5mo ago

Youtube has fully blocked Invidious

github.com [Bug] "This helps protect our community." · Issue #4734 · iv-org/invidious

Update 21/09/2024: #4734 (comment) EDIT by @unixfox: The Invidious team is aware of this issue. It appears that it affects all the software using YouTube. Please refrain from commenting if you have...

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.

Free and Open Source Software @beehaw.org

captainkangaroo @discuss.tchncs.de

5mo ago

Youtube has fully blocked Invidious

github.com /iv-org/invidious/issues/4734

184 42

DeGoogle Yourself @lemmy.ml

captainkangaroo @discuss.tchncs.de

5mo ago

Youtube has fully blocked Invidious

github.com /iv-org/invidious/issues/4734

395 54

Technology @lemmy.zip

LunchMoneyThief @links.hackliberty.org

5mo ago

Google closes in on Invidious, "Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot"

github.com /iv-org/invidious/issues/4734

56 6

318 comments

i absolutely despise youtube. these fuckers are putting ads on paused videos now, and then this.
they will never get better. only worse. we need regulations badly.
- We need a competitor badly.
  
  Peertube/Odysee exist, even if they are relatively niche.
  
  Whatever happened to dailymotion?
  
  Paying Nebula subscriber here 🙋‍♂️
  Pony up or your call for a competitor doesn’t mean anything. People don’t want ads? Fine. There has to be another revenue stream. Server capacity costs money, making a website and app cost money, and video creators need to eat.
- You want regulations on ads for a free service?
  The entitlement is wild.
  
  Free or not, monopolies should be regulated.
  
  Works for Albania.
  Its not like google fucking earned that money anyways. You don't earn billions of dollars.
  Think about it. If you earned a million dollars a year, you'd be set for life. If you lived for a full hundred years you'd have only made 1/10th of a billion dollars. Despite the fact that its still more money than either of us will probably ever see.
  The people who operate google have billions with an s at the end. Think about the hardest working person you've known. Think about how little money they made.
  Now ask yourself, what did the people with billions do to earn that money? How hard did they have to work to justify it, and how is that level of work even humanly possible? How would a bunch of spoiled overgrown trustfund fratboys find it in themselves do that work?
  They fucking don't. The only people who get that rich do it by cheating, and stealing, and fucking people over. Those fuckers owe us a lot more than video streaming services.
  
  They’re a monopoly that relies on users to produce content. You see, in a functional capitalist system, when one supplier deliberately hinders competition through unfair trade practices, they are made to change their methods in order to foster competition.
  When that system is corrupted and fails to act in a timely manner, all bets are off.
  You know where else you can go to find the billions of videos users have uploaded? No. How did it get that way? Just, luck? No.
  Yes, we want regulations on ads in YouTube, and it’s an ignorant and arrogant position to call that “entitled”.
  
  You’ll never get upvotes for telling people this reality, but you are of course completely correct.
  If only we saw as much enthusiasm for voting generally as we see for taking ads off YT. Maybe we’d actually get a government that was willing to regulate titans.

Not just invidious, they've just de facto blocked video embedding:
If you're wondering how a viable competitor could arise, other companies needing a video hosting solution that they can rely on to run their storefronts is a perfect use case. This is the Humble Bundle storefront, and they could pretty easily spin up a peertube instance. If that became commonplace, it could be one way for peertube to become ubiquitous.
EDIT: This is related to my VPN I believe, but storefronts still aren't going to be happy if they can't rely on their storefronts working for everyone.
- yo rainworld i used to have a friend that was a fan of that game
  
  It's a 10/10 for me! Amazing game but definitely not for everyone
  
  What happened?
  
  aww, thanks!
  -rain world
- Sure but it's really common to see embedded youtube videos on storefronts, and if storefronts en masse abandoned it that's one more piece of the market that youtube has lost.
  They can't keep locking it down and not lose market share, is my point. They're enshittifying so much, so fast, and eventually there will be a tipping point.
- Seems it's fixed now?
  
  Could be, maybe it's intermittent, but the more times they try to lock this shit down and it stops working for storefronts, the more unreliable it becomes.
  What percentage of visits can they afford to have this error happen before they seek alternatives? If it were my business and I didn't know how many customers were closing the store page because the video didn't play and they lost interest, I would be immediately looking for an alternative.
  EDIT: Still broken for me. I can fix it by turning off my VPN, but storefronts are going to want to sell to everyone, including the VPN users.
  
  is that a possible workaround? Also, a tip from my school trying to block YouTube (idk if it applies here) is that you can 'add to queue' to where it plays in the corner then there's a button to make it bigger.
- other companies needing a video hosting solution that they can rely on to run their storefronts is a perfect use case.
  Many companies use Vimeo for this.
- I watch embedded videos all the time. Literally hundreds this weekend. Embedded is not “de facto blocked”.
  
