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YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

rg3.github.io

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Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#331

Post by cookiecaper »

CM30 wrote: post #329
cookiecaper wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The niche was extremely specific. It's not something the NY Times or TechCrunch or other big generic media outlets would've reported on. As for niche authorities, there are only a very small handful of them. I did contact them. One of them never replied and started deleting all references to my project off of their message boards where users had been raving about it. I don't have any official reason why, I can only s…

Wow, that's pretty awful. Out of curiosity, what is this niche? Sounds like one where the major players in the field are messed up beyond belief. Last time I heard stories like that was about heavily spammed niches, like casinos or pharmacies or SEO itself. But yeah, if you're in a field where competitors are either ultra paranoid or sleazy, then you'll likely have to resort to 'dirty' tactics.

I don't want to disclose the niche because it's so small that disclosing it will likely allow people to figure out what the project was. It's not something that's conventionally thought of as filled with spammers. I was pretty surprised at the total vacuum of professional behavior when I first got plugged into it.

The larger issue here is that Google's algorithms can't identify quality content without something that it already believes to be quality pointing out to it (and in a very specific way that Google detects as a "natural" link, whatever that means). This causes issues with innovative solutions that aren't immediately accepted within their niche, niches that are small and heavily paranoid, and in which incumbents maintain their positions by offensively seeking to harm and/or silence discussion of anyone they dislike, or other sites that deserve good rankings but are unable to get acclaim from either the NYT or the niche-equivalent. You shouldn't need an entity Google trusts to run a story on you to get good rankings. It'd be great if Google fixed that, but I don't really expect them to do so.

We should just make it known among real entrepreneurs that they shouldn't have reservations about SEO tactics (which are almost all somewhat uncomfortable, at least) and that they are required to compete so that no one else with a good, legit business gets quashed by a spammer because Matt Cutts and Google swears up and down that not only do you not need to do anything but "make good content", but that you'll be hurt if you take artificial steps to enhance your rank. It's BS -- those artificial steps are mandatory to control ranking.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#332

Post by clapinton »

baldfat wrote: post #163
guycook wrote: post #28

The tragedy of this software (and many like it) is that despite working exactly as advertised, easily and with a lot of features, because it's a quiet open source project without any SEO rigging it will never appear in page 1 of any searches by laymen trying to download videos ("save youtube to hard drive", "download youtube videos" et al). The amount of crapware I've had to remove from family member's PCs just becau…

I treat youtube-dl like Fight Club. I am glad it isn't on the top of searches since I am afraid sites would start trying to stop it from working harder.

My Maslow's middle layer immediately filled up when I read this. Thanks for making my Monday better.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#333

Post by CM30 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #331
CM30 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that's pretty awful. Out of curiosity, what is this niche? Sounds like one where the major players in the field are messed up beyond belief. Last time I heard stories like that was about heavily spammed niches, like casinos or pharmacies or SEO itself. But yeah, if you're in a field where competitors are either ultra paranoid or sleazy, then you'll likely have to resort to 'dirty' tactics.

I don't want to disclose the niche because it's so small that disclosing it will likely allow people to figure out what the project was. It's not something that's conventionally thought of as filled with spammers. I was pretty surprised at the total vacuum of professional behavior when I first got plugged into it. The larger issue here is that Google's algorithms can't identify quality content without something that…

Unfortunately, this is likely going to be a problem till strong AI becomes a thing, since there's no real way to judge content quality automatically without it.

Also, popularity may not be tied to quality, but to some degree, it's tied to what people expect to get when they search. Which is its own problem, since someone like Microsoft or Apple could do anything, yet people would be suspicious if they didn't show up for obvious queries. So it's a balancing act between 'rank the sites that might be better but less obscure', or 'rank the ones people expect to find because they already know about them'.

