Not to be a downer but... how did people not anticipate this happening? Google is likely going to do everything they can to shut down non-official clients like Piped, since they're sidestepping all of YouTube's revenue streams. Hopefully they don't take the nuclear option and somehow lock down the API and make it much harder to download videos via tools like yt-dlp.
I'm pretty sure most people anticipated it at some point. I just seems to be starting now.
I'm not going to be popular saying this but how is the service supposed to survive without a revenue stream? It takes a shit ton of bandwidth and storage to keep YouTube running, that ain't free.
I get that the ads are incredibly annoying but if you truly watch as much YouTube as some people in this thread are claiming, maybe it's worth paying for it? I bit the bullet and for basically the price of my cancelled Spotify subscription I now have no ads in YT and an okay streaming service with yt music.
Of course Google could do things better. And actually I think it would be important to have a competitor. But I wouldn't expect that one to be free either.
If youtube fixed their content ID system and stopped falsely demonitizing all the creators I watch then I would hapily pay for youtube red (or whatever they call it now). As it is though I'm not giving them my money just for them to pay copyright trolls with some of it. I'd rather give my money to noone than risk having some of it go to the people leaching off the completely broken content ID system.
It's called RedTube now.
YouTube should be public infrastructure.
Well, if they implement their web integrity DRM thingy in Chrome and Youtube then that will prevent anything that's not a real approved browser from accessing the website, and with that the video streams. Not only Piped/Newpipe, but anything automated trying to access any website will be automatically locked out unless the website approves of it. New search engine bot? Archiving crawlers? Any type of third party program that accesses some website's content without approval? Dead.
Yeah we're basically hurting their revenue by using Piped and other ways to bypass Google's ads. They wouldn't be profitable if everyone stopped watching those ads
Noooooooooo! The poor google 😢
their $412,378/s has been reduced to $412,367/s! 😭 😭
Yeah, they should provide thousands of gigiabits of video streaming to everyone for free. It's our right!
It's not for free. They use your data. Also most of these 'free' videos are made by enthusiasts.
Most of what they use your data for is to serve you ads. If you're blocking ads, that data isn't all that valuable.
Big platforms tend to forget they're big because they're free. It's our duty to remind them.
I wish the product was somewhat good too. Piped has features that even YT Premium users don't have.
They’re making plenty of profit selling all of our data  and getting ad revenue from the 95%+ of other users who aren’t blocking them.
It amazes me how entitled these Internet hippies are nowadays. You can't expect someone to provide such a huge service for free. If you don't like ads, pay for it. It's like $5 per month when you pay as a group..
I would pay if
Google promised not collect any data but now you would pay and have your data collected.
I just want load my subscription feed and they are all there not hidden away.
Hid shorts or have them on separate tab.
Bonus would be if related videos where acutely related videos in time span. Not the mess they are now.
Also why would I have to pay YouTube music? I don’t want that.
I would pay if they let me without compromising my anonymity.
They make enough money off the rubes. They should just let us nerds have this one.
If you are using LibreTube this is fixable by disabling piped proxies in the setting. HOWEVER do be warned that Youtube will know your IP, so you should only really do this while using a VPN service.
Real heroes don't wear capes, they give solid advice.
ps: thanks
Thanks. Worked for me.
Took me a while to find the setting under the audio and video section of the settings, because I was constantly looking for it under instance, general or advanced.
I watch more YouTube than I do television these days.
As of now, I'm able to watch it ad free on both Brave and Firefox. I don't have revanced as I'm more or less too technically stupid to do it.
If it becomes impossible to watch YouTube, I'll walk away from it just like I did cable in 2009 and Netflix in 2023.
I haven't sailed the high seas since the eighties, and I'd honestly prefer not to, but you gotta make a product that doesn't consistently try to piss me off.
It's not trying to piss you off, it's trying to make money, as it should. Do you have any idea how much money it costs to run the infrastructure behind YouTube? Neither do I, because it's unfathomable.
I pay for YouTube Premium along with 5 friends. It's $5 per month per person. Beats any streaming service by miles.
I do, however pirate all my movies (except for the occasional cinema visit) and TV shows.
They are definitely in a crackdown phase. Some revanced versions stopped working just yesterday, the yt-dlp stuff, the ad block block...
The best hope would be to get off of YouTube but that's not happening any time soon given how expensive bandwidth is.
I guess that's it then. If I'm forced to see ads and be tracked I'll just block the domain on my network like I did reddit and invest that time in other things.
You can always grab a browser extension. Apple has Vinegar, not sure what others run. Just plucks the video feed direct pretty much like Piped. So no ads. Still stuck on YT unfortunately
I just wish Peertube had proper federation and a more accessible interface, some of their decitions sadly make is a unvaiable alternative! :(
Good to know what was going on — I just noticed yesterday that piped vids weren’t loading for me.
It's time LibreTube moved on from Pipe Backend too. Too many times the app just doesn't work leading to server hopping and more.
I could use NewPipe but the app has a really terrible UI.
LibreTube existence is built upon Piped as far as I know. Even the developer wants you to donate to Piped instead of LibreTube as far as I remember.
Isn't Piped the only way to easily mask YouTube history with Google? So I think we should be very thankful of the existence of Piped
NewPipe has been having a lot of issues as well. Videos crash a minute in and the only way to solve it is to clear cache which only works for one video.
We should open our own YouTube, with blackjack... and hookers! That'll show those google guys.
We already have peertube and Odysee. But majority of the content still lies in Youtube.
Man, just when I downloaded LibreTube. :(
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)