  Well I now can't unless I disable my VPN. Storefronts would probably like VPN users to be able to use their stores, in which case they might be more interested in an alternative.
- rain world????
  
  Rain world.

Start asking your favourite content creators to post on PeerTube.
- And how are they going to make a living to keep producing videos?
  I’d say ask them to join Nebula.
  
  That depends. If they only make a living with YT ads, then it’s going to be hard.
  
  Remember when people posted on YouTube for fun? It's only when it became a viable business that the platform turned to shit.
  
  All the people I watch on youtube make the majority of their money on patreon or twitch. Youtube is way too heavy handed with demonitization and copyright strikes to be a trutsworthy income source.
  
  Nebula is cool and all, but at the end of the day, it's still a commercial platform, and those do tend to enshittify and depend a lot on externalities.
  As creators grow more dependent on Nebula, Sam and the team of original Nebula creators can wield more power and change the rules.
  They already dictate the kind of content that is allowed - for example, Second Thought, one of the original creators behind Nebula, was asked to leave as he doesn't agree to change public stance on Israeli-Palestinian conflict (he is pro-Palestine). This has suddenly left him without a source of revenue necessary for the production to expand, and has put him into debt.
  Solution? Probably independent sponsorships that would go both on YouTube and PeerTube videos. Or a creator reward system like in Lbry/Odysee. Something that would allow to reward creators without going full commercial.
  
  Patreon and all the other services creators have at their disposal already.
  Don't think most Youtubers can make a living these days solely on YT as revenue, and are already exploring other avenues.
  
  They can still post on YouTube.
  It might take a tiny bit of their revenue away but I doubt it would make much of a dent, especially for creators that run mostly on patreon anyway.
  
  Direct payment to creators seems like the most simple and efficient method.
  
  Paying Nebula subscriber here 🙋‍♂️
  I can’t stand hearing people whine about wanting everything for free and how DARE people try to make a living so they can eat in between making videos!!!
  
  I just want the videos no creator makes money on. I expect thats about 50% at least. Let’s start there. Put them in the Library of Congress and YouTube will be free to enshittify themselves into oblivion without complaint.
- And then watch the peertube instance die. See also: https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/issues/5783
- or odysee ig but i cannot find a good peertube instance i can post in
  
  What are your criteria for a good instance? I host one myself, so genuinely curious.
- Civvie 11 is a old head. How do I convince him?
  
  What have you tried so far?
- on which instance?
  
  Tilvids.com is a good start. Fx The Linux Experiment is there.
  Otherwise, I host peertube.wtf.
- And while we're at it, stop calling them 'content creators'
  EDIT: to clarify, my stance on this is that 'content creator' devalues the human endeavour behind a piece of work (or content, if you will). Instead it's just slop for the machine, and who cares what it is as long as it gets numbers, right?
  
  What is the alternative name for someone who creates content for a platform?
  
  I'll take the name Content Creator over Influencer any day.
  
  Why? What else would we call them?
  
  Right. Call them youtubers! Wait...
  
  Male/female adult online entertainer?

yt-dlp still works.
A spark of hope in a dim world.
- I've seen it go down in some cases on VPNs, so it could be a matter of time (or they'll find a solution again and the back and forth will just continue).
- My god, what if its on google's chopping block next?
  
  Donate to the EFF for fighting that fight in court already.
  
  I often consider the scenario.
  What would I do if Google straight sniped and headshot every single method of piracy, even embedding the ads into the video?
  "He'll pay now!*
  Nah, never. People are more momentary, at least I am. I don't care if I'm being entertained by "X". If "X" isn't worth the trouble, there's "Y". The days of everyone even caring to digest the same media as anyone else is over unless your main drugs are pop music, Asmongold reacting to politics and influencers.

You can still watch YouTube without ads using grayjay.app including sponsor block.
Thanks to Louis Rossman
- Or just use Firefox with ublock?
  
  Sure, that works too, however with grayjay you can follow creaters across platforms. So in case someone's account gets banned by YouTube due to whatever bullshit reason, you can continue following them on other platforms. Next to that you won't get spammed with Shorts junk. If you want to download a video to watch it offline, you can actually watch it offline (you don't require a connection like with YouTube to watch something offline)
  
  But ur data gets raped if u don't use a VPN + no account (but then u don't get to see age restricted material)
- grayjay doesnt have return youtube dislike
  
  It has its own like and dislike system, so it's not cluttered by yt bots.
  
