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Show HN: Firefox add-on to open YouTube videos in alternative front ends

333 points| d3vr | 2 years ago |github.com

YouTube started blocking me because I use an adblocker. So I made this simple Firefox Add-On (haven't made it cross-browser yet, contributions welcome!) to open videos in alternative front-ends (piped.video by default).

Default keybinding: Alt+J to reopen current page in the configured frontend.

Shift+Click to open any video in a new tab in the configured frontend.

You can change the default frontend to something else if you like.

129 comments

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ryandrake|2 years ago

It would be nice if browsers were able to get around all these kinds of shenanigans directly, instead of having to always reach for extensions and addons and endlessly participate in this cat and mouse game. After all, the browser is supposed to be the user's agent. Its job is to do what the user wants and fetch the content that the user asks for.

Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn and allowed the browsers to become agents of the web developers instead, gatekeeping on behalf of web sites, rather than serving the user's interests.

My ideal browser would load up a site like YouTube, and, knowing my already-configured preference for ad-free, minimalist layout, would present it as a Craigslist-style list of links with thumbnails, ignoring the mess of JS and CSS that the site's developer futilely sends.

atleta|2 years ago

Lookig at it source (the page downloaded when you open a YT link pointing to a video), it's almost certain that YT doesn't load without JS. It's not an html page with some extra functionality implemented in JS, it's a web app that builds the web page you see from JS.

So firefox can't do much about it without actively trying to circumvent YT and YT specifically.

I don't think browsers made the turn you mention. It's more like browsers became more and more capable and web developers made use of it. Sometimes it's annoying because most websites are not websites anymore but apps (GUIs) that run in the browser and some of the web sites/apps people use could never work without it. Sure, we could all deploy those apps onto our machines (or have them deploy automatically in a sandbox) and there were actually technologies that did just that (think java web start or whatever the name ended up being) but they lost to what we have now: running these apps in the browser.

Also, you can't have an ad-free experience if the price of using a service is that the ad is delivered to you. On YT you can buy a subscription and you'll see no ads. But sure, most sites don't offer this.

BiteCode_dev|2 years ago

Now that DRM are part of the web standards, and TPM are generalized, it's game over.

I predict youtube will escalate this way:

- Pump up aggressive anti ad block measures.

- It will fail, so they will enforce DRM so that they have control.

- It will not be enough, so they will ask to only serve DRM to "trusted browsers".

- And it will not suffice, so the trusted browser will have to run on a trusted OS checked by hardware.

That will work since almost nobody will take the risk to jailbreak their expensive device.

And we will all have lost.

petree|2 years ago

You can use NoScript to disable JS and see how well that works.

But more to the point, yes, a browser is a client, but without the economic incentive of either ads or direct monetization from users, many sites, YouTube included, would simply not work. Storage and bandwith costs money. Unless we decided to somehow fund all of this through some sort of additional tax through the ISPs or governments, ads or subscriptions are a necessary evil.

drdaeman|2 years ago

> Somewhere along the path, we've made a terrible turn

It was a variation of Eternal September that caused it. ;)

The majority of users became non-technical, so the focus had shifted as browser vendors needed to cater to different audiences.

pmontra|2 years ago

How could that work, given that a web site can change its working every day? Each site can have its passionated circumvention developer that maintains an extension like this. Is it reasonable to expect that each browser can do the same for each website? And is it reasonable to expect it for Google's Chrome?

anon_cow1111|2 years ago

I don't think firefox could reasonably do this, just because a significant part of their funding comes directly from google.

And maybe more relevant, having this be default behavior would just cause the cat-and-mouse to get worse, when the majority of users are now blocking it with no effort, and the bean-counters notice the ad impression numbers suddenly dropping.

tianqi|2 years ago

I'm not sure you can still "do what you want" because without ads Youtube would not exist.

butz|2 years ago

What you just described is "User agent stylesheet" and in theory you could build your own styles for any website which your browser will prefer.

