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Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

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Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#51
post #39

I find that YouTubes recommendation algorithm is not great. It would be a cool feature to be able to something like assume a persona and have recommended videos that similar like minded people watched. There's effectively infinite videos on YouTube but it's common I can go there looking for a video and find nothing interesting to watch. In some cases it's pushing recommendations for videos all similar to a recent vid…

I have started to click "don't recommend this channel" quite a bit on YouTube shorts and I am finding it is recommending me more channels like the one that I just said I would never like to see again...

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#52
Invidious is also a great frontend. From what I can tell, a lot lighter an simpler. From what I can tell, Piped also uses a custom fonts to render controls(?), so it doesn't work well with remote fonts disabled.

My go-to instance is: https://yewtu.be/

Occasionally it might be down, but it's easy to find others.

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#53
I want a frontend where I control suggestions. If I'm watching something where I want more of that topic, I would then click 'suggest more like this' if I don't and it's just some stupid one-off video it won't suggest similar going forward.

Do any alt-frontends have that functionality?

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#54
post #48

Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS? As much as I don't like ads as the next person, my Google account is one thing I don't want to risk. Anybody hear of this happening or think it's a possibility down the road?

> Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS?

It's probably a grey area. It's hard to claim that I'm acting against YouTube's TOS by using Piped. Aside from the fact that I haven't agreed to them, I'm also not interacting with YouTube.

As for the devs: they're merely writing a proxy. I'm sure some creative lawyer can find a way to portrait this as illegal, but it's likely a stretch.

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#55
post #29

The privacy argument is extremely important, also in regards to avoiding tracking via ads, but I do not think bypassing or blocking ads is the way forward. In the free democratic world, we really should aim to do better than this, and instead try to actually develop privacy respecting alternatives that is not going to undermine the internet, further empower the big players, or hurt website owners unnecessarily – incl…

Blocking ads is also a perfect example of a Kantian non-universalizable maxim.

I often consider Kant's first formulation of the Categorical Imperative as a moral guide.

Internally I paraphrase it as: if everyone does this [action that I intend to do] will it be a good thing. I notionally insert "[everyone] who would wish to".

This situation is like the 'desire path' situation where an authority has imposed a pathway, but many pedestrians choose a different path because that is more useful. Ultimately the unpaved walking route will ride, and could cause a quagmire to form (in UK); should one then take the less practical, imposed, paved walkway?

I think the same conclusion forms for me. No. Because eventually the lack of utility in the imposed pathway will be made clear, and then the flaw will be designed around and utility will be increased.

Some might see this as shortcutting (ha!) the categorical imperative...

So yes, video sharing services need to be financed. But this doesn't mean we just roll over and accept alterations to the fundamentals of the web that make it worse.

Ultimately, my connection is that the whole system of brainwashing (advertising) people to increase consumption, or redirect consumption according to other characteristics besides thrift|utility, is detrimental to humanity (and the Earth) and needs to be done away with.

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#56

I am a paying YT Premium customer and am honestly deeply frustrated by their child proofing controls. The worst is having a “Guest” mode on the TV app that you can’t turn off. It lets anybody completely bypass all restrictions. There is an open ticket on this dating back many years. Their best response to date has been ~ “it can’t be done - will share feedback with the team.” The sudden interest/surge in custom YT fr…

> The worst is having a “Guest” mode on the TV app that you can’t turn off. It lets anybody completely bypass all restrictions. There is an open ticket on this dating back many years. Their best response to date has been ~ “it can’t be done - will share feedback with the team.”

This sort of thing is exactly why I roll my eyes when somebody suggests that it's the sole responsibility of parents to control what their children see online, and that anybody who complains about the state of things is just an irresponsible parent. The nature of tech products conspires to make this virtually impossible for all but perhaps an elite minority of technically inclined parents.. and probably still impossible even for them. Even the simple option of "no computers / internet in this household" is undermined by schools which give kids computers with leaky content blocking and require families to accept this.

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#57
post #39

I find that YouTubes recommendation algorithm is not great. It would be a cool feature to be able to something like assume a persona and have recommended videos that similar like minded people watched. There's effectively infinite videos on YouTube but it's common I can go there looking for a video and find nothing interesting to watch. In some cases it's pushing recommendations for videos all similar to a recent vid…

I have started to click "don't recommend this channel" quite a bit on YouTube shorts and I am finding it is recommending me more channels like the one that I just said I would never like to see again...

Skip that button and use BlockTube to blacklist channels instead.

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#58
post #48

Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS? As much as I don't like ads as the next person, my Google account is one thing I don't want to risk. Anybody hear of this happening or think it's a possibility down the road?

The game is rigged, so you should stop caring about the rules.

Also, don't associate your google account with your youtube usage. Problem solved.

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#59

I am a paying YT Premium customer and am honestly deeply frustrated by their child proofing controls. The worst is having a “Guest” mode on the TV app that you can’t turn off. It lets anybody completely bypass all restrictions. There is an open ticket on this dating back many years. Their best response to date has been ~ “it can’t be done - will share feedback with the team.” The sudden interest/surge in custom YT fr…

I uninstalled TikTok because it turned into a time-wasting attention sink.

I'm fine with YouTube proper, but YouTube Shorts is essentially TikTok in a trenchcoat.

There really, really, really needs to be a way to banish YouTube Shorts in your settings, because for me the alternative is uninstalling YouTube.

Re: Piped – An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube front end

#60
post #48

Aren't these services (and even adblockers) against YouTube's TOS? As much as I don't like ads as the next person, my Google account is one thing I don't want to risk. Anybody hear of this happening or think it's a possibility down the road?

This is my question too. If I am going to risk my Google Account getting banned, there is no way I want to try something like this. If it is actually explicitly allowed, then sure I will use it.
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