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

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

#51

Post by whelp_24 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #49
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…

My ideal getaway car would include an automated drone which flies into the store to exfiltrate the codes from the prepaid cards, and present them as credits in my phone, ignoring the mess of walking inside, paying, and typing into my phone that the retailer futilely demands.

This analogy isn't even close.

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

#52

Post by anon_cow1111 »

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 don't think firefox could reasonably do this, just because a significant part of their funding comes directly from google.

And maybe more relevant, having this be default behavior would just cause the cat-and-mouse to get worse, when the majority of users are now blocking it with no effort, and the bean-counters notice the ad impression numbers suddenly dropping.

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

#53

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

anon_cow1111 wrote: post #52
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 don't think firefox could reasonably do this, just because a significant part of their funding comes directly from google. And maybe more relevant, having this be default behavior would just cause the cat-and-mouse to get worse, when the majority of users are now blocking it with no effort, and the bean-counters notice the ad impression numbers suddenly dropping.

this is true from a practical standpoint.

It's like an adult watching a child's idealism and knowing the child is right.

I'm not calling the OP a child, I'm saying the OP is right and the world sucks.

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

#54

Post by jraph »

saxonww wrote: post #42
jraph wrote: post #7

I've been using Privacy Redirect and some of the other generalist redirector extension with quite some success. Privacy redirect also redirects twitter to nitter, reddit to libreddit or old.reddit, Google Maps to openstreetmap and other stuff. Redirects can be enabled/disabled to ones taste. That's quite neat. Combined with my private invidious instance so I can subscribe to channels without this data leaving compute…

Yeah it's a shame these aren't available for Firefox Mobile. At least one of the redirect plugins would be nice.

I remember reading that firefox mobile is going to allow all extensions? Or maybe it's the case of the version coming from F-Droid?

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

#55

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

d3vr wrote: post #36
Krasnol wrote: post #33

I'm using ublock Origin and have never seen any of those. For those with ubO who still see them, cleaning the cache and updating the filters within ubO seems to help. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

I am using ubO too, I just purged the cache and updated the filters, still experiencing the same issue. Maybe YT is still testing this and haven't rolled out the blocking on everyone just yet?

with ubO you can tell it to remove elements from a page permanently (every time it's loaded).

I just used the picker, removed the elements, saved it, and haven't looked back.

I also did this with the stack overflow nag.

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

#56

Post by jraph »

gear54rus wrote: post #44
jraph wrote: post #7

I've been using Privacy Redirect and some of the other generalist redirector extension with quite some success. Privacy redirect also redirects twitter to nitter, reddit to libreddit or old.reddit, Google Maps to openstreetmap and other stuff. Redirects can be enabled/disabled to ones taste. That's quite neat. Combined with my private invidious instance so I can subscribe to channels without this data leaving compute…

While we're on the topic of unfucking youtube, do you know how I can turn shorts crappy player without controls into something that I can rewind? Sound volume controls would be nice too.

Invidious uses its regular player for shorts.

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

#57

Post by atleta »

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…

Lookig at it source (the page downloaded when you open a YT link pointing to a video), it's almost certain that YT doesn't load without JS. It's not an html page with some extra functionality implemented in JS, it's a web app that builds the web page you see from JS.

So firefox can't do much about it without actively trying to circumvent YT and YT specifically.

I don't think browsers made the turn you mention. It's more like browsers became more and more capable and web developers made use of it. Sometimes it's annoying because most websites are not websites anymore but apps (GUIs) that run in the browser and some of the web sites/apps people use could never work without it. Sure, we could all deploy those apps onto our machines (or have them deploy automatically in a sandbox) and there were actually technologies that did just that (think java web start or whatever the name ended up being) but they lost to what we have now: running these apps in the browser.

Also, you can't have an ad-free experience if the price of using a service is that the ad is delivered to you. On YT you can buy a subscription and you'll see no ads. But sure, most sites don't offer this.

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

#58

Post by jellyblade »

gear54rus wrote: post #44
jraph wrote: post #7

I've been using Privacy Redirect and some of the other generalist redirector extension with quite some success. Privacy redirect also redirects twitter to nitter, reddit to libreddit or old.reddit, Google Maps to openstreetmap and other stuff. Redirects can be enabled/disabled to ones taste. That's quite neat. Combined with my private invidious instance so I can subscribe to channels without this data leaving compute…

While we're on the topic of unfucking youtube, do you know how I can turn shorts crappy player without controls into something that I can rewind? Sound volume controls would be nice too.

If you're watching on desktop, you can change the youtube video's url path from /shorts/video to youtube's usual ?watch=video and have it play in youtube's regular player. You can also just have an extension do this for you, which is what I do.

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

#59

Post by tianqi »

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.

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

#60

Post by pmontra »

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…

How could that work, given that a web site can change its working every day? Each site can have its passionated circumvention developer that maintains an extension like this. Is it reasonable to expect that each browser can do the same for each website? And is it reasonable to expect it for Google's Chrome?
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