I love the idea of a privacy-focused fronend for YouTube, but every time I visit a piped link, it just spins forever. Both on my Linux desktop and my Android phone.

Maybe I’m doing something wrong?

Here is the latest one I tried and failed to load.

  • @[email protected]
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    388 months ago

    Yeah it literally never works. Cool idea but it’s so bad when I see one of those links I just ignore it because they literally never work

  • Hildegarde
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    198 months ago

    That one loaded fine for me.

    Temporary outages are likely the result of the server being unable to handle the load. If youtube changed their system it would take a while for a fix.

    Piped is web software anyone can host. Like Lemmy, everyone piles into the biggest instance with most memorable / searchale name, thus overloading it.

    https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances

    Try another instance and see if it solves the issue.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 months ago

    It’s a cat and mouse game with Google. Sometimes Piped works, other times it loads only the first minute of the video before hanging forever, and sometimes it doesn’t load at all. Often YouTube makes an updates that breaks it altogether until someone fixes it.

    I’ve had the most luck with NewPipe but unfortunately it’s only a mobile app, not a website. Works great though.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          8 months ago

          I’m afraid if it’s not a) FOSS and b) on F-Droid, I’m not interested. Grayjay appears not to qualify on either front.

          Edit: Oh damn. Louis Rossmann made Grayjay. Now I’m a little disappointed in Louis Rossmann.

          • @[email protected]
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            28 months ago

            Also, check the FUTO About page

            https://futo.org/what-is-futo/

            Check their ‘Our Three Pledges’, particularly the third one regarding open source…

            Quoted from their site, pledge #3

            “We will always be transparently devoted to making delightful software. All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so. No effort will ever be taken to hide from the people what their computers are doing, to limit how they use them, or to modify their behavior through their software.”

            • @[email protected]OP
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              38 months ago

              All FUTO-funded projects are expected to be open-source or develop a plan to eventually become so.

              Huh. Well, if it even lands in F-Droid, maybe I’ll give it a try.

              • @[email protected]
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                18 months ago

                The app is so relatively new that initially it wasn’t even on any of the app stores, only straight from their site. But now it’s also on Google Play and APKPure, possibly other alternative app stores as well. Give it some time, I’m pretty sure F-Droid is on their radar as well sooner or later.

                The app is still labeled as being Under Construction, but so far I’m rather pleased with it and would recommend giving it a try.

            • @[email protected]OP
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              38 months ago

              I saw that. It’s not FOSS, though if that’s what you’re implying.

              Just reading over the license, it allows neither making modifications to the source nor commercial use. Allowing both of those would be necessary for it to qualify as either Free Software or Open Source. (And I’m not sure those are the only things in the license preventing it from qualifying as FOSS.)

              Source available ≠ FOSS. And Grayjay isn’t FOSS even if its source can be perused.

              • @[email protected]
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                18 months ago

                TBH I don’t really care that much as long as the source is available. Some talented dev can fork it if the project goes sideways. I’d like a webapp/desktop app too

                • @[email protected]OP
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                  28 months ago

                  Some talented dev can fork it

                  Not without infringing copyright. At least not the way the license is written now.

              • @[email protected]
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                -18 months ago

                They don’t give a flying crap if you modify the source and compile it privately for yourself, they just don’t want people or companies making profit from their works or distributing said modifications without their approval.

                • @[email protected]OP
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                  28 months ago

                  They don’t give a flying crap if you modify the source and compile it privately for yourself

                  Then why do they leave permission to do so out of their license? (So far, at least.)

                  they just don’t want people or companies making profit from their works or distributing said modifications without their approval.

                  That’s called “proprietary.”

  • @[email protected]
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    78 months ago

    I run my own Piped server, works great and have a few friends that use it exclusively now because the YT algo was getting too be too much for them, besides the ads.

    I think the public ones are just hammered too hard.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍
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    8 months ago

    No, I gave up on linking via Piped. At this point I figure people willing to go to the trouble of using alternative frontends already have a favorite (that’s probably not piped) and the Privacy Redirect extension and are good to just get the yt link.

  • @[email protected]
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    58 months ago

    Gotta swap instances pretty frequently with piped in my experience. Or just find a good invidious instance, is what i ended up doing.

    • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏
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      38 months ago

      Pretty much my experience when using piped on my desktop, quick to resolve so not too much of an issue.

      On the other side of things, my partner got tired of that and now uses FreeTube (which falls back to Invidious on failure IIRC)

  • @[email protected]
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    38 months ago

    Worked on my end. I also regularly use Yattee on my iPhone without issue.

    These services will get better, just give them some time.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      28 months ago

      I’m not looking to self host anything or switch frontends. I just wish I could watch videos when people post Piped links without the extra hassle of navigating Piped’s interface enough to get the raw Youtube url. I suppose if there’s a public Invidious instance that actually works and everybody on Lemmy posting links to Piped switches to that public Invidious instance, that would wolve my issue, but I suspect Invidioue may not actually be any more reliable.

  • @[email protected]
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    28 months ago

    That video loaded fine for me just now. I have had similar issues though when I need to refresh a page once or twice to get it to load/play the video. It’s either hit and miss or maybe an issue when I load the page initially.

  • @[email protected]
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    18 months ago

    Yes, but I have noticed you have to wait for that spin for quite some time. I have not looked at its architecture at all, but it made me assume it was doing some intermediary caching or some such. I wonder if this is the same for videos that have been watched already at your local CDN assuming it is doing something interesting with edge delivery.

    Have just started to check it out, so I’m clueless but it has worked pretty well so far.