- Joined
- May 9, 2017
Threadly reminder that Google gets absolutely zero benefit from constantly breaking third party programs for Youtube. It's pure spite.
Youtube General thread (formerly Youtube Censorship discussion thread)
- Thread starter The handsome tard
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- Apr 16, 2025
This probably has something to with the problem I had today with JDownloader.
At first it would not grab ANY Youtube URLs with linkgrabber. Then I updated JD and it would be selective about playlist URLs: it would import one list, but the next one would get ignored.
It's mostly to set an example for any future developers of similar programs, same reason nintendo fucks with the emulation scene even though it doesn't meaningfully damage their profits.
If they think there's even a 0.1% chance something like this can tangibly offset them in the future, they'll do all of what they do now to make sure anyone who even thinks about developing such a program is deterred by simply having to consider the kind of shit they'll have to wade through in the form of arbitrary bug-fixing, API blocks and takedown notices for little material gain.
- Joined
- May 15, 2023
Yep, FreeTube is broken again and only the latest yt-dlp works. Had to be something big.
Google seems to be operating under the delusion a day will come when we play by their rules. It won't. We won't. When they make downloading / watching without ads impossible, we'll just have more time for more respectable hobbies other than cons00ming. Thanks for the favor.
Google seems to be operating under the delusion a day will come when we play by their rules. It won't. We won't. When they make downloading / watching without ads impossible, we'll just have more time for more respectable hobbies other than cons00ming. Thanks for the favor.
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2019
grayjay still works, wait a couple hours or days and freetube will work again
guess i spoke to soon, grayjay is struggling too
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BiggestKai
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2023
Because, and I'm sorry if this is too MATI, fuck their rules and whomever lies down and plays by them.
Fuck you if you really think I'm sitting through three unskippable 20 second ads+banner ads on the side+ad video recommendations+BUY PREMIUM FUCKFACE prompts when all I want to do is just listen to an album.
Fuck you if you really think I'm sitting through pages loading slowly as fuck because I'm not logged in or I have fingerprinting disabled on my browser and your shitty theme refresh code makes loading anything take an eternity.
Fuck you if you think I even want to consider watching shorts and you constantly recommending them to me.
Fuck you for shitting up the site so much that every video has to come with increasingly annoying sound effects to censor their slurs.
And fuck youtube premium.
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2013
I know yt-dlp-git updated and now they use deno for reading yt links. I'm trying this rust add-on for getting PO tokens.
The funniest shit is that I've never seem NewPipe / Tubular have the issues freetube has. Its still working. Knock on wood.
The funniest shit is that I've never seem NewPipe / Tubular have the issues freetube has. Its still working. Knock on wood.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
JDownloader's linkgrabber is still not grabbing Youtube URLs, but I found a workaround. It's not great, so only read below if you're desperate.
Video DownloadHelper for Firefox scans pages for download links and JD's linkgrabber grabs THOSE. However, those are only the links for the video streams. There's no audio.
For the audio, click "details" in the same menu and it will show you the list of all streams associated with the YT video. Double click the long URL after "#0 audio component" and copy it. JD's lingrabber will recognize it.
Now you have to mux video and audio using Avidemux or MKVtoolnix etc.
Video DownloadHelper for Firefox scans pages for download links and JD's linkgrabber grabs THOSE. However, those are only the links for the video streams. There's no audio.
For the audio, click "details" in the same menu and it will show you the list of all streams associated with the YT video. Double click the long URL after "#0 audio component" and copy it. JD's lingrabber will recognize it.
Now you have to mux video and audio using Avidemux or MKVtoolnix etc.
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Bonzi Baptist
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2025
Does anybody know of a program like Invidious that isn't broken that I can use to put all of my YouTube watch histories into one account? I am trying to de-Google my life. I am so tired of YouTube controlling me, so importing my watch history would allow me to see which videos are worth downloading and which videos aren't, so I can finally be free of YouTube's tyranny.
Also on the topic of YouTube unbanning people, even though they sadly rebanned Alex Jones, I noticed when I searched for Jared Taylor videos that I actually got interviews of Jared Taylor. Just 3 or 4 years ago, the only videos you could find in the search bar were mainstream media interviewing and slandering Jared Taylor; now you can see the man himself on various podcasts. YouTube is still awful, but I am so happy they are loosening censorship. I feel the change is finally happening. We are finally winning. The left lost; the right is back and better than ever.
Also on the topic of YouTube unbanning people, even though they sadly rebanned Alex Jones, I noticed when I searched for Jared Taylor videos that I actually got interviews of Jared Taylor. Just 3 or 4 years ago, the only videos you could find in the search bar were mainstream media interviewing and slandering Jared Taylor; now you can see the man himself on various podcasts. YouTube is still awful, but I am so happy they are loosening censorship. I feel the change is finally happening. We are finally winning. The left lost; the right is back and better than ever.
