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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

#61

Post by xemdetia »

chipsrafferty wrote: post #51
wppick wrote: 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...

My favourite is when you did click don't recommend channel it sometimes still comes back after a year or two like a bad relationship on Facebook. I try and maintain a few browsers with different recommendations streams and it's always wild when I have a new PC and I get some really toxic recommendations.

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

#62

Post by SkyMarshal »

ipsin wrote: post #59
sheepscreek wrote: post #17

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.

You can banish YT shorts by clicking the X in the top right corner of the shorts row.

And yeah they’re pretty stupid. YT took a bunch of normal videos and cropped them to phone camera dimensions, lol. You can click the author’s name to find the original in their YT page. It’s just idiotic.

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

#63

Post by mcpackieh »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #13
crtasm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how many viewers they have using televisions/set top boxes/streaming usb sticks that will never get an update, do you see that happening any time soon?

These won't be supported forever

Youtube wants to be a ubiquitous presence in modern culture, therefore it is in their interest to continue to support all the old and busted computers/etc that are still in common use. This includes allowing people to watch videos without an account using the old busted up computer they have in the back room at work, keeping youtube accessible on publicly shared IPs like libraries, coffee shops, even VPNs.

I believe they will be very reticent to cut off access to this long tail of users with outdated computers, with no account on shared IPs. As long as this is true, it will be possible to use youtube in contradiction to their TOS. They could lock things down quite tight overnight by requiring people to sign in and use up to date browsers/players, but doing so would threaten their ubiquity.

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

#64

Post by elashri »

avg_dev wrote: post #60
cbuq wrote: 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.

I don't think it allows you to login with your Google account. You can have a local account on the instance but it does not have anything with your google account.

So you cannot interact with videos (comment, like..etc) although you can create Playlists that will be linked to your local instance account.

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

#65

Post by aquova »

cbuq wrote: 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?

I can't speak for piped, but I use a self-hosted Invidious instance to watch Youtube. You don't log into it with your Google account, it has its own authentication so that it can save your (distinct) subscriptions. Even if Google decided to crack down on alternate front-end usage, they can't correlate it back to your actual account.

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

#67

Post by nwsm »

mikece wrote: post #26

With a name like "Piped" I wonder if it's related to the NewPipe app, one of my favorite apps on Graphene OS and something that I really wish existed on iOS.

At first glance I thought this would be an article about corporate HR's "Performance Improvement Plans"

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

#68

Post by mcpackieh »

JacobSeated wrote: post #24

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…

> I do not think bypassing or blocking ads is the way forward. In the free democratic world...

Ads are psychological warfare against the human mind. Advertising campaigns are designed/directed by unscrupulous mercenaries trained in the latest psychology, willing to use every manipulative technique known to science to manipulate you on behalf of the highest bidder. This mass-manipulation undermines democracy and is broadly harmful to society in general.

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

#69

Post by jollyjerry »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #62
ipsin wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can banish YT shorts by clicking the X in the top right corner of the shorts row. And yeah they’re pretty stupid. YT took a bunch of normal videos and cropped them to phone camera dimensions, lol. You can click the author’s name to find the original in their YT page. It’s just idiotic.

It comes back for me. Super annoying

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

#70

Post by cultureswitch »

cbuq wrote: 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?

Google can block you at any time for any reason. Terms of Service are never relevant. If you're doing something many other people do, you're okay.

Besides, suppose they do block you. What's the worst that going to happen? If you can think of something really bad (e.g. I'm going to lose all my photos) then you should do something to address that. Regardless.

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