I kind of wish people would stop making yt-dlp more accessible and increasing Google's desire to shut it down.
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Yes, YT has good monetization, but it still pays peanuts to the average creator. So the competitive threat is very real - superstars alone wouldn't be enough to make for a really compelling platform.
Would be nice if Youtube just let premium users download the actual video files. What I find interesting is how so many of the Chinese social media platforms just let you download videos while western tech companies pretty much universally block it.
Not so sure, since everything is monetized nowadays (YouTuber make video to earn money) and the audience is there, i don't see how they could move anywhere.
Which, I get it, YouTube isn't paying them enough and they gotta eat. So, it kind of feels like YouTube letting them post their own ads is an intentional choice on YouTube's part to not give me the service I'm paying for.
In order to ensure that not too many people learn about yt-dlp, we should also work to remove all access to knowledge about the magical super big brain requiring, mytical command line.
In fact to ensure that Google does not kill yt-dlp, everyone in the world except tracerbulletx should be force fed chemical powder that makes them stupid.
That way, only tracerbulletx will understand yt-dlp, and he can heroically guard this super secret tool that only those worthy deserves to know.
Edit: Take me, for instance. I can tolerate ads, much as I hate them - waiting 15 seconds and hitting "skip" twice isn't going to kill me. But good christ do I not like YT's UI/UX.
youtube-dl were under the microscope and were even unlisted from github at one point[0].
And as recent as 1yr ago had their website taken offline[1].
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/jgtzum/youtube...
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/comments/15wx4sl/youtubed...
The rate things are going I’ll just have to use those sites instead.
YouTube is a weird position. A lot of content is public domain and should be freely downloaded. Other content isn’t.
A good middle ground would be for YouTube to just give uploaders an option to enable downloads.
I do agree that people need to STOP trying to make yt-dl easy to use to the point it actually competes with YouTube. YouTube Red when you factor in music is a very good deal. I’ve been subscribed for years.
Like it or not but YouTube is almost entirely funded by ads. You don’t have a right to use the service without paying.
Regarding the website being taken down, it was hosted in Germany and it was a German court order. Germany is notorious for this stuff, and it should never have been hosted there. If they wanted, they could have found a more reasonable host.
I understand the burnout, but it comes with the territory, and powerful enough people made it clear that the team did have their support. With some effort, the project could have continued on at full pace at least as uninhibited as its forks.
Now the URL just redirects to the yt-dlp GitHub repository, anyway.
It's clear where this is heading:
1) Youtube will go after software like yt-dlp to ensure only AlphaGoogle-sanctioned players can play its videos
2) Youtube will encode commercials directly into the videos it streams
Both will come to pass. It's not 'if' but 'when'
They stream the commercials separately on purpose, because this makes it a whole lot easier for them to track ad impression metrics. Splicing the ad within the same feed is technically quite feasible and indeed almost trivial, it doesn't even require a re-encoding of the entire video. So we can assume that they're avoiding that for a reason.
Even if they do it via some sort of chunking, then it's possible to skip chunks easily too (aka, relatively easy to bypass given the amount of effort to implement).
Not to mention it's hard to do caching this way imho.
What it means is adblocker can block the reporting API, but you still get to watch the ad and cost the streaming provider wasting money to splice the ad.
There are important use cases for these tools outside of "free stuff".
But yeah, why not also attach our payment information to our watch history to make it even more efficient for Google to keep on what it's doing right now?
This is how you describe a glorified VCR?
But if they were, they probably would agree that it never should have been posted to HN, not even the first time they saw it on HN.
Not publishing at all would obviously be incorrect. You know they're not saying that.
If a channel posts a review of a piece of hardware that was sent to them for free by the manufacturer is the entire video an ad?
I think saying you don't have a right is fine... they are providing a service and dictating it's usage and you are using it.
So on the "closing your eyes". On one side, yes, allowing your browser to play the video and YT then being able to treat as a advert view means that youtube gets paid and the creator gets paid.
However... I would personally view this as can a person do this and how it works as a generalisation and I would say "no", because if everyone did this (why does just one person have the right to close their eyes), then (at least I'd imagine) the companies paying for advertising would see a drop in click-throughs and (I don't know what you call it.. but let's just say) more money. They'd then stop paying for adverts. Then no companies would want to pay for adverts and YT is no longer profitable (to YT or the creators).
If you work in a part of the advertising industry with any kind of privacy invasion you deserve to lose your job and have your business be shut down, in some cases even jail time would be completely deserved. So no you don't need to allow ads for ethical reasons.
You can already do this with Sponsorblock.
