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Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

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Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#181

Post by chrisweekly »

mtrovo wrote: post #132
ACCount37 wrote: post #49

Earlier 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.

I don't know, it's really hard to blame them. In a way, the next couple of years are going to be a battle to balance easy access to info with compensation for content creators. The web as we knew it before ChatGPT was built around the idea that humans have to scavenge for information, and while they're doing that, you can show them ads. In that world, content didn't need to be too protected because you were making up…

I think your point is valid, but FTR the "shift" happened long before ChatGPT; bot traffic has exceeded that of humans for over a decade.

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#186

Post by raincole »

m_ke wrote: post #24

I used to work on video generation models and was shocked at how hard it was to find any videos online that were not hosted on YouTube, and YouTube has made it impossibly hard to download more than a few videos at a time.

> YouTube has made it impossibly hard to download more than a few videos at a time

I wonder why. Perhaps because people use bots to mass-crawl contents from youtube to train their AI. And Youtube prioritizes normal users who only watch a few videos at most at the same time, over those crawling bots.

Who knows?

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#187

Post by kccqzy »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #43
est wrote: post #16

I really appreciate the engineering effort went into this "JavaScript interpreter" https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/2025.09.23/yt_dlp/jsin...

Heh, now I wonder how much JavaScript it actually interprets and given that it’s < 1000 lines, whether it could be used towards an introductory course in compilers.

Obviously not. An introductory course would introduce concepts like lexers, parsers, AST, etc, instead of working on strings.

Here are lines 431 through 433:

    if expr.startswith('new '):
        obj = expr[4:]
            if obj.startswith('Date('):

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#188

Post by bitwize »

rwmj wrote: post #81
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm sure that's a problem for Youtube. What does it have to do with me rendering Youtube videos on my own computer in the way I want?

You don't have that right. When you view copyrighted content, you do so at the pleasure of the licensor.

Re: Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

#190

Post by nharada »

whatshisface wrote: post #153
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone here who runs a startup, I propose two lifestyle benefits you should add: 1. Unlimited YouTube Premium 2. Unlimited drink reimbursement (coffee, tea, smoothies, whatever) The psychological sense of loss from those two things would be larger than any 5% raise.

I personally wouldn't want to hire a startup employee who couldn't figure out how to install a browser extension. ;-)

Roku tho
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