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The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

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579 points Leftium | 1 comments | 19 Sep 25 12:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.213s | source
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Wowfunhappy ◴[19 Sep 25 20:32 UTC] No.45306196[source]▶
> Google needs YouTube downloaders. They perform a valuable role: If it were impossible to download YouTube videos, many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility. Or they’d need to host a separate download link and put it in their YouTube descriptions. But organizations don’t need to jump through hoops -- they just let people use YouTube downloaders.

I don't think I believe this, as much as I'd like to. How many organizations would really consider this a critical need? My guess is, not enough for Google to care.

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adocomplete ◴[19 Sep 25 21:29 UTC] No.45306872[source]▶
Also, if you upload a video to YouTube you can download it from YouTube Studio at any time, so that doesn't add up at all.

YouTube just doesn't make this available via API, but you've always been able to manually from YouTube Studio download your uploaded videos.

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yason ◴[20 Sep 25 15:46 UTC] No.45314344[source]▶
Surely you would have the originals locally and not rely on youtube to archive yours uploads?
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1. sneak ◴[20 Sep 25 16:13 UTC] No.45314595[source]▶
People who do this are a minority. The vast majority have the masters only available on YouTube.

I hope your “surely” was in jest.