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Youtube has fully blocked Invidious (github.com)

submitted 2 months ago by captainkangaroo@discuss.tchncs.de to c/technology@lemmy.world

325 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/22423685

EDIT: For those who are too lazy to click the link, this is what it says

Hello,

Sad news for everyone. YouTube/Google has patched the latest workaround that we had in order to restore the video playback functionality.

Right now we have no other solutions/fixes. You may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home) but on datacenter IP addresses Invidious won't work anymore.

If you are interested to install Invidious at home, we remind you that we have a guide for that here: https://docs.invidious.io/installation/..

This is not the death of this project. We will still try to find new solutions, but this might take time, months probably.

I have updated the public instance list in order to reflect on the working public instances: https://instances.invidious.io. Please don't abuse them since the number is really low.

Feel free to discuss this politely on Matrix or IRC.

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[–] TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz 19 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The problem is, there's just no (good) direct competition. The audience will follow creators once enough of them switch to the same alternative platform. But as long as there's no platform with a comparable amount of money behind it, most people will continue to use Youtube.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Eh, there are some competitors:

Nebula - costs $5/month; can get a discount if you find a creator's discount code (I used NotJustBikes, can check out LegalEagle, HalfAsinteresting, or any of the others if you want; I got 50% off a year sub)
Odyssee - pretty much the OG alternative to YT - I follow a few there
Rumble - much better funded, but caters to conservatives and far-right, but there are some more moderate videos there (I like Glenn Greenwald, except for anything related to Russia); I think it's funny that it has been blocked by some countries for allowing pro-Russian content, while also being blocked by Russia (this year) for not removing content

I sub to some channels from each (as well as Twitch and YT) though Grayjay, which seems to work pretty well. I'd say about 50% of my video watch time is on YouTube, 15-20% on Odyssee, 20-30% on Nebula, and a little on Rumble. I try to watch Nebula videos on the Nebula app so creators get credited with watch time, but I honestly prefer Grayjay.

I've been trying to cut down on how much I watch anyway, so hopefully I'll be able to slowly eliminate YT from my life.

[–] dsilverz@thelemmy.club 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Rumble - [...] I think it’s funny that it has been blocked by some countries

Rumble is blocked here in Brazil, not because Brazil blocked it (although there was once a strife between Rumble and Brazilian Supreme Court due to a half dozen far-right influencers) , but because Rumble themselves blocked us.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah, my understanding is that they blocked Brazil due to some stuff they disagreed with. They're certainly a mixed bag.

[–] TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I know about Nebula, but you have to admit, the barrier to entrance is a lot higher for most people because of the subscription fee, so it's not necessarily a direct comparison. Some of my favourite content creators are on there.

Didn't know about Odysee. As far as I can see, that platform uses crypto for payments, which could also act as a deterrent to some people.

As for Rumble: Personally, I wouldn't touch anything related to JD Vance with a ten foot pole (he's a pretty big investor). And one of their biggest channels seems to be by Andrew Tate (ew). To be fair, I couldn't tell you for sure that Youtube doesn't take money from any of them in some form. But they seem to be more of an equal opportunity offender lol.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

As far as I can see, that platform uses crypto for payments, which could also act as a deterrent to some people.

I'm confused, what I'm hearing is:

YouTube - don't want because of ads and ownership by Google
Nebula - don't want because of required subscription
Odysee - don't want because of optional crypto payments
Rumble - undesirables use/invest in the platform?
PeerTube (not mentioned) - not enough content

That seems unreasonable to me. All three of those alternatives have no ads and have content that you would probably enjoy. You don't need to use crypto to use Odysee. You don't need to watch Andrew Tate or support JD Vance to use Rumble. You do need to pay for Nebula, but you can pay for a single month if you just want to try it out.

But at the end of the day, these alternatives need to get paid to survive. None of them are perfect, which is a big part of why I use Grayjay, which lets me sub to creators from all of them without having to see those services' front pages. I pay for Nebula and I donate to creators I like at Odysee outside the built-in crypto system. I don't like JD Vance, but I also don't particularly care if we invests in Rumble, that really doesn't affect me in any way. My goal is to reduce my YT use, and I'm not going to get there by continually moving the goalposts, so I decided to just pull the trigger and try them all out, and they're fine.

[–] TheDarksteel94@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 months ago

Oh, please don't misunderstand: I personally don't really care about leaving Youtube myself, but it's good to have alternatives/competition. And as I said, there's no direct competition to Youtube, which does everything they do. Low barrier to entry, a huge amount of money behind it, a self contained eco system with decent tools, barely any political affiliation (afaik), etc.

So, I was more talking about why the majority of people won't leave for other platforms.

Pretty much everything Youtube does is driven by making the platform profitable. Which, ironically, makes me trust them more with certain things. Not a huge fan of their parent company tho.