Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 135 posts

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#111

Post by kaliqt »

redder23 wrote: post #68
marttt wrote: post #64

For a few years, I've been using the Redirector add-on [1] to redirect Yotube URLs to various Invidious instances. No ads, and easy to tailor the visual experience to your needs. Here's my Redirector rule: Youtube Redirect: https://www.youtube.com/* to: https://invidious.protokolla.fi/$1 Hint: Youtube > Invidious instance redirection Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hipBryeDc0E → https://invidious.protokolla.…

The issue is that Invidious only supports 720p

What's preventing them from going higher? Also I think Invidious sorely needs UX updates to help make it easier to avoid having to go to Youtube.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#112

Post by kzrdude »

ryandrake wrote: post #40

It would be nice if browsers were able to get around all these kinds of shenanigans directly, instead of having to always reach for extensions and addons and endlessly participate in this cat and mouse game. After all, the browser is supposed to be the user's agent. Its job is to do what the user wants and fetch the content that the user asks for. Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn and allowed the b…

It's a lot better if the user-agent is extensible. For one thing, so that users can customize it. But also so that it will not be summarily blocked by websites and networks.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#113

Post by globular-toast »

tianqi wrote: post #59
ryandrake wrote: post #40

It would be nice if browsers were able to get around all these kinds of shenanigans directly, instead of having to always reach for extensions and addons and endlessly participate in this cat and mouse game. After all, the browser is supposed to be the user's agent. Its job is to do what the user wants and fetch the content that the user asks for. Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn and allowed the b…

I'm not sure you can still "do what you want" because without ads Youtube would not exist.

Where does this idea that YouTube couldn't exist without ads? Not with it's current architecture, sure, but do people really lack the imagination to see a web with videos that aren't served by a monopoly? Peer-to-peer sharing has been around for a very long time and works very well. You can share large content right now with essentially no extra cost (you already pay for bandwidth, you already have storage etc).

The trouble is finding said content. There is a huge conflict of interest due to the most popular search engine also owning the most popular centralised content platform. This should never have been allowed to happen, but here we are.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#114

Post by matheusmoreira »

_cenw wrote: post #109
matheusmoreira wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So firefox can't do much about it without actively trying to circumvent YT and YT specifically. There's no reason why Firefox couldn't do that. > Also, you can't have an ad-free experience if the price of using a service is that the ad is delivered to you. Sure I can, uBlock Origin provides exactly that. They are not entitled to my attention. If they have a problem with that, they can return 402 Payment Required.

That's excessive scope creep. Adding site-specific workarounds for some sites feels uncomfortable. Who decides what websites get "fixed", and how? That's a great bit to move to addons. Maybe recommend them more visibly instead. Also, remember how Mozilla is funded.

> That's excessive scope creep. Adding site-specific workarounds for some sites feels uncomfortable.

Not to Google and its fellow corporations apparently.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29707078

https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/main/Source/WebCore/pa...

They have site-specific fixes for their own sites. Instead of fixing their stuff, they fixed the browsers instead. We can obviously apply the exact same strategy to dealing with every single website out there. If a website is broken or generally annoying to use, just fix it by providing a site specific version of the browser.

They don't even need to reinvent the wheel. Port yt-dlp to Firefox. That will fix YouTube and literally every other video website out there. What yt-dlp does should be a core feature of every browser out there. It's that good. uBlock Origin too.

> Who decides what websites get "fixed", and how?

Whoever develops the browser or its extensions. Arguably the whole of uBlock Origin and its filter lists are just databases of site specific fixes. If people can maintain an extremely huge list of advertisers and blockers for every website out there, surely they can maintain something like this.

> Also, remember how Mozilla is funded.

I remember Mozilla has about a billion dollars in the bank. Who cares about their Google funding? I doubt they're gonna drop them anyway. I bet they pay them just to ward off risk of antitrust lawsuits.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#115

Post by progval »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #114
_cenw wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's excessive scope creep. Adding site-specific workarounds for some sites feels uncomfortable. Who decides what websites get "fixed", and how? That's a great bit to move to addons. Maybe recommend them more visibly instead. Also, remember how Mozilla is funded.

