• ISOmorph@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    I’ve seen the effects on invidious these past days. 8 in 10 instances have been broken. Google is putting some serious work into shutting alternate frontends down. Shows you how much of a dent they’re putting in the bottom line.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      YouTube and my existing Gmail is the only thing tying me back. And the occasional Google maps. I don’t even use the rest of their services anymore

      • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
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        2 months ago

        THat sounds great! Gmail can be easily replaced, by like Proton mail or something… Youtube is also very hard… It’s a vicious circle, “Youtubers” try to host their content elsewhere but nobody is looking. While some users also want to get rid of the youtube platform, but since most people are still and keep watching on YouTube, the content creators keep uploading there…

        • dan@upvote.au
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          2 months ago

          Gmail can be easily replaced, by like Proton mail or something

          Except for the fact that you’ll need to update your email address in so many places.

          If you do move to a different provider, make sure you use your own domain. It’s way more professional, and it lets you move to a different provider in the future without having to change your email address again. I’ve had one of my email addresses for a bit over 20 years across a bunch of different providers.

          The paid version of Protonmail lets you have up to 3 custom domains. MXRoute and FastMail let you use your own domain too. MXRoute supports unlimited domains and addresses; you’re just limited by total disk space.

          If the email address is important to you, it’s better to use a paid service since it’ll usually give you proper support and an SLA.

          • ayaya@lemdro.id
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            2 months ago

            +1 for MXroute. I have unlimited domains with 25GB of storage for $30 every 3 years. So less than a dollar per month. Looks like they are still offering it. It’s more than enough for email especially considering the Gmail account I used for 15 years was under 5GB.

            I switched to them at the beginning of the year so about 9 months ago and have not had any issues.

            • dan@upvote.au
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              2 months ago

              MXroute are great. I switched to self-hosting my email server using Mailcow a few years ago, but still use MXroute for outbound email (meaning my SMTP server relays outbound email via MXroute). They’ve got deliverability figured out and have several fallbacks - I think if all of their outbound servers fail to send the email, they retry via Mailbaby and Mailchannels.

          • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
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            2 months ago

            Agreed, if you can effort is, buy a domain and use it for email. I also have melroy at melroy dot o r g. However, I still redirect my mail, since I don’t like paying for services haha. That being said, I’m planning to setup my own mail server (I finally now have the infrastructure at home and static IP, needed for this).

            Anyhow, DNS also needs to be replaced by something better.

            • dan@upvote.au
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              2 months ago

              Forwarding is a decent approach too. Just note that it’s not 100% reliable (due to limitations around spam filtering) and you will sometimes have emails that get dropped.

          • ad_on_is@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            Except for the fact that you’ll need to update your email address in so many places.

            Which is actually a good thing. Might sound scarry and counterintuitive at first, but is the right way to go.

            Especially with a custom domain, (can be smth cheap for 2 bucks a year) and using aliases for all the different places… like onlyfans@mydomain com… this prevents other malicious services from sending spam to your main email adress, since you can just delete the alias.

            • dan@upvote.au
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              1 month ago

              Which is actually a good thing. Might sound scarry and counterintuitive at first, but is the right way to go.

              My point was more that if you do change email address, you should change to your own domain, since then you won’t have to change it again in the future :)

              using aliases for all the different places…

              Yeah this is great. I use a catchall email so anything @ my domain goes to me.

              • ad_on_is@lemm.ee
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                1 month ago

                catchall

                yeah… me too… thankfully no one tried to bruteforce, at least not for now 😅

          • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
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            2 months ago

            It’s still youtube… And if you talk about Tor, the Tor network is not gonna like this kind of traffic. Video streams are too heavy for the Tor network. Maybe I2Pnet… But again, it’s still Google YouTube.

