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Piped: A privacy-friendly YouTube front end which is efficient by design

2021-07-1722:02265230github.com

An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube frontend which is efficient by design. - TeamPiped/Piped

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An alternative YouTube frontend which is efficient by design.

YouTube has an extremely invasive privacy policy which relies on using user data in unethical ways. You give them a lot of data - ranging from ideas, music taste, content, political opinions, and much more than you think.

By using Piped, you can freely watch and listen to content freely without the fear of prying eyes watching everything you are doing.

Features:

WIP

Documentation

The documentation can be found at https://piped-docs.kavin.rocks (accessible via IPNS as well)

Screenshots

Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3

Donations

Donations can be made at 13MoHioctZkC7LDSZSb4m32TDT8xNmei1p (BTC)

Contributions in any other form are also welcomed.

Development Setup

Compiles and hot-reloads for development

You can now make changes and see them as soon you save the file!

Contact

If you would like to contact me personally, you may do so with the following means:

Public Chat Rooms

  • You can join us via Matrix at #piped.
  • You can also join us at the libera.chat IRC network which is bridged to the Matrix room at #piped.

YourKit

YourKit has given an open source license for their profiler, greatly simplifying the profiling of Piped's performance.

YourKit supports open source projects with its full-featured Java Profiler. YourKit, LLC is the creator of YourKit Java Profiler and YourKit .NET Profiler, innovative and intelligent tools for profiling Java and .NET applications.


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emanuelpina

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Comments

  • By Reubend 2021-07-1722:5114 reply

    While I can easily understand people's aversion to tracking and advertisements, I think projects like this are really unsustainable. Storing videos, transcoding them, and then using large amounts of bandwidth to serve them isn't free; it's fair that YT is showing ads to make up for that.

    I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. I think that's a good compromise: either you use it for free with ads, or you pay to remove them.

    • By spiderice 2021-07-1723:215 reply

      I don’t think many people argue it is unfair for YouTube to show ads. They argue it is wrong for them to be tracked aggressively across the web.

      So where is the front end I can use to still give YouTube ad views without being tracked? I’m saying this as a YT premium subscriber.

      • By blondin 2021-07-180:22

        > They argue it is wrong for them to be tracked aggressively across the web.

        sums it up.

        a long time believer of seeing ads here. that way, i don't have to subscribe to bazillion of platforms i tend to visit. but this view started to shift when i started seeing ads from my alma mater's football team everywhere. the "why am i seeing this ad" link told me that "i gave my information to the advertiser".

        of course i did, i went to school there!

      • By lancesells 2021-07-180:071 reply

        Think of how different everything would be if YouTube wasn't a part of Google. They would no doubt have ads but the entire Google universe wouldn't have access to the viewing habits of 2 billion people.

        • By Pako 2021-07-180:183 reply

          It also probably wouldn't exist anymore. last time I heard anything about it YouTube was in the red and only sustained with income from other Google services. (I might be wrong on that, if so please correct me)

          • By IX-103 2021-07-181:22

            I heard that Google was able to get it to break even after a substantial investment to improve efficiency (custom ASICs for transcoding, machine learning models for prioritizing allocation of storage and computing resources).

            I think I agree that it probably wouldn't exist. Not very many companies would invest that much to just to break even.

          • By ExtraE 2021-07-180:21

            Haven’t checked if this is a reputable source, but:

            https://www.tubics.com/blog/youtube-revenue/

          • By Rd6n6 2021-07-194:36

            I forget the source, but years ago I tried to look it up and it seemed that YouTube was extremely profitable

      • By numpad0 2021-07-181:18

        Is the tracking part not a cover argument? For me I went full adblock because forms of ads became obnoxious and contents unpleasant.

        I wouldn’t mind being manipulated into buying a clunky life improvement gadget that I use exactly once as much as being forced to watch a guy screaming at me for 15 seconds. On second thought, isn’t the latter straight up jumpscare?

      • By mgraczyk 2021-07-180:474 reply

        The frontend that does this is youtube.com

        You can completely, 100% opt out of personalized ads. Go to https://adssettings.google.com/ (edit to fix url)

        • By gizdan 2021-07-181:572 reply

          I clear all cookies up to 5 minutes after I've closed a site. I get asked to give my life away everytime I open youtube with no way to just block the request as it used to be possible. To make matters worse, I am unable to select that I don't want to be tracked because when I select "Agree", it simply goes to YouTube, when I select to opt out it goes to Google's tracking servers which are blocked across my home network because I don't want to be tracked. So I'm left with no choice to press agree, or alternatively I can simply use an alternative backend.

