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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

#61

Post by RockRobotRock »

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…

Go ahead, fork Firefox with extensions pre-installed that disable JS and default settings that disable CSS. See if your idealistic world works in reality. :)

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

#62

Post by citruscomputing »

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.

There is a hacky workaround you can do to add any extension to ff mobile, it involves making a personal collection: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

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

#63

Post by RockRobotRock »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #22

While we're on the subject of youtube annoyances: are there any extensions that disable "ambient mode?" This infuriating feature provides nothing useful and absolutely murders Apple Silicon GPUs, draining the battery very, very quickly.

I have never seen it turn itself back on after disabling it once.

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

#64

Post by marttt »

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.fi/watch?v=hipBryeDc0E
  Applies to: Main window (address bar)
As a parenting control trick, I also use Redirector to direct some of the more immersive gaming sites to about:blank for our 10yo son. Definitely proud of that hack, ha.

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/

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

#65

Post by _Algernon_ »

loveparade wrote: post #48

I don't care as much about the privacy as I care about not messing up my Youtube recommendations. Any time I accidentally click on or hover over some BS video my front page is full of clickbait spam and I need to manually clean up my watch history. I guess (?) it works for monetization, but the UX of YouTube and their pushing of clickbait content has become horrible over the past few years. I just wish they stopped t…

The option for making youtube stupid has always been there. It is called the subscription feed: https://youtube.com/feed/subscriptions

You can hide all the other sections using an extension like UnHook: https://unhook.app/

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

#66

Post by loveparade »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #65
loveparade wrote: post #48

I don't care as much about the privacy as I care about not messing up my Youtube recommendations. Any time I accidentally click on or hover over some BS video my front page is full of clickbait spam and I need to manually clean up my watch history. I guess (?) it works for monetization, but the UX of YouTube and their pushing of clickbait content has become horrible over the past few years. I just wish they stopped t…

The option for making youtube stupid has always been there. It is called the subscription feed: https://youtube.com/feed/subscriptions You can hide all the other sections using an extension like UnHook: https://unhook.app/

Thanks, I wasn't aware of Unhook. I know the I can use the subscriptions feed, but it doesn't solve all problems. When I open YT on my phone, or on my TV, I still get blasted with recommendations and clickbait. When I search for a keyword I get relevant results interspersed with clickbaity content (similar to Google SEO spam), and so on. This problem permeates the whole YT experience because the business model is maximize engagement metrics and ad view time at all costs.

Unhook looks good indeed, I guess I am just a bit frustrated that I need external extensions, many of which are linked in this thread, and hacks to fight against services that try to monetize my attention. Especially when I already pay for them.

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

#67

Post by butz »

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…

What you just described is "User agent stylesheet" and in theory you could build your own styles for any website which your browser will prefer.

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

#68

Post by redder23 »

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

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

#69

Post by vorticalbox »

pmontra wrote: post #60
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?

I guess in an idea world servers would return only data and browsers would style that data to each yours preferred looks.

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

#70

Post by petree »

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…

You can use NoScript to disable JS and see how well that works.

But more to the point, yes, a browser is a client, but without the economic incentive of either ads or direct monetization from users, many sites, YouTube included, would simply not work. Storage and bandwith costs money. Unless we decided to somehow fund all of this through some sort of additional tax through the ISPs or governments, ads or subscriptions are a necessary evil.

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