  It does, you can turn it on in the YouTube plugin settings.
  
  We can't complain about everything, here, considering the circumstances.

YouTube will not change until people stop using it. And people do not want to put up with the inconvenience of not having a YouTube type service again for the amount of time it would take for YouTube to change or a viable competitor to take their place, it really is that simple.
Are YouTube and Google terrible? For sure, but it only got this way because the only backstop to holding them accountable, the consumer, has proven that they will choose putting up with shitty products and services in the name of convenience 9 times out of 10.
Same reasons that ad tiers are gaining a foothold in streaming services like Netflix. The consumer has shown they are fine with it.
- Time to pirate YT content and upload to usenet to be automatically downloaded using sonarr
  
  Yes but literally throwing together a script to download the days subscription videos to a jellyfin media drive would be stupidly simple.
  
  Honestly, it would probably be easier to just build a arr program specifically for downloading YouTube videos directly. Tie it into the rest of the arr suite, with naming conventions for Plex/Jellyfin.
- Same reasons that ad tiers are gaining a foothold in streaming services like Netflix. The consumer has shown they are fine with it.
  Yep, I remember when Netlfix first put it out there that they would start with the ads, and everyone on reddit was like, "Canceling my Netflix right now!!"
  Netflix is doing just fine without the 5 redditors who actually did cancel it. lmao
  
  the problem is so many people are willing to say they'll take a stand.
  but when the time comes, the mindnumbingly overwhelming majority suck it up, because they must have their precious shiny and can not suffer even the mildest of inconvenience.
  Its my biggest gripe in gaming, but its a enormous gripe just in general, with everything. because it doesnt matter if you are talking about appliances, creative software, video games, streaming services, stores, etc.
  
  I know you weren't using the number 5 as a hard example, but a thing that people still don't seem to realize is that the people in threads like this are the people that actually care. Even if the few thousand redditors who subscribe to a subreddit where they discussed that topic were to all (and I mean 100% of them) cancel there subscriptions. That is still only a drop in the bucket for Netflix. Losing a few thousand subscribers is still nothing if they made more money with the addition of ads.
  
  "Socialist Chaos Trow" lol
- While I agree, I have a hard time seeing how people will stop using it until the field changes. Maybe in 10 years it will the the MySpace of the sitcom era, but right now it's still growing. That growth is giving it carte blanche to manipulate the users as it sees fit. Regulation might impact it, but it's still a bit of a Goliath.
  Compared to 2023, YouTube’s user base has grown by 20 million this year, representing a 0.74% increase. From Global media insights
  Also the active user base is 2.7 billion people in 2024 from the same source above.
  The alternatives are out there, but just not in the same league.
- I see we're pretending the government doesn't have regulatory power today

The elites don't want you to know but "[y]ou may be able to get Invidious working on residential IP addresses (like at home)"
Following their guide gives a local Invidious client, don't forget to 1) copy their production compose file instead of using the one on git and 2) change "hmac_key"... from my experience setting up cron (crontab -e) to restart the docker container once per day keeps the Invidious docker healthy
Edit: here are some alternatives for popular Google services. Not in anyway related to the above (smirk
Google itself: SearXNG (try searx.be first), one of the easiest services to self-host
Gmail/calendar: a lot of people seem to swear by one of Proton Mail, Tutanota or Mailbox.org. Self-hosting is possible but challenging
Google Drive: You mean Nextcloud?
Google maps: Organic Maps is actually getting pretty good now
Google Chrome: at the very least there is Chromium... obviously there is Firefox and Firefox forks (such as Librewolf), as well as other smaller browsers
Google Play: F-Droid hosts a lot of FOSS stuff, and there are alternative ways to access Play (such as Aurora Store)
Android: a bit more difficult... but there is LineageOS, GrapheneOS, and similar stuff
- If you do this, I would be fully prepared to lose access to all your Google services along with anyone else who may use Google services on the same IP. Gmail, Play store, Chrome, etc, etc can easily be wiped out with a ban from Google and this can seriously fuck people's day up if they've used Gmail and have 2FA setup on any external account.
  
