Had this question in my mind for a while now, after going through the recent Reddit API drama.

I am a big FOSS advocate, and have moved away from YouTube (but not the contents, lol) because of its invasive tracking practice.

I have been using NewPipe on my phone for a long time now, and I think it’s an excellent piece of work.

I believe I also read somewhere that unlike other third party YouTube Apps, NewPipe doesn’t use YouTube’s API, but instead retrieves data by scraping the website via an Extractor.

Recently I came across LibreTube - which I believe has a slightly different approach. It points to a “Piped API” which acts as an “intermediary” between YouTube and LibreTube ( and I think I also heard that Piped API uses NewPipe Extractor underneath) - I am not hugely tech-savvy, so correct me if I sound weird.

All these said and done - in case YouTube decides to turn rogue one fine morning (like Reddit) - will any of these Apps be impacted?

(And while we are here, can anybody please ELI5 for me the differences between Invidious and Piped?)

Thanks in advance !

  • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    This is kind of besides the question, but a reddit alternative also is on a completely different level than developing an alternative for youtube. it is way easier to replace. You mainly need the userbase.

    With youtube, it’s more complicated. Hosting videos takes vast amounts of storage. And it is pretty commercialized. People want to make money with their content. Which opens another can of worms. You need advertisements, tracking, payments … Legal stuff becomes much more important when handling money etc.