I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble here, but why hasn’t anyone tried to steal youtube’s content and make it available to non-paying users (read: users who refuse to partake in surveillance capitalism).

In the old days we had the piratebay and many others that basically refused to respect “property rights”. YouTube has a massive advantage for coercing people into giving their personal data; you can live your whole life without seeking Facebook’s Meta’s content, but anyone will have to watch a youtube video at some point, and they are very effective at paywalling their content. Front ends still provide your IP address to YouTube which then blocks you if you have any decent proxy/VPN.

In the case of YouTube it is reasonable and acceptable to steal their content and even sell it forward, as the seller is not profiting off the content but off the privacy service it would be providing.

The structural functionalism school of sociology sees crime as necessary for evolution and change in society, but really we can skip the rigorous academic reasoning: this is pretty obvious for most of us who can trace enough of our ancestry to a commercial (and lawful) transaction.

  • theham@lemmy.wtf
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 hours ago

    🤣 why is this considered not safe for work. Work is not safe for you.

  • Dessalines@lemmy.mlM
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 day ago

    My plan for this: https://lemmy.ml/c/torrenttube

    It essentially is just a script that involves creating torrents from youtube videos, using yt-dlp, and optionally posting them to that community. (People should also upload those torrents to other platforms).

    I’m not good at popularizing things tho, and not sure what to do to get more people to use it.

  • apparia@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    2 days ago

    they are very effective at paywalling their content

    I feel like I’m missing something – I don’t really watch a whole lot of YouTube, or follow specific channels – but I have virtually never had an issue using Invidious and/or yt-dlp, even with a VPN. When I occasionally hit a 403, rotating VPN servers is almost always enough to bypass it.

    If that’s “stealing” it’s the first I’m hearing about it.

  • kungen@feddit.nu
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    2 days ago

    It’d be a very difficult endeavour, for the same reasons why there aren’t that many popular alternatives: YouTube has so many videos. Even just mirroring the videos from the top-100 channels would be extremely expensive. Google has a mind-blowing amount of storage space.

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    2 days ago

    Because someone has to pay for the storage and bandwidth, which is hugely expensive. To fund it they’d have to charge subscriptions or run ads, same as Google.

    • Ashenlux@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      Exactly. Everyone gets mad about being asked to pay, but servers and employees are not free. That money need to come from somewhere. And we all know the saying, “If you aren’t paying for it, you’re the product.” A subscription is probably the most ethical way to fund a service like YouTube aside from a “pay what you want” system which runs the risk of not bringing in enough to to cover costs.

  • BucketBong@p.hobo.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    2 days ago

    Even if you started doing this 5 years ago, there would be absolutely no way you could do this, there’s a ridiculous amount of content being uploaded.

          • DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 day ago

            I just thought it was pretty rich complaining about people using pirate speech when talking about piracy while in your previous post you took offence that not everyone likes the same games as you.

            We don’t have the same preferences and complaining about things other people do, calling it cringe, is not very productive. You can choose to ignore it and not try to dictate what other people should do or like. Just like no one can tell you what to play and enjoy or not.

            • kuiskaaja@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              1 day ago

              this is what it was a reply to lol.

              i was actually defending someone liking certain types of games

              if youre going to dig for shit in someones comment history, please check the context of the comment before weaponizing it

              ty

              • DaTingGoBrrr@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                1 day ago

                That is exactly my point. You have double standards.

                God forbid someone wants to express themselves differently than you

                • kuiskaaja@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  ·
                  1 day ago

                  i don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

                  the guy i replied to was shitting on the OP for liking normie games and i came to the OP’s defense

                  edit: oh yeah i see what you mean now. i don’t actually like those games, i felt that it’s fine to play whatever u want.

                  playing games in your private time and minding your own business is different to acting cringe on a public forum.

  • solidheron@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    My first thought is we need open source recommendations algorithms. Just something that can run locally. That’s only because there’s so much content.

    Second thought is make an extension that basically intercepts your click so if you’re on YouTube and a torrent exists then you watch the torrent with an option to start a torrent

  • coolasbreeze@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    Not exactly sure what the end goal is. To get YouTube content but not pay? YouTube is free at the point of use. There are great adblockers like ublock Origin and SponsorBlock that can be used on mobile (android) devices and web browsers to rid yourself of ads.

    There are resources available to download YouTube videos and save a ‘local copy’ like yt-dl. This is only practical for selected videos. For education purposes of course.

    The main issue is that there is a huge volume of YouTube content though. Like 8 hours per second. That becomes prohibitively expensive and impractical.

    Not that I am suggesting you use these tools :)

    There are alternatives like peer tube that is decentralised, some leftist creaters are on meanstv.

    EDIT: spelling and clarifying