As for having reservations about SEO tactics... it should depend on exactly what they are. Something that hurts communities or users (like spamming forums or social media) is pretty damn sleazy, and is a quick way to commit business suicide. As is outright or borderline criminal behaviour for rankings.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#334

Post by cookiecaper »

CM30 wrote: post #333
cookiecaper wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to disclose the niche because it's so small that disclosing it will likely allow people to figure out what the project was. It's not something that's conventionally thought of as filled with spammers. I was pretty surprised at the total vacuum of professional behavior when I first got plugged into it. The larger issue here is that Google's algorithms can't identify quality content without something that…

Unfortunately, this is likely going to be a problem till strong AI becomes a thing, since there's no real way to judge content quality automatically without it. Also, popularity may not be tied to quality, but to some degree, it's tied to what people expect to get when they search. Which is its own problem, since someone like Microsoft or Apple could do anything, yet people would be suspicious if they didn't show up…

>Unfortunately, this is likely going to be a problem till strong AI becomes a thing, since there's no real way to judge content quality automatically without it.

While this is true in absolute terms, there are ways to improve that I don't really know of Google doing (not that they aren't, as I don't have information on their internal workings). Google's algorithms seem to consider linking supreme and they don't appear to do any of their own research. I think a research/polling program to get users to rate some content would greatly improve search results. Other signals like the average reading level of the page's text could also be used to surmise the type and quality of content.

Overall, we need more humanity in the search results and less blind belief in the academic theory. This is a lapse in judgment frequently made by academics and mathematicians; they refuse to accept the evidence of failure that lies in front of them (since their theory/model/whatever doesn't say it should exist) until the failure reaches catastrophic, impossible-to-ignore thresholds. We need more humanity in a lot of systems, in my estimation.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#335

Post by ismyrnow »

There's an app called Free Download Manager which has this feature. I suspect it may be using youtube-dl under the hood, since the functionality looks similar (with a GUI, of course). The app allows you to copy/paste youtube urls and it parses the page for available downloads (audio and video). I use it regularly for putting technical talks onto my phone to watch or listen to on my commute.

The app is very easy to use, and one of the few I would recommend to a non-technical person for the features it has.

I know the name makes it sound like spyware, but it's the most lightweight tool I've found for both this and the occasional torrent.

http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#336

Post by nsgi »

lelandbatey wrote: post #278
Kristine1975 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really possible to block youtube-dl? All it does is the same thing Youtube's own HMTL5 player does, except that it saves the video instead of playing it back.

It isn't quite possible to block youtube-dl but not other ways of accessing YouTube. However, if you're downloading a lot of videos from one IP address, Google will blobk your IP from accessing YouTube. I know this because it happened to me after I ran a service to allow people to make gifs from YouTube videos, and the way I got them was with youtube-dl. After a while (about two years) they blacklisted my IP.

Once every two years isn't a bad failure rate. Easy to get another one.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#337

Post by daveloyall »

danso wrote: post #4

Mostly OT: A friend of mine posted this article from his local newspaper as an example of how slow news is in his town: http://www.ottumwacourier.com/news/local_news/what-is-a-gif/... > What is a GIF? > OTTUMWA — Chances are if you have been on the Internet lately, you have encountered a GIF...In honor of National Teen Tech Week, the Ottumwa Public Library offered a session on GIF making for local teens Saturday afte…

The Ottumwa Public Library staff are heros.

Re: YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

#338

Post by JadeNB »

chriswarbo wrote: post #304
JadeNB wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> youtube-dl actually has quite sane defaults too; e.g. "youtube-dl https://......" will Just Work (TM). Are you sure that this is true? Starting many updates ago, but continuing into the present (I just updated to 2016.04.06 to be sure), I encountered a weird situation where $ ./youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbKJt1NQtZE fails but $ ./youtube-dl wbKJt1NQtZE works. I have no problem with the second workin…

$ youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbKJt1NQtZE [youtube] wbKJt1NQtZE: Downloading webpage [youtube] wbKJt1NQtZE: Downloading video info webpage [youtube] wbKJt1NQtZE: Extracting video information [youtube] wbKJt1NQtZE: Downloading MPD manifest WARNING: Requested formats are incompatible for merge and will be merged into mkv. [download] Destination: True Detective - My Least Favorite Life - Lera Lynn Scene-w…

In case anyone else hits this (admittedly very specific) problem, nathyong (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11461326 )'s suggestion, and a subsequent USE (http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/276731/shell-eating-...) question, made it clear that my issue is that I had some time turned on `nullglob`, so `https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbKJt1NQtZE ` was being taken as a very strange, certainly non-matching, glob.
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