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YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

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Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#61

Post by chii »

madeofpalk wrote: post #57
xnx wrote: post #10

This will be a positive if browsers (extensions?) allow the ability to spoof visibility by site. Most websites have no business knowing if they're in the foreground or background.

Nice - you’ve just increased significantly power consumption of your browser! Browsers will “slow down” various aspects of pages when they’re not visible, like animations or timers, to save on battery usage on laptops or phones. Even if your remove explicit APIs for backgrounding, pages can still use heuristics to detect anyway.

The user should be making the choice - not the website. The website could be informed about being backgrounded, if the user chooses to. But the user should have the priority in the decision chain - their choice overrides any that the website makes.

That is what it means to have control over your own computing.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#62

Post by GvS »

politelemon wrote: post #8

Newpipe remains one of the best solutions for background playback. They do tend to move pretty quickly to patch "fixes" that YouTube throw in now and again. It's also useful for video backups if you need to preserve them for any reason.

I recommend PipePipe: https://github.com/InfinityLoop1308/PipePipe

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#63

Post by learingsci »

reddalo wrote: post #46
BrenBarn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they wanted users to pay for the service they're using they should never have made YouTube free in the first place.

They made it free just like any other startup makes a free tier to obtain market share.

Drug dealers invented this business model, they would give heroin to young children for free and then once hooked hike the prices or force them to turn tricks to pay for their habit. It’s effective but not very admirable to say the least.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#65

Post by lombasihir »

reddalo wrote: post #58
sneak wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not remotely true.

Okay, so list which websites I can use to watch all kinds of content that I can find on YouTube. Vimeo? It's basically dead. DailyMotion? It could've been an alternative, but they've recently deleted most old videos. Peertube? Nice idea in theory, but lack of content.

is use yewtu.be from time to time on web, and pipepipex on android.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#66

Post by sxde »

Revanced allows you to patch the official Android YouTube apk to enable this feature alongside many others, including a block, Sponsorblock, and dislikes.

https://github.com/revanced/revanced-manager

Rossmann's Grayjay app offers the same functionality in a separate standalone client. It has a paid pro mode, but is free software. I use this on devices that I haven't signed in with Google.

https://grayjay.app/

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#67

Post by learingsci »

keepamovin wrote: post #54
politelemon wrote: post #8

Newpipe remains one of the best solutions for background playback. They do tend to move pretty quickly to patch "fixes" that YouTube throw in now and again. It's also useful for video backups if you need to preserve them for any reason.

I released a browserbox variant many years ago that could ensure background playback on YouTube. Despite multiple posts here and on PH, it never gained any traction. It seemed people were simply not interested in overcoming no background playback for free on every platform (including mobile). Same time, one can appreciate the YouTube business: once you give something away for free, people absolutely loose their fucki…

It’s called “opportunity cost.”

If you marry somebody and they suddenly become a totally different person and try to extort you a common reaction is to feel deceived and unhappy. They have cheated you in a sense of the opportunity cost of being able to marry someone else.

That people might not understand that tells you something about them.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#68

Post by shevy-java »

It should be trivial to work around; for instance, yt-dlp or so (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) and I think you can as-is stream e. g. via mpv or something, probably to the browser too. Some python script for an ad-hoc localhost webserver I'd think.

What is much more worrying is how aggressively Google tries to abuse its de-facto monopoly. I have said it before, I will say it again: Google abusing everyone else is a bad situation. We need to make Google smaller again.

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#69

Post by shevy-java »

kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

> Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet

I am not sure those who work at Google are all brilliant - but it should also not matter, because they support Evil here. They should be ashamed for working for Evil. Guess if the money is right ...

Re: YouTube blocks background video playback on Brave and other browsers

#70

Post by rockskon »

jy14898 wrote: post #43
kurito wrote: post #23

What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place. At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.

While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide how to monetise their product, including things which were originally free. If you don't like free services, stop using them

If a company wants to offer its service as a loss-leader to outlast its competitors who offered their services at a cost its users were willing to pay, then that company has no room to complain if people don't want to pay the last-game-in-town's jacked-up rates!

There is no moral high-ground for YouTube to take here.

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