          • By Freak_NL 2021-07-1812:181 reply

            Not to mention the extra cognitive load in dealing with all these opt-outs and configurable cookie settings. Everyone one of them is different, everyone of them is located somewhere else, and there is no sensible way to simply say to websites, with a single checkbox in your browser: I don't want to be tracked.

            Well there was of course; the do-not-track header.

            So now we fight back with ad-blockers and other privacy preserving tricks (like clearing cookies) to keep our sanity and make our compiled profiles a lot less valuable (although Google will probably still profit from it by pretending I do see ads and are influenced).

            • By mgraczyk 2021-07-1817:201 reply

              Personally it's very convenient for me, because I never have to opt out of anything. Nothing bad has ever happened to me and as a person who knows how the targeted ads business works, I'm confident in saying that nothing ever will. It's seriously liberating and worth considering.

              • By spiderice 2021-07-1820:431 reply

                If you think "nothing bad has happened to me personally due to aggressive tracking measures" is at all a reasonable argument, then I can only assume you are incredibly ignorant on the implications of it. I don't despise tracking because I'm afraid Google is interested in me personally. But the implications at a societal level are ENOURMOUS.

                When you have data on one person, you can sell them ads. When you have data on everybody, you can change elections, culture, and widespread opinions as you see fit. Even if that isn't being abused today (which it probably is) the fact the Google has the capability of doing that one day is scary enough that we absolutely shouldn't let the practice continue.

                • By mgraczyk 2021-07-1821:16

                  Do you have an example? IMO the benefits massively outweigh the downsides. Swaying elections has been done historically with newspaper and television. Fox news is still far, far more influential than Facebook for political opinion. Why is this different?

          • By mgraczyk 2021-07-183:451 reply

            Ok but just try not doing that and maybe you'll find that life is way better?

            • By gizdan 2021-07-185:17

              I'll do that once websites stop tracking me. I guess that's never.

        • By bryan0 2021-07-184:55

          You’re conflating “tracking” with “personalized ads”

        • By ffffwe3rq352y3 2021-07-180:521 reply

          I don't want to make a google account so they still track me ;(

          • By mgraczyk 2021-07-180:563 reply

            You can still opt out even without an account. The opt-out will be remembered until you clear your browser history.

            https://adssettings.google.com/

            • By autoexec 2021-07-2320:011 reply

              Ah, the old "Let me track you using this cookie so that you don't have to sign in and let us track you" trick! I'm guessing between IPs, browser fingerprinting, and usage/viewing habits it's beyond trivial for google to know the computer opting out at 3:00pm today is the same one that opted out this morning before clearing their cookies, and the same one that opted out yesterday for 16 hours and the same one the day before that, etc

              As for me, I'll stick to youtube-dl

              • By mgraczyk 2021-07-2320:091 reply

                Nope, google is legally obligated to not do that, and in fact they don't. Google has much more to lose in this than you do, and a strong incentive not to lie.

                • By autoexec 2021-07-2322:131 reply

                  How'd we ever know if they did? Are there independent audits or would discovery that they have been doing that depend on a whistleblower? If we know anything about corporations it's that they have zero problems with violating laws as long as they'll have mode more money than the slap on the wrist fine or class action settlement they'd pay out assuming they are ever caught in the first place.

                  • By mgraczyk 2021-07-2322:49

                    I disagree that they would make more money by lying directly and explicitly like that, and yes it would be very difficult to cover up a lie like that. Literally millions of people would know, because any employee at Google or anyone who inspects the code of any google web app would learn of the lie.

            • By pabs3 2021-07-181:131 reply

              Did you mean cookies instead of history?

            • By ffffwe3rq352y3 2021-07-182:54

              Hey thanks! I've seen that link thrown around a million times but I've just dismissed it. I appreciate you actually finding a useful one for me!

        • By just-ok 2021-07-181:17

          Tracking (or “personalization”) should always be opt-in.

      • By judge2020 2021-07-1723:46

        That's just an issue with it being associate with Google, though - recommendations are based on your viewing habits and that's done server-side. Most people use recommendations at least somewhat, and don't find absolutely all of the videos via just the subscription and search features.

    • By bogwog 2021-07-182:03

      > I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them. I think that's a good compromise: either you use it for free with ads, or you pay to remove them.

      The problem with that logic is that people don't just hate ads, they hate and/or distrust Google.

      People are not going to give money to a company they hate and/or distrust if they can avoid it. That's why it's important for businesses to not engage in unethical behavior/things their customers hate.

      Of course, in Google's case (and peers), they're largely immune to market forces thanks to years of anti-competitive behavior. So the consequences of being evil/unethical/shitty/etc are usually minor or non-existent.

