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Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

popsci.com

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Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#3

Post by walterbell »

dreadlordbone wrote: post #2

I assume this is in the wake of the cease & desist sent to Invidious (the engine behind Freetube) by the YouTube peeps: https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-orders-invidious-privacy-so...

Isn't this app still using Invidious public servers? The cat-and-mouse game continues.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#5

Post by Qwertious »

walterbell wrote: post #3
dreadlordbone wrote: post #2

I assume this is in the wake of the cease & desist sent to Invidious (the engine behind Freetube) by the YouTube peeps: https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-orders-invidious-privacy-so...

Isn't this app still using Invidious public servers? The cat-and-mouse game continues.

It's an option that can be toggled on. By default it pulls from YouTube AFAICT.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#6

Post by roenxi »

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of Google and I don't have a lot of respect for the YouTube selection algorithm. However this culture of expecting Google to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly.

There is an unwritten social contract here. Google is willing to host and organise a vast number of videos because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may freeloaders resisting the ads then Google won't host the videos, and on the path to that the freeloaders are really just leeching off a system in an entitled way (unless their goal is to destroy YouTube in which case good on them for consistency and for picking a worthy target).

If people aren't going to be polite and accept that contract then fine, enforcement was always by an honour system. But strategically if Google's social contract doesn't work for someone then they shouldn't use YouTube - they'd just be feeding the beast. They should go make PeerTube work or investigate the long list of alternative video platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_video_platforms .

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#7

Post by eurekin »

In the age of LLM's, I with there was some way to automatically pull videos about particular topic, extract the information out of the transcript (skip the clickbait as well) and deduplicate. I spend so much time watching videos just to conclude "ah right, it's actually based on the same info previous 3 videos"

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#9

Post by akkartik »

roenxi wrote: post #6

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of Google and I don't have a lot of respect for the YouTube selection algorithm. However this culture of expecting Google to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Google is willing to host and organise a vast number of videos because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may fr…

I had a lot more sympathy for this argument a few years ago, but lately Google does enough short-term thinking all by itself that it seems fine to just take what you can get for as long as it does something that happens to be useful to you, amidst all the stuff it does that is useful only to itself.

Just be prepared for the good times to end at any moment.

Re: Freetube is the best way to watch YouTube

#10

Post by Vampiero »

roenxi wrote: post #6

I'm torn. I'm not a huge fan of Google and I don't have a lot of respect for the YouTube selection algorithm. However this culture of expecting Google to host the data then freeloading off it by blocking the tracking and ads is also a bit ugly. There is an unwritten social contract here. Google is willing to host and organise a vast number of videos because that'll attract an audience for ads. If there are too may fr…

Hey, you want a monopoly on information while at the same time operating the largest ad network in the world?

Then don't complain if people block your stupid ads and count yourself lucky that the government didn't split your megacorp into several tiny companies

The only morally wrong thing here is NOT blocking Google's ads

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