  I guess I forgot to take that into consideration... I'm not worried about Google banning my IP since I essentially don't use any Google services at all and my home IP is hidden behind a wireguard tunnel, but yes that is a valid concern
  But I mean someone can just spin it up on their home network so... No way 192.168.0.1:3000 can get someone into trouble right
  
  Cory wrote about this in his essay, "Unpersoned". I've been using gmail as a spam catcher for all the sleazy sites you need to register with, but didn't realize how I've made a trap for myself when, for example, my prescriptions need 2 factor authorization via my gmail. This is going to be a hard one to detangle.
- At least until they start blacklisting IPs using Invidious.
  
  One of the positives of nat

You can block YouTube ads simply by connecting to an Albanian VPN server.
- This comment changed my life. Thanks.
- Why does that work?
  
  nobody wants to advertise in albania lmao
  
  Ads on streaming media are against the law works for twitch, too
- Same thing with Syria, Ukraine, Russia ...

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.
This might explain why mine has been reliable even though it hasn't been updated in months. I guess add me to the list of confirmations that it works on residential connections.

newpiped and freetube will continue to work but piped is also blocked as well
- Doesn’t freetube use invidious api?
  
  It also has a local API
  
  I can use invidious, but also works without it. Unless Google decides to mess with that too. Was broken for a few days like a month ago or smth
  
  It directly pulls Videos from Google servers unlike Invidious U can use Invidious on it but I doubt it works so well
  
  idk

For those who are want something similar to invidious, you can try youtube-local (not my project, I am just a user). It is a minimal python youtube client, and functions similar to other frontends, but runs locally. You lose some amount of privacy (youtube still has a general idea of who is watching with IPs), but it is not very exact, and there is an option to use tor to get the content. You can also enable sponsorblock, or hide yt-shorts.

Sad to hear. Newpipe is still working fine (as of a couple minutes ago) if that helps. That's through a residential IP. I will try yt-dlp from a data center IP when I get a chance. I hope they haven't blocked that.

For Android users, I highly recommend NewPipe as a YouTube client
- Revanced is also very nice if you prefer the regular YouTube layout and experience
- Or Tubular, which is an up to date fork with Sponsorblock support as well
- I use newpipe and freetube for my Andriod and PC respectively.

Self hosted option is a docker image. Probably not difficult to set up.

Didn't Odysee recently removed ads? Anyway, I think I'll start watching videos on Odysee and peertube, via RSS feeds. At least from youtubers that upload there.

If you have the resources, host your own to help and spread the load across public instances.
- They said:
  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.
  and I imagine that most people that host something like this do so using a VPS. Homelabs tend to be the minority use case.
  
  Plus, some ISPs might frown upon the increase in traffic when hosting a public service.
  I hate my ISP.

So if Google can ban our IP if caught using this, could you not use some type of dynamic IP mechanism every time they ban the IP?
- Probably would be a good idea, I'm guessing this type of thing could be problematic for google if the IP bans started stacking up, probably also if they can't just look up what the site is using and banning it manually, which let's be fair and not give them too much credit, is exactly what they've been doing. They look up that some invidious or downloader site is hosted on some IP address and block it manually, or blocking its whole range. Something that doesn't cause many headaches for others outside of those services but would cause a lot of problems if those sites were run with reverse-proxying to dynamic IPs which caused YouTube blocks for legitimate users, including in public places.

I would suggest the devs to be able to create instances from within tor. It would be slow, but impossible to block. Or from any other network that don’t rely on single IP access to YouTube . Or, make a mesh of collaborative home instances. Google can’t block millions of home IPs. Or use any mesh collaborative network capable of it.
- TOR exit node IP addresses are well-known. If YouTube wants to, they can just block the TOR network.
  
  Good question why they didn’t already or if they did it already
- Piped extractor already did this by implementing ipv6 rotator
  
  Is it possible to add it by invidious ?

I wonder if some kind of mesh might work. Maybe like a secret Santa type deal. By that I mean everyone who connects, gets a randomised, anonymous partner or partners. Everyone in the swarm streams for each other.

Oh that's why no videos would load.
Damn it

I've also ran into some issues simply accessing youtube through my vpn, but that's been going on for a while.
- Login to prove you are not a bot!

theoretically, they could switch the player to use a nocookie embed.

Wow all this bullying is really convincing me to go back to their shitty platform.
If i can’t access my fav creators anymore itl just motivate me to do sm productive, like building web3
- Haven't you heard? web3 is going great so far!
  
