this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 147 points 1 month ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Shows you how much of a dent they’re putting in the bottom line.

Or how desperate google execs are to get even the tiniest bump in revenue.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago

LINE MUST GO UP AT ALL TIMES

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

GrayJay is the only one that seems to still work without issue but it's getting updates very regularly.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Invidious and YouTube piped (and LibreTube) by default load the videos server-side, as opposed to GrayJay, NewPipe or Smarttube.

It has advantages (mostly that your IP address is not shared with YouTube, and it allows users from countries where YouTube is blocked to still access it) and inconvenients (much harder to keep up when YouTube actively seeks to block them).

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Invidious shares your IP with google, it does not act as a proxy

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I guess this reply lost its “by default” part on the way 🤔

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm pretty confident that you are wrong.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Fair enough, that's interesting. I assume this only applies to the non-web clients. On the web, it would not be possible. You can verify by looking at the outgoing network requests on this random video for example: https://invidious.privacyredirect.com/watch?v=qKMcKQCQxxI

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

On the web, it would not be possible.

Why not?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because of the CORS settings on Google's servers would tell your browser to not go forward with the request. There are two ways it could eventually be possible:

  • By opening the video in a new page/tab that only contains the video, with the YouTube player, which defeats the purpose a bit.
  • By installing an addon or an app on your device.
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I haven't checked the CORS headers for YouTube videos but wouldn't access have to be fairly open to allow embedded videos to work?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

For that they use iframes, which have a different security system.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I doubt it's denting the bottom* line as much as the recent court rulings. And I doubt it's as much paying bills as it is paying vested interests.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I remember Hooktube. That was when front ends were still trying to play nice by accessing youtube the "right way".

They killed that one off pretty hastily.

Invidious was the hero successor, but I think we all knew that it would eventually come to this. Invidious' most recent fixes for blocking involve passing identity tokens, making a concession that Google is then better able to track users behind Invidious.

I'm not sure how much farther there is left to go on the technical angle of this fight.