Its very funny to me that I only learned about Invidious recently because youtube is trying to take it down. I will never open youtube ever again. Ive been using addblock/tracking blockers for a decade at this point but now I don't even have to look at their shitty website with its ever degrading interface.
I run my own invidious instance locally, I really hope G! doesn't manage to shut down the main project. Don't have the link handy, but on Invidious's Github page in the issue tracker the author basically says that the email they got from G! was invalid because the project isn't using the G! API and is instead essentially scraping the website and no terms were explicitly agreed to by them. Don't know if that will hold up legally, but it doesn't seem like the author is kowtowing to G! at this point at least. And since hearing the story then I've gotten 3 software updates if that's any indication about the inertia of the project.
I mean if absolute worst comes to worst, the main project goes down a fork goes up and people just move over. I also host my own instance so itll live forever til they break it with an update. And hell, Vanced still works so... shrug
My thought's exactly. If the community is there and there's enough people willing to do the dev work, the project will go on indefinitely even if the author is forced to drop it.
I truly don't know what they think is going to happen. Its an open source, endlessly clonable piece of software. They killed Youtube Vanced and within a week Revanced popped up.
I'm assuming Google istrying to use fear tactics as there is zero legal ground. If they require a Google account for YouTube access, then Invidious would be in trouble. But this would also cut into the view count and URLs tougher to sell ad's with less views.
I used to use Invidious on my desktop and NewPipe on my Android phone. Even tried FreeTube for a while. Everything worked great except managing subscriptions was a pain. Each device needed to be updated manually.
Then I discovered Piped and now use this exclusively. It's open-source, blocks ads, has SponsorBlock, and subscriptions. You can use it any browser and use the LibreTube Android client.
All the benefits of FreeTube, Invidious, Newpipe -- with the added benefit of subscription sync across all devices.
I've never heard of it before either, and this is awesome! I've been using NewPipe on my phone for a while and loving it, but also wishing for something like this on my pc. And now, thanks to Reddit for leading me to Lemmy leading me to this... 😁
Like how you found out about it from Youtube trying to take more control, makes me think of the famous like from Princess Leia: "The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers."
Thanks for the post! 🏆