NewPipe – ad-free, open-source Android YouTube client

> I really wonder why so many innocuous, on-topic comments about NewPipe are being downvoted in this thread. Are YouTube employees raiding HN or something? /s

At this point pretty much all comments saying that this is bypassing paid features are downvoted into oblivion and grayed out, so what exactly are you talking about?

The big thing is that pirates would most likely not pay for the thing they are pirating if it was not available legally. This isn't by any means universal but take video games for example.

Developers have long since abandoned the concept of providing demos to "try the game" before you buy it. If I am thinking about buying a game but can't be convinced that I'll get my money's worth, I'll pirate the game. If I end up liking the game, I might as well buy it so that I can use online features, receive updates, and not have to worry with the crack causing weird bugs. In these cases, piracy has filled in the roll of demo software and provides a net positive for companies because any converts to paying customers would likely have never purchased the game had they not pirated it.

Alternatively, look at something like the anime fansub scene. Fansubs often have far better quality than anything you'll see coming from legitimate anime streaming services. I pay for anime streaming subscriptions but I can't count the number of times I've refused to watch something on the service due to how bad the subtitles were, torrented an actually good fansub, and then supported the series (not the streaming platform) through alternative means.

You also have the digital preservation aspect. Piracy is the reason most early console games are playable nowadays. Emulators aren't really legal and all of the published ROMs are very much pirated content but if they didn't exist, how many games would be either extraordinarily rare or lost to time by now. Same goes for music. What.cd was an incredible archive of music and it preserved tonnes of tracks from small now defunct bands throughout the start of the millennium. This is all content that would otherwise be lost to time if pirates hadn't preserved them due to their own motivations.

There's more on this out on the web. I read a really cool article about it a while back but I can't find it atm.

About half the time I get a new error on NewPipe I just go to their FDroid.org page and download the new mi or version bump and its been sorted out.

I'm completely against Google usage of personal informations and hate annoying and bad ux on official YouTube app but, to be honest, ads support creators with revenue so when you "avoid ads", you are harming creators too, not only Google.

I think that if you don't like YT app and advertising, you simply shouldn't use YouTube.

This argument is as old as time, and the counterpoint is simply "it's revenue they were not getting regardless".

Those of us who don't want to see ads ever, for any reason aren't stealing or harming anyone, we simply don't want to see ads -- saying "well don't use the service" is not all of a sudden getting the creators back any revenue, and no, if there's interesting stuff on YouTube, I'm going to use it, and do so without seeing ads. I'll support the creators I want to support elsewise.