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Bonzi Baptist
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2025
Update: YouTube censorship is still terrible. I just noticed the official upload for the song "Suicide Is Painless" was banned. I had it in my tabs and planned to listen to it, but then when I clicked it, the video was terminated for violating community guidelines. This is the official upload for the song "Suicide Is Painless," but yet uploads of the exact song are not taken down and are allowed. YouTube moderators are such crybaby losers that the phrase "suicide is painless" is enough to take down a popular song that was the theme song of a movie. Either the soyboy pajeet moderators that run YouTube or their AI bots don't care about context; they only see a bad YouTube title and take down the video. Truly insane.
jray4559
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2024
It's not zero benefit, per se. If they take down all the free and easy options to download their videos, that means, for one, it's harder for someone to reupload content to another site if they deleted their original copy of it, and, for two, some of the people who want to download offline will eventually crack and pay for it instead of doing the smart thing and going without, thus more money in their pockets.
And trying to stop adblockers, same thing. If they manage to defeat uBlock Origin and Revanced-style patches to remove ads, some people will crack and pay to get rid of them. The YouTube subreddit has their share of people who cracked and bought premium already as it is, despite the easy solutions still being out there, why shouldn't they go for more? It's their right to set the rules of the platform and punish people who try to break them. That doesn't mean it's good for their consumers or that their rules are morally good, but it's up to the people to recognize the shittiness and leave for/create better options, not up to the company to deliberately turn a blind eye.
The cat and mouse game will continue until either they eventually win, or people upload somewhere else and YouTube cancels their crusade to save their own skins. (And don't say that they'll never win, either. Ask AAA game pirates how their battle with cracking Denuvo games is going)
CEO of Autism
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2024
The FreeTube guys are already working on a fix. This exposes the absurdity of the whole thing; Google has been trying for more than a year to stop people from consooming videos outside of their walled garden, and every time they attempt something, it gets fixed a few days later. It's like they haven't learned anything from the decades long war against piracy. Maybe they're attempting a war of attrition, but they underestimate how dedicated autists can be.
Combustion Engine
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2024
They're in a tough spot. Whoever competent is left can most certainly develop something that would render most downloaders useless, but doing so would also break all the devices sold with YouTube compatibility, TVs are a notable example because most of them are just opening a specific web interface and extractors including NewPipe's and yt-dlp were using that TVHTML5.. to which they added DRM earlier this year, because it was the best and most effective way to grab high-res streams at the time. I'm afraid at some point in the future (if not already) most devices supporting YT as advertised will be using some locked down application that'll make those simpler, more free to access interfaces legacy, and then dropped. They just have to do it in steps, the same way they did in 2015 (still mad when they broke mine). If you have to wait a few seconds now between downloads, in some time you might be forced to use your own YouTube's account cookies/API (so your Google account's, to whom most people are forced to give PII) and be even more rate limited from watching or downloading anything every X downloads (low double-digit if even that). Then it'll be single digit, then none at all. It's too easy to take for granted having access to those bastard's precious data stash, I would recommend to everyone archiving anything still up you care about, now. Who knows if it won't be ten times as difficult or with one tenth the video quality in a few years, spinning rust storage is cheap.
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2019
seeing as google is replacing the trained white employees with cheap indians and AI they won't ever be able to stop shit, they will just end up breaking their own site to the point people won't want to use it.
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2016
Me and my mother were laughing because for a while all the Suicidal Tendancies music came up with big warnings.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
"We" are constantly losing and "we" have no say in what the System does. There is no reason to get your hopes up just because there's slightly less censorship on X and Youtube. The so-called Right and white people in general are way too disorganized. "We" don't have any pressure groups with millions of dollars to counter the likes of the ADL.
I'm sorry if this sounds overly blackpilled. I'm not saying there's no hope for the future, but I don't see how "we" are in a better spot than we were 5-10 years ago. The System (not just in the US, by the way) will always come up with a pretext to crack down on free speech. A pandemic, yet another war, you name it.
Brabbit Narp
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2023
To paraphrase an old saying, conservatives have never "conserved" anything.
While I would also like to hope otherwise, I have not seen much in terms of meaningful alternatives that can be readily adopted by the masses. Or rather, those that would not end up on the chopping block to be deplatformed through one means or another. Sites like Odysee got royally reamed when they attempted to fund themselves through their own crypto after angering some three letter agency that I cannot be bothered to remember the name of, Parlar and Bitchute were also similarly screwed when some Amazon and the like pulled support for their infrastructure "out of the blue". I.E: Conspired with the likes of Google to neutralize any third party competitors to their reign.
