I’m a paying YouTube premium subscriber. Last weekend, I wanted to download something so I can watch it on my way in the train. The app got stuck at “waiting for download..” on my iPad. Same on iPhone. Restart did not work. I gave up after an hour (30 mins hands on trying stuff, 30 mins waiting for it to fix itself). Downloaded the video using yt-dlp, transferred it to my USB c flash drive, and watched it from that.…
What video did you watch?
Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
101–110 of 635 posts
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you ever wondered why the likes of Google and Cloudflare want to restrict the web to a few signed, integrity-checked browser implementations? Now you know.
At least for YouTube, viewbotting is very much a thing, which undermines trust in the platform. Even if we were to remove Google ads from the equation, there’s nothing preventing someone from crafting a channel with millions of bot-generated views and comments, in order to paid sponsor placements, etc. The reasons are similar for Cloudflare, but their stances are a bit too DRMish for my tastes. I guess someone could…
Even if they hadn't done that, you can craft millions of bot-sponsored views using a legitimate browser and some automation and the current update doesn't change that.
So I'd say Occam's razor applies and Youtube simply wants to be in control of how people view their videos so they can serve ads, show additional content nearby to keep them on the platform longer, track what parts of the video are most watched, and so on.
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#103Its such a shithole, with no real replacement, sad state of affairs.
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#104Why can youtube not just give a micropayments backed API? Just charge a few cents per video download and be done with it.
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#105Youtube is the real monopoly. Creators are also slaves, as they cant monetize elsewhere, and also they cant let their users download their own content. And the icing on the cake is youtube is unbearable without an ad-blocker, and even with that youtube has started throttling ad-block users. Its such a shithole, with no real replacement, sad state of affairs.
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#106The writing is on the wall for easy ripping. If there's any YT content you expect you'll want to preserve for a long time, I suggest spinning up https://www.tubearchivist.com/ or something similar and archiving it now while you still can.
This solution looks interesting, but I am technical enough to know that this looks like a PITA to setup and maintain. It also seems like it is focused on downloading everything from a subbed channel.
As it is now, with a folder of downloaded videos, I just need a local web server that can interpret the video names and create an organized page with links. Is there anything like this that is very lightweight with a next next finish install?
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you ever wondered why the likes of Google and Cloudflare want to restrict the web to a few signed, integrity-checked browser implementations? Now you know.
>If you ever wondered why the likes of Google and Cloudflare want to restrict the web I disagree with the framing of "us vs them". It's actually "us vs us". It's not just us plebians vs FAANG giants. The small-time independent publishers and creators also want to restrict the web because they don't want their content "stolen". They want to interact with real humans instead of bots. The following are manifestations of…
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you ever wondered why the likes of Google and Cloudflare want to restrict the web to a few signed, integrity-checked browser implementations? Now you know.
At least for YouTube, viewbotting is very much a thing, which undermines trust in the platform. Even if we were to remove Google ads from the equation, there’s nothing preventing someone from crafting a channel with millions of bot-generated views and comments, in order to paid sponsor placements, etc. The reasons are similar for Cloudflare, but their stances are a bit too DRMish for my tastes. I guess someone could…
They pay a lot of money to many smart people who can implement sophisticated bot detection systems, without impacting most legitimate human users. But when their business model depends on extracting value from their users' data, tracking their behavior and profiling them across their services so that they can better serve them ads, it goes against their bottom line for anyone to access their service via any other interface than their official ones.
This is what these changes are primarily about. Preventing abuse is just a side benefit they can use as an excuse.
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#109The writing is on the wall for easy ripping. If there's any YT content you expect you'll want to preserve for a long time, I suggest spinning up https://www.tubearchivist.com/ or something similar and archiving it now while you still can.
They already had the proper-DRM tech for youtube movies for years, why didn't they already turn that on for all content?
But if they decide they have to, they can do it fairly trivially.
Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads
#110[flagged]