Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads

Post by numpad0 » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 3:12 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #139

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.

Everything trends towards centralization on a long enough period. I laugh at people who think ActivityPub or Mastodon or BlueSky will save us. We already had that, it was called e-mail, look what happened once everyone started using it. If we couldn't stop the centralization effects that occurred on e-mail, any attempt to stop centralization in general is honestly a utopian fool's errand. Regulation is easier.

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #148

mavhc wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why can't they monetize elsewhere?

Much, much, much smaller audience elsewhere.

Post by hyperrail » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

arbll wrote: post #12

adzm wrote: post #5

I was surprised they went with Deno instead of Node, but since Deno has a readily available single-exe distribution that removes a lot of potential pain. This was pretty much just a matter of time, though; the original interpreter in Python was a brilliant hack but limited in capability. It was discussed a few years ago for the YouTube-dl project here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32793061

The sandboxing features of Deno also seem to have played a role in that choice. I wouldn't overly trust that as a security layer but it's better than nothing.

Post by nananana9 » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 3:17 PM UTC

wraptile wrote: post #58

Days of just getting data off the web are coming to an end as everything requires a full browser running thousands of lines of obfuscated js code now. So instead of a website giving me that 1kb json that could be cached now I start a full browser stack and transmit 10 megabytes through 100 requests, messing up your analytics and security profile and everyone's a loser. Yay.

Post by ivanjermakov » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 3:20 PM UTC

Fabricio20 wrote: post #79

ivanjermakov wrote: post #55

Can we remove heartdropping mystery from the title? My first thought is that Google makes it more difficult to download from YouTube. "yt-dlp moves to Deno runtime"

Google is making it harder to download from Youtube. Your first thought is correct! Every other website that yt-dlp supports doesn't require this change. Additionally, yt-dlp is still written in python, it has not moved to deno. They are only adding a deno dependency for the javascript challenges added by youtube.