  Oh no, the execution and information thus far has been horrible. You are alluding to blockchain are you? When i look at the website you post i see absolutely nothing that i even recognize as web3 its all cryptostuff.
  I don’t get why everybody is so hell-bend on blockchain based internet (sure its decentralized but come on, we're creative enough to do better). Its like people don’t get the point of “user owned” and are expecting companies to build a better internet for them without serving their own interests.
  No, we are going to need to do this ourselves, self host our own data and services, open source everything.
  Lemmy and the fediverse are the closest i have seen to being proto web 3 in spirit and there are also still far from perfect.
  I have read the "What is web3" from that site and could not disagree on the definition more. I would not be suprised if both the blockchain cults and this website are part of the propaganda machine that is stopping a free internet from happening.
  My web3 is aligned much more with this: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/user-liberation-watch-and-share-our-new-video
- I don’t judge people who give in to the oppressor. Life is hard and you have to pick your battles, more important stuff then blocking ads for “normal” people.
  For me its largely a disability/accessibility thing. The whole site is not usable.
  Its not that i want to die on this hill its that corporate bullshit is measurably detrimental to my health. My hill is the only one i can exist on.

People can always just stop using YouTube. It’s getting laughable the level of Stockholm syndrome-like addiction people have for that shit service.
- As someone who does a lot of DIY what are my options? I can't learn from reading and have nobody to show me how in person. Other platforms are so incredibly limited I can't ever find any content helping me learn something. What other platform is seeking to ACTUALLY compete with YouTube by offering fair compensation and exposure to the masses? It's so incredibly expensive to try that nobody is.
  
  I'd you have android, I recommended newpipe or one of it's fork like tubular. Or Seal or it's fork Ytdlnis.
  There are several front ends for yt-dlp on Mac and Windows as well.
  
  Pay tor youtube or watch the ads.
  
  Don’t know what to tell you. I’m Simply saying that I personally refuse to support any product that I would actively complain about online in social media posts. And if I’m willing to yell at people online about how shitty something is- yet continue to not only use it- but contribute to the financial success of said company-
  I’d have to admit that I was a hypocrite.
  Because “there is no other option for me to watch a video” isn’t a good reason to support a platform that treats its content creators like utter garbage, and alienates its user base seemingly daily.
- I don't really think Stockholm syndrome applies here. I don't watch YouTube out of some irrational bond with the platform. I watch YouTube because it's literally the only place the creators I watch upload. I would absolutely follow the creators I watch to whatever platform the content is available on. Until then, I'm stuck with YouTube and ad blocking extensions.
  
  I’m not saying it’s exactly the same. But there are definitely people that whine all day and night about it, and then go pacify themselves by watching even more YouTube videos.
  If I hate something as much as people seem to hate YouTube, I can easily stop using it. But then again, I have enough strength of conviction to do so. I’m certainly not going to financially support them by patronizing their service. And this futile attempt to circumvent their add service was is only making them more clever about blocking people from doing so.
  YouTube will always win this.
  Period. End of story.
  The only way to beat them is to not play. I guarantee you if the lose 50% of their viewers. They’ll change their tune.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  There doesn’t need to be direct competition. Just stop watching YouTube. If someone cannot do that- they have an addiction, and ads are not their biggest problem.
- I pay for Nebula and, although there's a lot to watch there, skimming through the boring stuff is horrible.
  
  Same. I mostly watch a handful of channels:
  various TLDR channels
  Morning Brew - not a fan of the hosts, so I'll catch maybe one/week
  LegalEagle - anything not about celebs
  the Friday Checkout
  NotJustBikes and other city infra-related channels - they don't post often though
  RealLifeLore
  Wendover/HalfAsInteresting - the host annoys me a bit, but the content is usually pretty good
  There's a ton of nonsense there that I don't like, but now that I found a set of channels I do like, I mostly just look in the "library" tab so I don't have to see the other crap.
  
  It’s good to see alternatives. I am not at the point where I need to see online videos badly enough that I’d pay for it- but it’s good to know that it exists.
- That's a fair point. There's a million things you could do, and watching videos on YT is just one of them. Watching videos online has become a large part of peoples lives. Surely it has a lot to offer, but we should probably not forget it also replaces a lot of things, things we would spent are time on otherwise, if we didn't have YT as an easy time-drain, and those other things are presumably equally rewarding or more so.
  
  Youtube isn't just a thing people use to waste time, but a source of educational content. That actually matters, and there isn't a good alternative to much of it.
  That being said, I agree that people could at least drop it (or reduce their usage) if they are just using it as a time waster.

People should learn to live without YT, instead of making an existential drama about it (about its ads, really).
- This is the way. Let those content creators sucking up your time be the background noise they were always meant to be.

318 comments