> If a channel posts a review of a piece of hardware that was sent to them for free by the manufacturer is the entire video an ad?
Yes.
Do you have any evidence to support your claim?
Music purchased on iTunes used to come with DRM. There were programs to get rid of it but they got shut down by Apple and were not easily accessible. Consumers pushed back on DRM and Apple eventually got rid of it.
Rather than leading to widespread piracy, most people just started renting their music from Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.
I see your point, bit it isn't just the ads. I object to being stalked throughout my life online, they don't have the right to do that IMO.
Separate the ads from the stalking and maybe I'll just block or otherwise avoid the stalking and not the ads, but right now that is not remotely possible. I don't use sponsorblock for instance, the main extra stuff that circumvents can't be stalky, though I do manually skip when I've heard the same scripted-by-the-advertiser-to-try-sound-natural part already (wow, so your favourite part of the service is exactly the same as the other two podcasters I've listened to this day? In exactly the same words? That really sounds like a recommendation from you personally as a genuine user… (actually, this can sometimes be a useful signal of how little trust I should put in their other opinions!)).
Considering YouTubers have to disclose paid promotions, this isn’t nearly as grey as your question suggests.
People who accept that as something a company should be allowed to do are a massive problem. Because of you, they might actually do it. It will start by making sure you cannot mute the sound in any way, designing hardware in a way to enforce that - devices will start overriding the use of external speakers and play ads from internal ones to make absolutely sure you haven't muted it. Next they will force always-on cameras on us which will make sure our eyes are open and looking at the ad. Next we will have brain implants to make sure you're actually paying attention and not thinking about something else.
I find it extremely disturbing that you don't feel disgusted about even thinking of "yes".
It'll definitely trouble the non-technical set though.
Ill say again what gabe newell said. Piracy isnt a price problem, but a service issue. Its convenient, if you can make a legit way to get the product thats as convenient for the user as piracy, then they will pay for it
They seem to be the only ones who get how piracy can be fought. And its no secret either, gabe newell has that "piracy is a service issue" quote for anyone to read. Its just that these companies dont want to consider not squeezing the life out of their users for shareholder benefit
But at the same time if you have an understanding that their business model demands you accept their terms of service, so they can fund the product, your basic options are participating or not.
The vast vast majority of the time I watch YouTube it's via an official client, and if you feel so strongly about your privacy I'm sure you're knowledgeable enough to sandbox your browser. You can always spin up a VM just for YouTube and run Chrome inside of that.
I rarely download public domain videos for music projects. But this gets harder every week. Eventually I'll just have to grab my phone with an analog audio jack and manually record back into my computer.
Or just download the public domain videos from another site. Yt-dl makes this phenomenally easier, but I definitely understand YouTube's motivations in blocking it.
If they're willing to pretend they use something and love it for ads, then I don't know if I can watch there stuff. If they just say, xyz company has paid use to advertise this, we tried it for a few days, we found it helpful, that would be fine, but don't pretend/lie that you've been using it for years.
Steam does do a great job of making stuff accessible and convenient. But plenty of people would still pirate over paying $90 for the new game if it wasn’t so hard.
It depends on the jurisdiction actually. In mine (France) and a few others, the right to save material is granted to every citizen no matter the license of the said material as long as the copy is made for private use only (it's called «droit à la copie privée» which translates to “right to private copy”).
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/strategic-policy-sector/en/...
(What a classic Canadian government URL that is.)
In theory YouTube could geo lock these features if made to implement it.
What I mean is that there's no legal reason for Youtube to prevent downloading their videos (they can't be sued by IP holders for providing a download link for that matter).
Also the videos are free either way. It's true that people are avoiding paying for an ad removing feature, but installing your own software to get features is pretty reasonable.
And ad removal is well established as a feature people use and it being fine that they do so.
While the line is fuzzy, there's definitely a line. For example, when a video cuts away from the content to talk about a sponsor that's a clear ad.
> how would you expect any company to remove in-video "ads" without rampant accusations of censorship?
Removing would be somewhat difficult. Banning would not be complicated. Companies word those kinds of agreements all the time.
> If a channel posts a review of a piece of hardware that was sent to them for free by the manufacturer is the entire video an ad?
I'd say it depends, but the answer doesn't really matter. That's a straightforward category that can be allowed or not allowed directly, no need to worry about semantics.
It seems like a good idea, Bojack Horseman is probably going to be taken down at some point, but enforcement remains elusive.
Even so, I can see how someone could have those opinions if they strongly distrust attempts at restricting hate speech. The desire for a platform that lets you say whatever you want, but not in exchange for money, is something that makes sense.