Invidious VS ungoogled-chromium

Youtube seems to be doing some A/B testing with the comment system which has made proxies like Invidious and yt-dlp/Newpipe unable to load comments. There is a patch for Invidious [1] which solves this problem but it is not in master yet. I tested it on my own instance and it does solve the problem.

[1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/pull/4576

BTW, I don't understand the workaround: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/pull/4552/files

Which was taken from here: https://github.com/LuanRT/YouTube.js/pull/624

Could anybody explain it to me?

Use a Youtube proxy like Invidious [1], problem solved and you get to subscribe to channels without telling the Beast about your interests. Add Sponsorblock (which supports Invidious) to get rid of any in-stream advertising which remains and you'll be transported back to those hallowed times of yore when men were men, women were women and advertising was something you found in newspapers. Youtube will try to make this harder just like Xitter is trying to make it harder to use proxies like Nitter [2].

[1] https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

[2] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

Going to drop this here for others who haven't heard of it https://invidious.io/

Now, how do we fix this? YouTube's ad model sucks. Their algorithm sucks. Their front page sucks. They've captured a bunch of creators though so often YouTube is the only place you can find someone.

I want those creators to benefit from me viewing their videos. I want the fact that I view a video and like it to help other people find that video in their recommendations. I want an algorithm that shows me things that are interesting and relevant not one that promotes the spammiest and most ad heavy videos that barely have anything to do with my watch history.

Having an alternative front end is nice but I don't want to rob YouTube of the money they spend on hosting the videos.

So, how do we do this?

Peer to peer fails when there is little interest in something or when most people leech and it sucks for archiving old content.

Hosting it all in one place is super expensive and hard for a small group to manage without turning into YouTube.

Maybe we could find a way for the creators to host their own content and get paid when people view it while being part of a large federated network for easy discoverability?

Please list any projects you know of, I'm sure there are a lot of people here who would be willing to contribute or donate.

Sometimes a half-solution will do, like Invidious or Piped.

[0] https://invidious.io/

[1] https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped

Cromite[0] is the best on Android, it's a privacy-oriented open source patchset on top of Chromium.

Cromite has a desktop build, but it's a bit more experimental than the mobile build, so you can use Ungoogled Chromium[1] instead. Ungoogled is also a privacy-oriented open source patchset on top of Chromium. Check the beta flags to enable some more interesting features like getClientRect anti-fingerprinting measures (unfortunately breaks some React-based sites that go into infinite re-render loop).

Both of these browsers selectively include patches from Brave, but they are community-oriented builds so imo more trustworthy than Brave, which continues to package various shady anti-features and always will because it's backed by a for-profit company.

LibreWolf[2] is the nicest Firefox-based one for desktop, I think. It's pretty hardcore, though, I most only use it to visit mainstream social media sites.

I tried a bunch of the Firefox-based ones on mobile and none of them clicked for me. Cromite is just too slick on Android. Put the address bar at the bottom and off you go. Only downside is no online syncing of tabs and bookmarks, but meh. You can save all open tabs to bookmark bar in one hit then export your bookmarks, send the file through whatever E2EE channel you want to your other device and import then reopen them again.

[0] https://github.com/uazo/cromite

[1] https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

[2] https://librewolf.net/

For those that like Chromium but want to remove any integration with Google, there's Ungoogled Chromium

https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

If you're entirely partial to Chromium browsers, use Ungoogled Chrome https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

what about https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Firefox or Ungoogled Chromium (needs to update uBlock manually) in Incognito window with unchanged vanilla uBlock Origin with lists updated and no other plugins and without YouTube account. Works perfectly. Also FreeTube.

Ungoogled Chromium is a Chromium-based browser with Google services stripped out.

- Project and source: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

- Binaries: https://ungoogled-software.github.io/ungoogled-chromium-bina...

Using these sort of downstream patch set browsers is rarely a good idea. If it has multiple full-time developers from a respected org dedicated to it, then it can be justifiable (Tor Browser, Brave), but take a look at the gaps in time for these two pages:

https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/rel...

https://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/c/ch...

There's often days you're going without security patches. If you want a browser without Google tracking, Firefox is a much better choice.

While these screenshots use Google Chrome, they will also work on all 'Chromium' based web browsers, like Brave, Vivaldi, ungoogled-chromium, etc. Window's Edge is also compatible, though some the button locations are changed.

I would highly recommend the Ungoogled Chromium fork instead: https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium

Entirely volunteer maintained, there is no for-profit entity behind it looking to do crypto referrals or ad swapping or anything like that.