RockRobotRock|2 years ago

Go ahead, fork Firefox with extensions pre-installed that disable JS and default settings that disable CSS. See if your idealistic world works in reality. :)

kzrdude|2 years ago

It's a lot better if the user-agent is extensible. For one thing, so that users can customize it. But also so that it will not be summarily blocked by websites and networks.

cyanydeez|2 years ago

Most of these services just don't exist in that timeline.

pchangr|2 years ago

DuckDuckGo browser does this by default

paulryanrogers|2 years ago

My ideal getaway car would include an automated drone which flies into the store to exfiltrate the codes from the prepaid cards, and present them as credits in my phone, ignoring the mess of walking inside, paying, and typing into my phone that the retailer futilely demands.

SushiHippie|2 years ago

As others mentioned: https://libredirect.github.io/ It redirects so many pages to their privacy friendly frontends. Can't use the internet anymore without this extension.

kiliankoe|2 years ago

It's especially helpful for medium posts imho. The alternatives load several orders of magnitude faster.

marttt|2 years ago

For a few years, I've been using the Redirector add-on [1] to redirect Yotube URLs to various Invidious instances. No ads, and easy to tailor the visual experience to your needs.

Here's my Redirector rule:

  Youtube
  Redirect: https://www.youtube.com/*
  to: https://invidious.protokolla.fi/$1
  Hint: Youtube > Invidious instance redirection
  Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hipBryeDc0E → https://invidious.protokolla.fi/watch?v=hipBryeDc0E
  Applies to: Main window (address bar)
As a parenting control trick, I also use Redirector to direct some of the more immersive gaming sites to about:blank for our 10yo son. Definitely proud of that hack, ha.

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/

redder23|2 years ago

The issue is that Invidious only supports 720p

loveparade|2 years ago

I don't care as much about the privacy as I care about not messing up my Youtube recommendations. Any time I accidentally click on or hover over some BS video my front page is full of clickbait spam and I need to manually clean up my watch history.

I guess (?) it works for monetization, but the UX of YouTube and their pushing of clickbait content has become horrible over the past few years. I just wish they stopped trying to be "smart" about what I want to watch. I'm already paying for Premium, just give me an option to make Youtube stupid.

zeta0134|2 years ago

I've long since blocked the recommendation content. No sidebar, no end-of-video overlay, no homepage content at all. Just a search box, thanks. (And even that's gotten functionally useless over the years; external search engines are much better at finding that one video I remember seeing but can't seem to convince YT proper to actually show me.)

Then again, I curate my subscriptions. Nobody I follow posts more than once every couple of weeks or so. Most days my subscription page looks the same as it did yesterday, so when I do have a new video to watch it's more like a rare treat.

wildrhythms|2 years ago

Certain 'categories' of Youtube videos is like dropping a nuclear bomb in your suggestions. Even accidentally clicking on it and immediately going back will poison the well. I have to go into my watch history and delete, and then spend days clicking 'three dots > Not interested' on the horrific thumbnails until Youtube stops recommending that category. I call it tending the garden.

Krssst|2 years ago

You can disable autoplay of videos on hovering in your YouTube settings. I disabled it and hovered videos stopped being added to my watch history.

https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/130441859/how-to-d...

Edit: not sure if the above page is up-to-date. On my side the setting is in "Settings - Playback and performance - Integrated playback" (setting name could be different, my interface is not in English so I translated the entry names)

pbhjpbhj|2 years ago

The algorithm just seems really blunt. You like a video on one category and then your entire feed becomes that category, it's not mixed into the other 100 categories of video you've liked.

Like you said, I'm sure this works for engagement, but it's pretty evil. I know they don't care about being evil anymore; but it's still annoying.

d3vr|2 years ago

Seems like there's a bit of confusion about what the add-on does exactly. It doesn't automatically redirect all YouTube pages you open.

This however gives you the choice to open the pages you want in an alternative frontend.

My use case is basically I browse the YT homepage and Shift+click the videos I want to watch. Or if someone shares a link to a video, I access that page and Alt+J to redirect to the alternative frontend.

