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Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

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Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#51
post #35
post #9

There’s comments on the issue that suggest that this is impacting any YouTube user rather than just Invidious users: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/4734#issuecomment...

NewPipe still working so far.

FYI - you can't be sure which side of the A/B test you are on.

Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YT premium unfortunately scales very poorly for low usage. I probably average about one youtube video watched per month, so while I'm not opposed to paying something , I am opposed to watching any ads, and I'm not going to pay $13/video.

With the family plan, the cost calculation is very different Blocking ads can be viewed as theft from the creators and many creators do see it this way

My wife doesn't use youtube to any significant degree either, so the cost calculation doesn't notably change with the family plan. Obviously if your usage is significantly different the cost calculation is different, which was my point from the start.

Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#53

I use individious because the current youtube frontend is bloated and slow on firefox. Maybe they should focus on improving their frontend instead of blocking frontends that other people prefer.

YouTube is borderline unusable now. For the last 6 months when I browse to YT - on any device - I get a blank page (no suggested content) with a decoy search box in the center of the page. When I click it, focus moves from the decoy to a second, real search box which unfurls at the top, but the cursor does not move and requires a subsequent click. This means on mobile I have to tap twice - in two different locations on the page - before I can start typing a search query.

Google needs to fire their entire UI/UX staff, this is "my first website" levels of usability. 2004-era websites were more functional.

Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#54
post #9

There’s comments on the issue that suggest that this is impacting any YouTube user rather than just Invidious users: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/4734#issuecomment...

It's not just any random user. That's the mobile DDG browser that's being targeted. I guess user agents aren't allowed anymore, only spy agents that tattle on the user.

Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying for YT premium is even better. No ads and you support the content creators

And Nebula.tv is best of all. No ads, you support the content creators, and you don't feed YouTube's near-monopoly on video distribution.

This sounds like YT premium, but just a different platform that has no ad supported option. These platforms are dependent on the network effect and the creators and viewers are only going to use a limited number of platforms (2-4)

Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably many would choose to block Invidious, and many would not. It sounds like none of them get a choice in the matter, which is why it's not crazy to question whether community is used as a euphemism in this case.

> Presumably many would choose to block Invidious, and many would not. Is this something a creator can do on their own today? How many of them are aware of Invidious?

Negative, and unknown.

Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#58

Sounds like the good ol' vague "For security reasons..." that companies use to excuse various things.

When I'm reading articles on the BBC, it gives me a popover prompting me to log in "to continue". I can immediately close it to no consequence whatsoever.

I have never figured out to what I would possibly be continuing.

Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Nebula.tv is best of all. No ads, you support the content creators, and you don't feed YouTube's near-monopoly on video distribution.

This sounds like YT premium, but just a different platform that has no ad supported option. These platforms are dependent on the network effect and the creators and viewers are only going to use a limited number of platforms (2-4)

Nebula was started by a bunch of very popular YT creators looking to bring their audience with them.

Re: Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"

#60
post #27

I use individious because the current youtube frontend is bloated and slow on firefox. Maybe they should focus on improving their frontend instead of blocking frontends that other people prefer.

I’ve been using Firefox for maybe 15 years. It has always been great. But in the past year or so, I’m finding that more and more web experiences are buggy and slow in Firefox, which is really frustrating. I don’t know if it’s that developers don’t do sufficient QA testing in Firefox, or the creators of Firefox have fallen behind. Either way it doesn’t bode well. I’m being forced to reach for Chrome more and more just…

Some of this is intentional on websites from Google. Google sheets has a very very annoying bug where if you want to multiply two values in a cell formula and press the asterisk key, the cursor jumps to the left of the asterisk. You then have to manually place the cursor to the right of the asterisk (since pushing the right arrow key may instead jump to the next cell to the right), breaking any typing flow whatsoever. However, if you fake your Firefox user agent to chrome (but change nothing else), the bug disappears.

I recall reading a post here on HN that Google has been found from time to time to intentionally cripple the FF user agent, which in turn led me to "discover" the sheets bug fix.

This does not change much about what you wrote, but it's at least something to do against malicious incompatibility

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