> That's excessive scope creep. Adding site-specific workarounds for some sites feels uncomfortable. Not to Google and its fellow corporations apparently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29707078 https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/main/Source/WebCore/pa... They have site-specific fixes for their own sites . Instead of fixing their stuff, they fixed the browsers instead. We can obviously apply the exact same s…

Firefox has this kind of workaround too: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/extensi...

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#116

Post by tuan »

redder23 wrote: post #68
marttt wrote: post #64

For a few years, I've been using the Redirector add-on [1] to redirect Yotube URLs to various Invidious instances. No ads, and easy to tailor the visual experience to your needs. Here's my Redirector rule: Youtube Redirect: https://www.youtube.com/* to: https://invidious.protokolla.fi/$1 Hint: Youtube > Invidious instance redirection Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hipBryeDc0E → https://invidious.protokolla.…

The issue is that Invidious only supports 720p

Hmm I installed invidious yesterday and was able to watch 1080p. Maybe you need to update to the latest.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#117

Post by taway1237 »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #96
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new generation knows mostly the web through jailed devices called "smartphones". They will have no idea, and just assume that's how things are. HN bubble strikes again.

I'm well aware that I'm an outlier here which is why I stated "in my mind". Not sure why you feel the need to write "HN bubble strikes again" except for a lack of reading comprehension or an attempt at trolling.

I also assumed that by saying "in my mind" you mean "in my opinion". English is not my first lamguare, but I think this is a reasonable reading?

If you wanted to say "youtube is not important enough for me" then your post reads weird - what is youtube going to get away with? Losing you personally? I think they'll get over it.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#118

Post by safety1st »

petree wrote: post #91
safety1st wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of fantasy microeconomics debate is silly at best, disingenuous at worst. We are talking about a company with $280B in revenue per year and one of the highest profit margins in America. How they spend that money is not connected to what is fair or what makes some kind of logical sense in your head. It's connected to whatever will increase their profits further. All you are doing is laying down cover fire to…

Having a loss leader like this is exactly monopolistic behavior though. The fact that Google are trying to make money from it is expected and more fair to their competitors than just having it completely free, and not having ads either.

No. Trying to make money is something that all businesses do, not just monopolies. Having loss leaders is also something that many businesses do.

Here are behaviors that are fairly unique to monopolies: raising prices while degrading their product. Many businesses try to do these, but monopolies, who have no significant competition, are more likely to succeed. Sure enough this monopolistic behavior is what Google has just exhibited: by banning people who use ad blockers, they have either degraded their product, or raised the price (from $0 to the cost of YouTube Premium for those users), depending on how you look at it.

They can do this because they are a monopoly.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#119

Post by matheusmoreira »

progval wrote: post #115
matheusmoreira wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's excessive scope creep. Adding site-specific workarounds for some sites feels uncomfortable. Not to Google and its fellow corporations apparently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29707078 https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/blob/main/Source/WebCore/pa... They have site-specific fixes for their own sites . Instead of fixing their stuff, they fixed the browsers instead. We can obviously apply the exact same s…

Firefox has this kind of workaround too: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/extensi...

Every browser does. I'm arguing they should have even more extensive workarounds for website idiocy than they do now. They're our user agents. Their purpose is to make the consumption of data from remote servers as painless as possible. They should totally fix sites in pursuit of that goal. Whether the sites want to be fixed or not.

Re: Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

#120

Post by littlestymaar »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #98
littlestymaar wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The execution being nontrivial is not in fact the main reason why you can't just “claim their kingdom”, their biggest most is by far the network effect, not the technological challenges (which also nontrivial, is far more tractable today than it used to be when YouTube was founded, and even then it still only required 67 employees to build from scratch).

The "execution" I'm referring to isn't limited to the technical implementation. I'm not sure why you decided to interpret my comment in the least charitable way.

Unless you think the initial YouTube team that was acquired by Google had 67 engineers and nothing else, I don't get the point you're making here.

The fact that you can in fact execute (whatever you want to put in this) a YouTube alternative with a team of less than 100 is easily demonstrated by the fact that YouTube used to be this small at some point…

Post reply on HN