Cilvic|2 years ago

Thanks for explaining, but what is an alternative frontend in this case?

aftergibson|2 years ago

What does this do differently to Privacy Redirect? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/privacy-redir...

ericra|2 years ago

Well, for one, the addon you linked has not been updated for over 2 years. This doesn't speak to the substance of your question really, but ad-blocking is a whack-a-mole game. Resources need to be constantly updated to keep up with companies' efforts to thwart them.

It's always nice to see new efforts in this space.

politelemon|2 years ago

On Android you can try NewPipe which serves as an alternate front end.

jszymborski|2 years ago

Can anyone recommend a NewPipe style desktop app?

gpgn|2 years ago

I saw the popup just once, I updated most of the filters used by uBlockOrigin and I haven't seen it since.

ksherlock|2 years ago

I made myself a bookmarklet last week to open the current URL with invidious. Not because of the adblocker prejudice (although there were reports, it hadn't hit me yet) but because YouTube was increasingly unable or unwilling to play videos.

As a side benefit, invidious can block comments and related videos so it's a better experience.

javascript:window.location=%22https://[your favorite invidious implementation]/watch%22+document.location.search

Krasnol|2 years ago

I'm using ublock Origin and have never seen any of those.

For those with ubO who still see them, cleaning the cache and updating the filters within ubO seems to help.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

d3vr|2 years ago

I am using ubO too, I just purged the cache and updated the filters, still experiencing the same issue. Maybe YT is still testing this and haven't rolled out the blocking on everyone just yet?

Jach|2 years ago

I've yet to encounter these also. I've assumed it's just been luck with the A/B testing.. But perhaps it could also be that I've never allowed doubleclick.net scripts to run in NoScript, or that my ublock-origin setup has taken care of itself, or that because I've actually participated in youtube's other non-premium monetization schemes (channel memberships) from which they take a 30% cut and they want to upset somewhat paying users last.

Shekelphile|2 years ago

Doesn’t libredirect already do this? Though I don’t use it for YouTube so I can’t say for sure

KennyBlanken|2 years ago

While we're on the subject of youtube annoyances: are there any extensions that disable "ambient mode?"

This infuriating feature provides nothing useful and absolutely murders Apple Silicon GPUs, draining the battery very, very quickly.

d3vr|2 years ago

I remember there was a toggle in the player settings to disable Ambient Mode, have they removed that option ?

RockRobotRock|2 years ago

I have never seen it turn itself back on after disabling it once.

amir734jj|2 years ago

I use YouTube to watch videos of news uploaded on their YouTube channel like CNN and NBC and etc, I'm wondering what's the YouTube alternative for me?

karaterobot|2 years ago

I just use the FreeTube desktop client, because even if you get around the anti ad-blocking stuff on YT, you're still left with the increasingly terrible UX. No doubt they'll block FreeTube and Invidious sooner or later, but until then I don't even need to worry about the Youtube website at all.

jraph|2 years ago

I've been using Privacy Redirect and some of the other generalist redirector extension with quite some success. Privacy redirect also redirects twitter to nitter, reddit to libreddit or old.reddit, Google Maps to openstreetmap and other stuff. Redirects can be enabled/disabled to ones taste. That's quite neat.

Combined with my private invidious instance so I can subscribe to channels without this data leaving computers I control.

May your own extension succeed too. I guess building it and releasing it are already two successes on their own.

kingTug|2 years ago

Are nitter instances still working? I was under the impression that project died when Elon curtailed api access.

d3vr|2 years ago

Thanks for sharing your setup, might look into that. In my case, the reason I decided to create the extension is that I didn't want to completely leave YT per se, but rather use the recommendations and browse the homepage and actually watch what I want on an alternative frontend.

saxonww|2 years ago

Yeah it's a shame these aren't available for Firefox Mobile. At least one of the redirect plugins would be nice.

gear54rus|2 years ago

While we're on the topic of unfucking youtube, do you know how I can turn shorts crappy player without controls into something that I can rewind? Sound volume controls would be nice too.