With Reddit shutting down its API setting a precedent in the corporate tech world (and Reddit was a major outlier in that a ton of their users are technical minded and support third party clients, YouTube does not have that kind of userbase and will not get backlash for it), Twitter doing whatever the fuck they’re doing, and Google already hellbent on destroying ad blockers, the days of Newpipe, Invidious, and Freetube are numbered. Wouldn’t be surprised if they implement Netflix level DRM tomorrow that makes alt clients impossible. I say savour your alt clients while you can guys, you won’t be able to soon.
Readily available content for everybody is the whole reason YouTube got so big.
So either the world would riot because YT is so popular, or the world would accept its fate, because YT is so popular.
Which one is it going to be? You decide
But then again, the overwhelming majority of people don’t even know that there’s other ways to watch YT
I wish that this risk encouraged people to migrate out of YouTube. Specially content creators. PeerTube could get a bit more people.
I’m going to seriously consider completely discontinuing watching YouTube if NewPipe stops working. I still like plenty of non-FLOSS oriented channels that will never even consider a FLOSS or open web solution, but I think I owe it to myself to not accept Google’s bullshit, not even use it from the browser, with or without the adblock ban. Not to protest Google’s actions because I don’t care, but to uphold my own values and interests. I need to heed my own advice and extended rants about big tech.
I do not think NewPipe Extractor or yt-dlp are stopping anytime soon. See how YouTube-DL still works today, even if throttled. This is someone from a maniac like me who monitors the whole tech scenario like a data archivist watchdog. YouTube is far too huge a service and its video content format makes it a lot more different than other gatekept services like text based social media or the Snapchat kinds (Snapchat is dead).
The only non-downloadable video streaming mechanism I have encountered to date is that of Netu/Hqq.tv, and that gets circumvented by screen recording.
my current guess is: this problem will mostly fix itself
youtube-ads are ridiculous. I wouldn’t consume these as they are now. If I’m forced to use that site without sponsorblock and adblock, I’m tending to just never watching anything there.
So if NewPipe/Sponsorblock (and of course NewPipe+Sponsorblock) are gone, then I won’t use that shit anymore and don’t feel any pain.
Same as with reddit. The last weeks I visited when pointed to reddit by some search enigne, but not out of “I could browse it for fun”. I didn’t miss anything. Twitter? Not even trying to visit that shithole anymore, since most links are unreadable anyways.
If platforms are closing down, they will lose my interactions. More free time for me!
The problem is that the content creators that I like are all on YouTube and nowhere else. There is no alternative.
You will find new ones you like or you will watch less.
Both is fine and you will survive.
And if less people consume content on YouTube, less creators will upload their stuff ONLY there.
It WILL break legacy and underpowered devices, so its likely they won’t at least not too soon. Those apps rely on the files hosted on the googlevideo servers, and most that are used are meant for legacy browsers.
I’ve never pegged Google as particularly giving a shit about legacy support though. They kill things out of the blue without warning or explanation.
For the most used services, legacy support is actually respected by Google.
Google Search still works on Internet Explorer 6 for Windows 98 and XP.
Wonder if that will finally change with web integrity.
What I sent was an old screenshot from the web, but I confirmed it now. Google Search still works on Windows 2000 and IE5 in the middle of 2023
