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

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.

          • FIST_FILLET@lemmy.ml
            131·
            3 months ago

            watching less youtube was one of my resolutions this year, it’s not going very well. remind me to skip the trash and watch more movies / read more books instead

            • psychOdelic@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              9·
              3 months ago

              i had that same resolution last year, and in the end youtube drove me away from YouTube, I watch about 1 video every two months but even that is usually just for nostalgic reasons. I have no desire to watch YouTube anymore, even though I used to watch at least 5 hours a day. All that because of their anti consumer actions.

        • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
          121·
          3 months ago

          Not watching so many videos, I guess. Maybe get a Nebula subscription (ersonally, I watch a lot of video essays).

        • Protoman64@lemmy.today
          6·
          3 months ago

          “And move to what?”

          To having a better life.

          I like YouTube as much as the guy next to me, but at this point we have become to Dependant to it. Instead of watching quality content like movies, series, documentaries or animation; we end watching someone talking about that on YouTube. When we find nothing good on the platform we end watching something we don’t care about just to have something to watch or having as background noise. Some people can’t even enjoy a meal or sleep without YouTube. At this point YouTube is more numbing the TV ever was.

          I hate what they are doing, trying to block Invidious, Newpipe and the ability to watch the platform without ads. But at the end it’ll be the best for all of us except for YouTube.

          Eventually YouTube will die and a new shitty monopoly will step in.

    • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
      20·
      3 months ago

      Freetube still works, as well. AFAIK, they’re basically rate-limiting the instances, so alternative clients that connect directly to youtube, as well as small invidious instances are good.

  • net00@lemm.eeEnglish
    54·
    3 months ago

    Title is kinda misleading. The issue only affects public instances, and it has been an ongoing problem since many months ago. Basically the moment youtube detects lots of traffic from one IP it gets blocked, and need sign-in.

    It seems this block just became harder to work around, and they started blocking all IPs from hosting providers, but I’m sure a solution will be found eventually.

    If you have a spare laptop/PC/raspberry pi you can host your own invidious in your home. It won’t get blocked, it will be much faster, and you can use options that are usually disabled on public instances (the API and DASH quality).

    Then you can add something like tailscale/twingate into the mix to access it outside your home. Self hosted wireguard can also work if your ISP gives you a static IP or you setup a DDNS service. I personally use twingate because I don’t like opening any port in my router.

    • ironsoap@lemmy.oneEnglish
      13·
      3 months ago

      I appreciate the cogent context and solution oriented post.

      I’d also say though that from a privacy standpoint self-hosting invidious is still allowing GeoIP info to be attached to downloaded videos, which is a fingerprint which can be used by data mining. Admittedly rather abstract as in this case the primary point of deplatforming might just be to de-ad, or give better video control, etc, and not obfuscate for privacy sake.

      As I said though great points!

      • Pup Biru@aussie.zoneEnglish
        4·
        3 months ago

        i feel like this makes it on par with eg newpipe right? since newpipe doesn’t have a server, so all requests are direct to youtube

        people seem to be okay with the fingerprint trade-off… and a vpn (as in, an external vpn that invidious routes all traffic through) would help with that

        • ironsoap@lemmy.oneEnglish
          4·
          3 months ago

          Exactly true in the newpipe comparison. Same with YT-dlp variants.

          I’m an always on VPN sort of guy, but most are not. So yes the fingerprint tradeoff is one I accept within my ability to deal with inconvenience. Mostly upside at this point with no ads, just sponsors that slip through sponsor block.

          My fingerprint it’s perfect, but I know it’s working as I can see other peoples feeds are more adaptive and directed then whatever I get. I know I have a hole when I see something spammy too.

          https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ always worth a check.

  • foremanguy@lemmy.ml
    29·
    3 months ago

    Need to use alternatives to YouTube and move the creators to, YouTube is shitting on our face day after day, and the problem is that we can’t hide ourselves to access them since they are blocking Tor and datacenters adresses… Good luck!

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
    294·
    3 months ago

    Not going to be a popular opinion but that doesn’t surprise me at all, almost certainly breaks their tos.

    I think people should focus more on stuff like peertube that doesn’t just piggyback off another service against said service provider’s wishes

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
        131·
        3 months ago

        Which at the end of the day is your choice, as much as it’s theirs not to use foss tools like mastodon and peertube

      • toastal@lemmy.ml
        13·
        3 months ago

        Like wanting to donate but they only offer proprietary, big corpo middlemen options like Patreon or Paypal or Microsoft GitHub Sponsors where they scrape off the top without adding any value.

          • aStonedSanta@lemm.ee
            1·
            3 months ago

            That won’t help the content creator as much with their taxes is my assumption as to why we don’t see it often. Whereas it’s probably a lot easier to report their revenue from patreon.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      7·
      3 months ago

      Sure, I agree, but at the end of the day it’s useful to be able to search and watch YouTube videos so long as it’s a popular platform because it still has by far the bulk of topics covered.

      • flashgnash@lemm.ee
        41·
        3 months ago

        You can do that through their own interface though, there are browser extensions to do all the things invidious did anyway

        Not like going to the website will cause your computer to blow up or something, if privacy is the concern there are plenty of ways to anonymise it

          • flashgnash@lemm.ee
            2·
            3 months ago

            I suppose if you really can’t stand to give them any information at all, don’t want to pay and don’t use ads your only choice is to not use the service

            They provide a pretty good service all things considered and have to pay the bills for their servers somehow

  • whoareu@lemmy.ca
    20·
    3 months ago

    It was expected since it makes sense to cut off users that don’t generate any revenue. YouTube has now became like Instagram or Facebook where you have to make an account to view anything on their platform

    • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
      11·
      3 months ago

      Because they still want to support embedded video you can still watch using apps from your own IP or download using yt-dlp

  • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
    12·
    3 months ago

    The day I can no longer download videos from YouTube will be the day I take a step back from it altogether…

    • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
      8·
      3 months ago

      yt-dl was “shut down” at one point. That led to vastly more interest and the birth of yt-dlp. I think they learned their lesson.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      5·
      3 months ago

      Never. Even if yt blocks the program from downloading from its site, it can still pull from like 10,000 other sites. I doubt google could do anything to actually stop the software from being distributed. We all know how that goes.

      It is a very useful piece of software. I’ve never used it to actually download a youtube video.

    • sovietknuckles[they]@lemmy.ml
      5·
      3 months ago

      yt-dlp now suffers from the same issue that Invidious does: uncircumventable rate-limiting based on IP address.

      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.

      Same for yt-dlp, currently: It works from your residential IP address, but not a datacenter IP address like a VPN.

      If you get Sign in to confirm that you’re not a bot or This helps protect our community. in yt-dlp, do not actually try to sign in, because that will get your account banned (see yt-dlp/yt-dlp#10128).

      So once a solution is found for Invidious, yt-dlp will be able use it too, and vice versa.

  • Luffy879@lemmy.ml
    2·
    3 months ago

    Well, I used invidious the time this post was coming out and I only had a Problem with yewtu.be, the one I host works perfectly to this day