On top of that, you now have worries with the whole implementation with the likes of digital ID and currencies, and whatever additional spices of authoritarianism that can be added into the mix that will come into vogue within the next five to ten years. To put it bluntly, we're the crab in the bucket being dragged down by the rest who either do not care to resist, or worse are in favor of such implementations for their own "benefit". I cannot even begin to list the amount of plain dumb midwits who believe that the likes of what I mentioned will neutralize what they deemed to be deviant content. Nevermind that those same laws, rules and regulations could easily be targeted towards them as an entity. As long as they are not the ones in the crosshairs right this moment, they couldn't give less of a damn. As mentioned here and elsewhere, the Internet as a whole is shifting towards a mono-use case where any pretense of being able to browse the web will be but a memory, locked down to strictly regulated approved apps to access online interactions and works. To name one beaten horse, I will reference any flavor of Child Safety acts that have come into vogue.
It takes a special sort of nitwit to take the effects of such laws at face value. While it seems more and more people are waking up to what it would do, what meaningful ways can be done to resist such that won't be locked down or otherwise suppressed through one means or another? VPNs are living on borrowed time, assuming they are not used as honeypots in of themselves. Payment processors have more thoroughly weaseled their way into places they ought not to be, acting as defato governments with how they dictate any platforms that must use their service in lieu of any alternatives. And even if some alternative does pop up, the tools to break them are either already in place and ready to be used, or soon will be through some further implementation of laws and other powers to be granted to the "proper" authorities.
If all else fails, civilized pretense can be dropped to just simply disappear those that resist or make an example of in the eyes of the public. Look no further than the likes of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. One is hiding in Russia, and the other is last I checked either dead or has been neutered to the point of being an example to the rest.
Still, I digress. We can at least make the best of what we have while we still have it, and I've been busy keep a small but growing record of videos that documented some of the stuff that's been going on for the past few years. And maybe, just maybe, there might be a ray of hope in some competitors now that some of the dangers like with the payment processors have been illuminated to the likes of Valve and Elon Musk. I'm not going to hold my breath, but I have room to be pleasantly surprised.
Anyway, I have some very late replies I need to finish. Apologies, but I was taking a sabbatical from the site to preserve my own sanity from the doomscrolling. One can only read so much before the need to refresh arises.
I won't deny that much of the works uploaded during that time left much to be desired, especially when you compare it to modern production standards that users back then could not even begin to dream of back then. Nor am I especially blackpilled, seeing at least some of those works did manage to survive in some form. But it cannot be denied that quite a bit has been lost or pruned over the years. Little Tommy's shitty AMV might not have been worth much of a damned, but he had some passion for the project. Cringe though it might have been, they are earnest in a manner that I hardly find during my usual searches these days. Those videos weren't uploaded to get some online clout, or any such nonsense in gaming the algorithm. For the lack of a better term, they were "pure" in a way that videos that pop into my feed nowadays are not.
Even if you are uploading as a fresh newcomer to the site, most of the stuff that either pops into my feed or come from subscriptions are built with the restrictions YouTube has placed upon creators in mind. Most of this would be obvious to those that have browsed the site for long enough, but for those just coming to the site? Most of what they will ever know is the shlock that is driven into them from YouTube's unfiltered frontpage. So much garbage in, garbage out that it stands in sharp contrast to the few old screenshots I have been able to locate of what used to be YouTube's frontpage from the early mid 2010s. There are definitely diamonds in the rough if you know where to look, but that usually comes with the benefit of curating your subscriptions and watch history for the purpose to build "some" profile to your preference. Otherwise, you are stuck in a perpetual present with little in the way of finding your way back to older videos if you have neglected to save them in one form or another.
Machinima is one example of this. Again, much of the work was of an amateur nature. But they were earnest in their sincerity and passion for the medium. Again, much of it does not stack to what we have now, and there was also worries about things like copyright infringement, but they were proof of the creative potential that YouTube of yore offered to those using the site without thought to any algorithms, opaque guidelines and rules, audience retention, or the like. This is not to say such concerns did not exist, but it did not dominate in the way any would be Youtuber now has to contend with in the present. But when the channel responsible serving as a repository for it privated their videos, so did any access to them went with them.
To state the obvious, YouTube was a much different beast back then that produced a different crop of videos. From the way of the desktop oriented site's features influenced their users to make creative uses of the likes of annotations to create corrections on the fly, lead to different "hidden" videos for the more observant in a choose your own adventure type of deal, to even creating "instruments" you could play around with for fun. Video responses were another delight, even if their usage was often mixed, lead me to some other videos and channels that I would have otherwise not have discovered back in the day. And the site "moved" in such a way that the community for some channels back then seemed more organic, even if it was still just that of a parasoscial nature, you could still interact via PMs, channel comment sections, and clue into what your favorite creator also liked that isn't possible in today's YouTube.