      • ludicolo@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        highly reccomend Grayjay and Freetube. Futo claims to be foss but it is only source viewable (my apologies having a brain fart and cannot remember the actual term.) which to my knowledge means you can see the source code but not redistribute it. They ask for a one time $10 payment but the app functions the exact same with or without payment. Grayjay does not have a desktop application but they are looking for someone with experience to develop one. Freetube is open source and contains extra addons like de arrow and watching from invidious instances along with a desktop and mobile application. It’s UI is less appealing than Grayjay ( at least personally) but it’s the only way I watch youtube on PC now and I use Grayjay on mobile. Both of these contain sponsorblock too! ;)

        If you watch YouTube on an android TV you can sideload smart tube TV, which is ad free as well. While I personally don’t reccomend it you can sign in with your yt account on both grayjay and smart tube to impket subscriptions.

        If you are looking for a solution for YouTube TV… Well… You may need to sail the 7 seas and live with not watching live (unless others have a solution for this.

        Fuck Google.

        • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          What I want is a platform on I2P which has a collection of residential proxies to connect and scrape YouTube. I guess that’ll work for Invidious too, but I just really like the idea of a huge community staying and interacting in I2P which will help its adoption (of course, the service must be P2P and not relay video directly like Invidious does now)

      • Preflight_Tomato@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago
        • gmail you can forward all mail to another account.
        • Youtube, you could try following your subscriptions via RSS/ATOM feed reader. It’s honestly just like regular YT but without the recommendation engine.
        • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          The point is not to use Gmail at all, and forwarding it isn’t likely to help (this is in important places like work)

          It’s about the YouTube platform. For the most part I don’t pay attention to the recommendations

      • melroy@kbin.melroy.org
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        2 months ago

        I agree. But to be very honest, de-googling is very important but not always very easy. So I did personally move away already from Gmail. I also now host my own Nextcloud instance, which I use for my agenda as well as contacts. Meaning I also don’t sync or store contacts or anything in Google. I don’t use any cloud services for storage either, again Nextcloud (self hosted) solved that for me.

        Then I was never using ChromeOS, so that helps, I’m only using Linux. However, I do have an Android device. It’s really hard to get rid of that, maybe a custom ROM, is that valid? Anyhow, and last but not least Google search, Google images, Google maps, etc. I don’t want to go from Google Search to another big Microsoft corp, so moving to Bing is a no go. That also means all those meta search engines is also not a good alternative, which includes: DuckDuckGo, ecosia and alike… Qitchain, presearch or Yacy isn’t working for me either. It’s just not good enough.

        Thus finding a good search alternative is hard! I’m actually considering as a software engineer to build my own.

  • arthurpizza@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’m a YouTube creator, part of the partner program, and I also manually upload to TILvids. The videos I make generate about $100-$300 a year through the partner program, so I’m not a professional by any means. It feels like they’re trying to keep creators from leaving by putting up small roadblocks that limit our reach beyond the platform. Given PeerTube’s non-profit model, I see it as a potential future for content sharing. Though there are a few rock stars on YouTube, most of the creators on that platform make little to no money from publishing videos. There are more people like me than Linus Media Group.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I would guess a significant number of “creators” are motivated by the idea of eventually becoming a hit and making much more money, though. And wouldn’t really do it of they didn’t have that dream.

      Not sure what percentage, though. Maybe less than I think.

    • mesamune@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      Yeah its really too bad how Youtube treats other video creators. Its a strange world. Hopefully peertube (given enough time) will have some viable options or at least an alternative. Is there any other platforms that work with video creators like yourself? I personally dont know of too many other than maybe twitch? I haven’t been keeping up.

  • foremanguy@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    We need to slowdown YouTube and get an alternative that is viable for people and creators. The problem in this case is creators and brands, almost no creators would continue doing videos if there’s no money at the end

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      The problem with money being involved is it’s an invitation to spam crap everywhere.

      One of my relatives has recently taken up “AI travel videos” and “AI cute videos” as a “hobby”. No doubt based on the first thing that came up when I searched for those things, a video titled “make $10,000 a month spamming up YouTube with your AI slop”.

      Oh, and it needs you to buy the AI slop generating tools that they happen to sell. How convenient!

      I mean, this also happened with broadcast TV, where we suddenly went from like 4 channels filled with programs and things competing for space, to 200 channels, where the rush was on to fill the gaps between the adverts as cheaply as possible with reality show tat. And that’s all YouTube is now.

      • foremanguy@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        This is one the best YouTube alternative but needs to be adopt massively

        • Meldrik@lemmy.wtf
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          2 months ago

          Start using it and ask content creators to also put their content on there.

