Live data from Hacker News

FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

freetubeapp.io

131–140 of 259 posts

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I feel about all the bold circumvention of paywalls. It’s a legally fuzzy area in some cases, but to me at least, it is basically people saying, “here, let me help you steal!”

YouTube could kill all of this by simply forcing a login to watch anything but they won't because they're cowards.

They won't because they can still serve you ads regardless of you being logged in or not. Why force you to log in and give up the instant ad impression?

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#132
post #54

How is this any different than running youtube in a Firefox container? I feel like it's a lot of reinventing the wheel if you have to do things like Sponsorblock, Adblock, etc. all over again instead of just relying on your current browser setup.

Apps minimize distraction. Plus you can now install it on devices that don't support browser use cases e.g Android TV etc.

[deleted]

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#133
post #69
post #54

How is this any different than running youtube in a Firefox container? I feel like it's a lot of reinventing the wheel if you have to do things like Sponsorblock, Adblock, etc. all over again instead of just relying on your current browser setup.

You can route all traffic through community invidious instances so Google can not even track what content is consumed by your IP. It also automatically skips all ads, even sponsor segments in videos. You also avoid needing to have a Google account to keep up with subscriptions, and you avoid content suppression as the sponsor-prioritized advertiser-friendly algorithms are turned off.

Sounds like an extension that could proxy traffic by website would solve your problem? I don't know why you can't create a google account just for yt so your subscriptions are contained to the firefox yt container.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#134
post #53

People here talking about how they don't want YouTube to make a profile of their preferences, and here I am, wishing YouTube had a better profile of my preferences. Lately, there is almost no new videos in my recommendation feed. It's mostly either the things I've already watched or new videos from the channels I'm already subscribed to. It really feels like I've exhausted the internet at some point. This can't possi…

It could be done without YouTube and tracking. In theory, FreeTube and Invidious could allow users to opt in to sharing some of their playlists.

With those lists, FreeTube and Invidious would have the data for good suggestions.

If they use some form of ActivityPub to share and publish the playlists, there would be an existing infrastructure to moderate and annotate the lists.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#135
post #54

How is this any different than running youtube in a Firefox container? I feel like it's a lot of reinventing the wheel if you have to do things like Sponsorblock, Adblock, etc. all over again instead of just relying on your current browser setup.

Apps minimize distraction. Plus you can now install it on devices that don't support browser use cases e.g Android TV etc.

How do apps minimize distraction? YT is a major source of distraction whether you wrap it in a shell app or not.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#136
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps minimize distraction. Plus you can now install it on devices that don't support browser use cases e.g Android TV etc.

How do apps minimize distraction? YT is a major source of distraction whether you wrap it in a shell app or not.

Well, for starters an app is not yet another open tab in your periphery screaming for you to check it out.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#137
post #53

People here talking about how they don't want YouTube to make a profile of their preferences, and here I am, wishing YouTube had a better profile of my preferences. Lately, there is almost no new videos in my recommendation feed. It's mostly either the things I've already watched or new videos from the channels I'm already subscribed to. It really feels like I've exhausted the internet at some point. This can't possi…

It's funny. Roll back the time to about 2-3 years ago, YouTube's recommendation algorithm was terribly good. It's the only reason I still kept my YouTube account but every time I visit YT I feel less of a need to keep the account now.

As a mass YouTube users probably spend more time on the site if they can't find what they want; I get the impression this sort of thing happens a lot online now, string users along so you can feed them ads from your customers.

I assume that's why they made Google search results so bad, rather than send you straight where you want to go they drive you around the block to run the meter up.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#138
post #105
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might not be understanding the context of the argument. Google has tons of information on you - way more than it needs, and yet it still doesn’t get recommendations as good as we expect (as you rightly point out). So the issue is that it has tons of extra data than they need because it * doesn’t make their recommendation any better.* Gathering data for the sake of gathering data in todays world of informa…

> Google has tons of information on you Do you have any good sources about this? what do we know for sure Google know and track about us? I work for Google now, but speak for myself here. In my time here (not much, less than a year still) I've seen a huge focus on privacy and not storing user data. Then again, I don't work on ads. However, even before working at Google I was surprised that given my liberal sharing of…

> Do you have any good sources about this?

For example, documents in Google court cases: https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1592380225064960002 and https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1592551401875734528 and https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21403202/google-engineers... and possibly others

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny. Roll back the time to about 2-3 years ago, YouTube's recommendation algorithm was terribly good. It's the only reason I still kept my YouTube account but every time I visit YT I feel less of a need to keep the account now.

As a mass YouTube users probably spend more time on the site if they can't find what they want; I get the impression this sort of thing happens a lot online now, string users along so you can feed them ads from your customers. I assume that's why they made Google search results so bad, rather than send you straight where you want to go they drive you around the block to run the meter up.

Its backfiring for them in my case. Usually if I can’t find something easy within a few seconds, I decide its not worth the trouble to go on this research assignment of a search query and just close the tab. The little bit of trivia I wanted an answer for usually isn’t that important anyhow.

Re: FreeTube – A Private YouTube Client

#140
post #71

I'm using a private [1] Invidious [2] instance on all platforms to gain access to Youtube content without feeding the beast more than needed. The advantage of something like Invidious is that it allows you to access subscriptions anywhere you can access the 'net instead of just on those platforms where you installed something like Freetube or Newpipe or any of the other alternative clients. [1] private for now since…

Freetube has built-in support to proxy all content via Invidious.

Sure, but what is the advantage of using Freetube when you're running your own instance of Invidious? What extra functionality does it offer over what Invidious already offers? As far as I can see the advantages of hosting your own Invidious - or a similar application offering anonymous Youtube (etc.) access - outweigh those of using specific desktop/mobile applications like Freetube and Newpipe. I used to use Newpipe before I started hosting my own Invidious instance but more or less stopped using that app since then, not because there is something wrong with Newpipe but because there is no need for it any more.
Post reply on HN