Again, I am not denying what you say when much of the stuff back then would be counted as pure dreck if it were to be uploaded today. But that was part of the fun back then, even including interacting in the comment sectios that were not a complete, overegulated cesspit that it is today. I had incentive to actually comment and interact with others in a way that I simply do not find the urge to on most any videos I come across these days. What's the point? Your comment will inevitably be buried by the endless onslaught for most of them, and on the ones you do comment on, thought must be given as to YouTube will view and moderate it. Will your comment be shadowbanned and only show up for you? Will you end up having a strike against your profile that you won't even know about until you find yourself unable to access it one day? Will this come back to haunt you in meatspace through one means or another?
Your life, and that of what you had on the Internet were separate. That is not to say the threat of doxxing yourself or the like did not exist. But far from what we have to worry about now. You could afford to have fun, be a little shit, throw out whatever without Big Brother, Uncle Sam, Big Corporate, or the like looking over your shoulder taking careful note of even the smallest interactions you might have that will come to haunt you later down the line. Of course there was a lmit to this, but the separation between "real" life and that of what you had out on the Internent influenced what videos were created and propogated back in the day. If your heart desired it, you could afford to be a little adolescent shit and not worry so much. You could be filmed or film others acting in silly and/or stupid ways without worry that some firm you were hoping to work for will look at your history and decide, no, we're not hiring you just because you were some spicy meatball say ten, fifteen years ago.
I could go on, but the tl'dr is the fundumentals of how we interact with the Internet were different, which influenced what was created accordingly. For every video that is still out there for you to archive, there ten more that have disappeared for one reason or another. Whether they were a gem or not, or that they even existed, is a moot point if they end up being purged from being seen ever again. That is the reason why I archive. That is why I bemoan lacking the foresight, however understandable it may have been, in preserving the past when I had the chance. I have since learned, and have successfully been vidicated in my efforts to preserve what is out there in the present like with those Star Fox videos I posted a while back.
There's nothing to do for it at this point, save for the vain hope that someone else has archived it somewhere that can be still be accessed. But that's the ticket, having a public archive and knowing about it. Even if it exists, it relies on it being accessible and propogating that the archive exists. Truly, the only one you can count to preserve such works is yourself.
It is better to start a day late than two.
As you say, you can still find some of the old stuff if you manage to strike gold with a playlist or two. But with the current recommendation algorithm, it's a tad difficult to recreate the gestalt, zeitgeist, collective consciousness, or whatever it is you wish to frame the culture as a user at the time would have seen it. The algorithm in some ways is a fluid, living thing, with YouTube's potent recency bias ensuring that only the most present and/or most popular videos of ages past rising to the top. But if you can find a channel or two who has playlists dating back to that era, you might be in luck to chain that into other old YouTubers who's playlists might reflect that era. Believe it or not, I find Freetube to be exceptional in bringing up playlists of related videos if I type in the title for certain videos. You might be in luck in that regard in adding that to your search technique, even if Freetube is currently inoperable otherwise for video watching.
It's been said here and elsewhere time and time again, but I'll repeat that YouTube is absolute shit for most any meaningful long term archive. Having the archive is one thing. But if you can't access or peruse it effectively, its archival function suffers. To repeat myself, the only one you can truly trust to preserve such works is you with a trusty hard drive. Do what you can, and if the worst does indeed come to past, perhaps some more resources can be invested into the already existing archival services to peruse those effectively.
With that, I'll toss in a few other videos I have archived as of recent to add a little bit of light to what is otherwise doom and gloom.
(This channel also features a teaser for an animation short that looks very promising. Look it up when you get the chance.)
On a sidenote, but I have noticed "viral" videos these days like those for animals seem to come under some multimedia congolmerate like Rumble Viral, The Dodo, and so on. It's not that surprising, seeing as to the nature of YouTube these days. But it's rare I find such videos these days under their "original" creators. At the very least, some of them do credit and link to the original article. It's a pity, but it seems they do give a small fee to the creators they feature if nothing else.
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- Joined
- Mar 4, 2019
I'm getting more and video recommendations with No views. Not just a few dozen views, or less than 100, but none.
No-Eyed Square Guy
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2025
I got a this in the mail today:
My account is over fifteen years old, and its early history is dominated by videos about vintage electronics and obscure underground music, as toddlers' accounts tend to be.
>Google couldn’t confirm you're an adult, so some account settings have changed
My account is over fifteen years old, and its early history is dominated by videos about vintage electronics and obscure underground music, as toddlers' accounts tend to be.