward. I understand that it’s a different work flow and that there are some use cases that will be missed (mobile specifically comes to mind) but I want to be able to cater to as many people as I can. Please let me know how you use Invidious and I will do my best to include that functionality within FreeTube as well.