    • sentientity@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      It’s subscription based, but Nebula is creator owned I believe. Sucks though that everything free gets acquired by some extractive company.

          • 0x0@infosec.pub
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            2 months ago

            See that’s the cute thing.They can have their free speech right there, but freedom also means the for most people obvious choice not to associate with nazis and other similiar troglodytes.

            And as you said yourself, it already seems to be a popular hole for said miscreants, so why even bother with it.

          • 0x0@infosec.pub
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            2 months ago

            Sure, but that doesn’t mean that one should willfully fraternize with idiots lol Troglodytes should be shunned, nothing wrong about that.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      We probably need to have some kind of business that links up people looking for ads with in video monetization. Of course sponsor block Will negate that to some decent extent.

      • Teils13@lemmy.eco.br
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        2 months ago

        VK Video is indeed probably close to it, being a quasi state company. Theoretically they can not maximize profit extraction in all spaces, and keep the videos without unlimited propaganda. But Rutube is a profit-seeking company that is just smaller scale youtube. Let’s see how the 1st will evolve over time.

  • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    The other day someone on lemmy kept trying to tell me that if google wanted to shut down ad blocking they would. But they don’t, so it’s ok.

    Lol, spawn me that person plz.

    • FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      AdBlocking is 100% OK, that part is correct for sure. Ad networks (including Google’s) routinely serve up scams and malware: It is foolish not to use a browser with a fully functional ad blocker at this point (i.e. avoid Chrome, use Firefox with uBlock origin).

      As for whether Google approves: Fuck Google! They have been serving up malware and scams in their ads. Their opinion should be irrelevant if you have any interest in protecting yourself, they have repeatedly proven they cannot and should not be trusted.

      • Rider@eviltoast.org
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        2 months ago

        Yes at this point why would any person would care what Google thinks? Google can go fuck themselves.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        If Google takes money to host an ad that’s malware, they should be able to be prosecuted for it.

        This is different than simply hosting community content that they can’t reasonably moderate. They’re being given money to distribute these ads, so they can afford to moderate them.

        Which should be easy anyway. Ads shouldn’t be able to install third-party shit from the advertisers on user computers. Google can easily restrict what can be included on an ad package.

  • Psythik@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Is this the reason why SmartTubeNext keeps breaking on my TV? The updates come pretty quickly but it’s getting annoying cause my $1800 OLED has the processing power of a $50 Chinese Android phone and thus takes forever to install updates.

    • emil_98@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It really is maddening how slow these expensive ass smart TVs are. Updating the software at all is often enough to make them nearly unusable

      • Psythik@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Not to mention the hilariously tiny storage space. My TV came out in 2022, and has 8 freaking gigabytes of storage space. That’s right, eight. Before I removed all the pre-installed bloat with ADB, it barely had enough space left to install one app fresh out of the box. It’s like these smart TV manufacturers expect people to only use the built-in apps and nothing else ever.

    • Daemon Silverstein@thelemmy.club
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      2 months ago

      It still lasts because there’s no easy way YT can offer their own content without the video being available as a file stream (through CDNs at googlevideos subdomains). If they centralize everything to a single, controlled domain (so to allow things as one-time HTTPS request, better session checking and so on), they’d lost the capability of load balancing allowed by the decentralized nature of CDNs. YouTube downloaders (and, by extension, third-party YT frontends such as Invidious) exploit this CDN aspect to download the videos.

      It’s common to see Invidious instances momentarily blocked. The blockage can’t last forever for two reasons: firstly, IPs (especially IPv4) changes due to how ISPs offer IPv4 addresses through CGNAT, so the instance IPv4 (generally domestic servers) will eventually change (often to a completely different IPv4 range) and YouTube won’t know that the new IP is a former “offender”. Secondly, as IPv4s works through CGNAT, Google can’t keep the bans forever because this IPv4 will be eventually rotated to another client from ISP that’s completely unrelated and unaware of how their IPv4 was a former address for a downloader. It’s like how Signal/WhatsApp/Telegram/Facebook/phone-required services can’t really keep a permanent ban for a specific prepaid number (especially on countries like Brazil, where ANATEL allows for phone number rotation when the mobile plan is cancelled), because the number will be potentially owned by another person with nothing to do with the former owner.

