pytube VS PeerTube

Quicker explanation of how Youtube is doing it is at the source code of pytube: https://github.com/tfdahlin/pytube/blob/bb890af3b271a616bbe1...

This is linked from the description of PR 30184 of youtube-dl but @varenc linked to a specific comment (talking about patching Windows builds, AFAICT) which might confuse some people.

I'll even save you the click:

> YouTube's strategy to restrict downloading videos is to send a ciphered version

There are workarounds (detailed very nicely in dirkf’s pull request for youtube-dl):

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/30184

Pasting the content here for convenience:

Since summer 2021, YouTube has started serving media URLs with a query parameter such as …&n=SXiXBH-xzrjeioPN&…. This now appears to be the default behaviour. Unless the value of this parameter is transformed according to an algorithm delivered in the site player JS, the download speed for the URL is throttled to ~50kB/s.

Solutions for this include:

• implementing a more complete JS interpreter, eg based on PR [jsinterp] Actual JS interpreter¹ #11272;

• using an external JS interpreter (PhantomJS, now unmaintained, is used by some extractors);

• spoofing the Android or iOS client to acquire unthrottled links, as successfully implemented in yt-dlp².

This PR takes a different approach derived from the successful solution used in VLC's youtube.lua (also implemented differently in pytube³). The approach relies on the fact that the challenge algorithm is served in a mini-language within the minified player JS and therefore the specific algorithm can be extracted and executed by interpreting the mini-language without actually running the JS itself. [In parallel with this PR, a separate implementation of this approach was added to yt-dlp⁴.]

The implementation of the mini-language interpreter is directly translated from VLC's n_descramble() Lua function⁵. The result sufficiently resembles the original that it should be straightforward to share changes between the two implementations.

――――――

¹ — https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/11272

² — https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/c888ffb95ab0ab4f4cd1...

³ — https://github.com/tfdahlin/pytube/blob/bb890af3b271a616bbe1...

⁴ — https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/commit/404f611f1c4aa516fbc4...

⁵ — https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/blob/4fb284e5af69aa...

PeerTube is a decentralized and federated alternative to YouTube. The goal of PeerTube is not to replace YouTube but to offer a viable alternative using the strength of ActivityPub and P2P protocols.

Being built on ActivityPub means PeerTube is able to be part of a bigger social network, the Fediverse (the Federated Universe). On the other hand, P2P technologies help PeerTube to solve the issue of money, inbound with all streaming platform : With PeerTube, you don't need to have a lot of bandwidth available on your server to host a PeerTube platform because all users (which didn't disable the feature) watching a video on PeerTube will be able to share this same video to other viewers.

If you are curious about PeerTube, I can't recommend you enough to check the official website (https://joinpeertube.org) to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find a platform available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube platform on your own server.

The development of PeerTube is actually sponsored by Framasoft (https://framasoft.org), a french non-for-profit popular educational organization, a group of friends convinced that an emancipating digital world is possible, convinced that it will arise through actual actions on real world and online with and for you!

Framasoft is also involved in the development of Mobilizon, a decentralized and federated alternative to Facebook Events and Meetup.

If you want to contribute to PeerTube, feel free to:

    * report bugs and give your feedback on Github or on our forums (https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/)

If you're looking for YouTube alternatives, you might be interested in PeerTube. PeerTube is to YouTube what Mastodon is to Twitter. (Plus PeerTube and Mastodon use the same federation technology. You can follow PeerTube accounts from inside Mastodon and vice versa.)

Hey! Just a rando here, but I would be interested in hearing your opinion as to where Peertube does well with this wish list and where it needs improvement.

https://joinpeertube.org

https://framablog.org/2023/11/28/peertube-v6-is-out-and-powe...

If you are curious about PeerTube, I can't recommend you enough to check the official website to learn more about the project. If after that you want to try to use PeerTube as a content creator, you can try to find a platform available there to register or host yourself your own PeerTube platform on your own server.

> YouTube (and other mainstream providers) solves user stories. The user story is "I want to find and watch interesting videos" and they nail it.

You miss another user story: IT department wants to self host a video distributing platform on their intranet and users need to embed video in intranet CMS (blogs, wikis, etc.) and they will watch those videos at home, at the office and in between places.

Thinking audience and monetization, basically it's thinking "youtube clone", and that narrows outlooks on what peertube brings to the table.

> The user story for this, judging by their homepage (https://joinpeertube.org), seems to be "I want a boring lecture on how bad Big Tech is"?

    What is PeerTube?

Exactly what you described exists and is called PeerTube.

https://joinpeertube.org

https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube

> Why don't you or someone else try starting one?

https://joinpeertube.org/

There are several instances, but that is not the solution to what the parent comment is pointing out. Videos are being published on YouTube because of network effect; it has become the defacto platform.

There already is an alternative to youtube. Peertube https://joinpeertube.org/

The problem is most content creators are only publishing on YouTube, so that is where you have to go. If you are a content creator please publish on peertube so we have options. If you know a creator, likewise encourage them to publish there.