      So, in summary, Google can either end with YouTube CDNs (ditching their load balancing), or they can try to implement an innovative way to keep load balancing while serving the request one-time only, or they won’t be able to do nothing but to perpetually catch themselves drying ice cubes.

        • hangonasecond@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Not the OP, and I don’t actually know, but paid streaming services differ from YouTube in that everyone who accesses the content is paying for the service. On one hand, you can validate that everytime a video is served, it’s served to a paying user. On the other, you are receiving revenue directly from consumers to fund the infrastructure to store and serve the videos.

          YouTube, on the other hand, stores significantly more content, for free, and can be accessed for free, without being signed in.

          • nafzib@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            The “without being signed in” part of YouTube is now no longer completely true. I tried to watch a video tutorial at work the other day and it wouldn’t play because I wasn’t signed in and so “they couldn’t be sure I wasn’t a bot”. I’m not signing into any personal stuff on my work computer, or wasting time creating a “work” Google account, so I guess YT can no longer be a place where I can get helpful programming info.

        • Daemon Silverstein@thelemmy.club
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          2 months ago

          I guess they have no decentralized CDNs as YouTube does, but… paid streaming services still have their weaknesses (there certainly are tools that fetches content from there because of, e.g: entire Netflix movies/series became torrents without screen recording).

        • towerful@programming.dev
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          2 months ago

          The financial insensitive to ensure only paying users can access the content offsets the cost of the different infrastructure.

          YouTube needs to make money as cheaply as possible. They can’t afford the processing to guarantee ad delivery and secure content like that.

          If the infrastructure/delivery cost of securing content goes up, streaming services can raise their prices.
          YT can’t really serve more ads. The platform is already pretty packed with ads

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            YT can’t really serve more ads

            They say to hold their beer and watch this…

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    2 months ago

    That doesn’t sound like it’s an incredibly difficult problem to solve from a technical standpoint, if the creator is the one being hit. Just need either a software package – or, if the limitation here is content creator bandwidth, service – that pushes a video to multiple streaming video providers.

    Might be an issue for third-parties creating mirrors of YouTube content, though.

  • Rob200@lemmy.autism.place
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    2 months ago

    This can be problematic for Peertube’s adoption.

    If user only uses Peertube to upload, they likely wouldn’t notice a thing from this, but if it’s a creator from Youtube that’s trying to upload to multiple platforms this can cause major problems for ease of use and since the Peertube user base is small to begin with, this can potentially damage Peertube in the long run.

  • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    I wonder if these services are on small cloud providers. If so then they can just block their entire CIDR.

    I wonder if they were to move to GPC if they would have better luck.

    • mesamune@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      Im seeing it from a residential IP. I think its more they have an allowlist rather than a blocklist nowadays. But I can only speculate. Piped stopped working a month or so ago on my personal instance and updates dont fix it. I can imagine for video uploaders, the issue is worse.

  • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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    2 months ago

    I’ve noticed a few people on Reddit taking about getting possibly shadow banned on YouTube, myself included. With no real explanation why? Every video just comes up as “content not available” when logged in. It started a week ago or so. I wonder if this is all related?

  • anticurrent@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    I took full advantage of invidious while it was still working, now I am anxious of ever going back to YouTube. It won’t be long before they requiring giving them your iris scan before watching a video on that shit platform.

    • Daemon Silverstein@thelemmy.club
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      2 months ago

      yt-dlp is only affected when YT changes their algorithms (breaking yt-dlp data scrapping capabilities) or when it’s used frequently with the same IP address (leading to automatic IP blockage). If you’re using yt-dlp sporadically, it shouldn’t be affected.

    • CH3DD4R_G0B-L1N@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Is there a gui interface for that anywhere? I really can’t be bothered to learn the command line just to download a couple vids here and there. Especially when freetube still works for now. But if the barrier to entry was a little lower, I’d start backing up faves.

  • bruhSoulz@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    This sux big time, been using grayjay and it seems to be working alright thus far