      That's exactly why projects like this are good. Because it's the only way (a tiny subset of) consumers have (a negligible amount of) power to have an impact on bad business practices, since the usual "vote with your wallet" tactic doesn't work.

      And if creators lose ad revenue because people use a project like this, well, tough luck. In the short term, some of those might make less money or go out of business, but if this ends up changing (or bankrupting!) youtube, it will ultimately help creators in the long run if it means new business opportunities once the monopoly is gone and/or some of that bargaining power goes back to the consumers.

    • By gopiandcode 2021-07-181:261 reply

      I'd argue that it's unfair for Google to use their market power in search to subsidise their video hosting products, thereby limiting the number of competitors, and then start forcing people to participate in their unethical privacy invasive ad network to consume video content online. Using services like this is a way to protest that injustice.

      • By orhmeh09 2021-07-181:362 reply

        How is it unfair that they invest their legitimately obtained profits into a new business? The people who are unsatisfied with this don’t know how hard it is to launch a search engine and plan wisely for the future they enjoy today. Just start a new search engine and then you can spend your money as you want, as you too are entitled to the sweat of your brow, just as Page and the other giants of our time are.

        • By makeitdouble 2021-07-184:03

          Replacce “unfair” with “detrimental to the ecosystem” then. We’ll never get good alternatives if they have to compete with a player with infinite money.

          IRL dumping is illegal, arguably we are in a similar situation.

        • By mst 2021-07-1814:201 reply

          The term for this is "predatory pricing" and was a big part of e.g. legal cases against Standard Oil who used it to crush competitors.

          • By root_axis 2021-07-1821:161 reply

            The distinguishing quality of predatory pricing is that it's an unsustainable tactic used to push competitors out of the market before raising prices at a later time. It's not predatory pricing if the price never changes and in the case of YouTube the price to consumers has always been free, even before it was owned by Google.

            • By Aissen 2021-07-196:59

              Not really, with ads the price has changed, you just pay with your eyeball/brain time. From videos starting instantly, to waiting twice for 8-seconds pre-roll (minimum). Or you can pay $12€ / month.

    • By jraph 2021-07-181:13

      Well, I'm not fond of Google and I'm not willing to run it's proprietary code. I'd pay for the video hosting service but I'm actively avoiding Google in my life and would rather avoid giving it money. I also don't like ads and tracking. I'd normally boycott a Google service but YouTube is where the content is (network effect).

      These alternative frontends at least avoid part of the tracking (ads are already taken care of by uBlock Origin anyway) and the non-free Javascript code. With respect to the business model, I don't feel especially guilty, Google has way too much money and power and I'd rather have an unsustainable YouTube replaced by a federation of PeerTube instances with a power diluted across these instances.

      These alternative frontends could be seen as a temporary, partial solution while YouTube is up.

      On the technical side, they are way easier on underpowered devices than YouTube proper, including the PinePhone.

    • By MaxBarraclough 2021-07-1723:09

      The emphasis of the project seems to be privacy, rather than ad-blocking, although it does block ads. The two are often intertwined.

    • By zouhair 2021-07-1815:12

      Beside ads the main problem I have with Youtube on my Desktop is I hate watching videos on a browser. I prefer using a dedicated video player like MPV.

    • By Beldin 2021-07-1818:12

      Given previous incidents where renowned sites spread malware via ads (eg. bbc), accepting ads on your system is simply unacceptable from a security point of view.

      I've never heard of anyone being reimbursed by a website that unwittingly infected them. Websites that take responsibility for their ads, that's different. But those are very few and very far between.

      Right now, surfing without an adblocker is like going to a swinger party vowing not to use condoms. (Actually, I think your browser is already intimite with more domains upon one average visit to one average website than that...)

      So: block ads. It's basic Internet hygiene.

    • By mario_lopez 2021-07-1723:025 reply

      This is my preferred option: Simply pay (in the worst case, a subscription, in the best case, a one-time fee) to get rid of the ads. If I spend more than 10 hours a week on a platform (e.g. YouTube, Reddit, Twitch), I will gladly pay to keep the ads away.

      I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this.

      • By macintux 2021-07-1723:062 reply

        > I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this.

        That's why I pay Fastmail: no ads, and no data harvesting.

        • By roenxi 2021-07-180:55

          Given the direction Google is heading, it is quite unlikely but not unthinkable that they'll start locking the accounts / blocking the emails of people who spread "misinformation".

          It is a good time to have a commercial relationship with an email service. Less likely for politics to get involved.

        • By toomuchtodo 2021-07-1723:13

          Also a FastMail user. I don’t want to give a single dollar or as impression to Google.

      • By nerdponx 2021-07-1723:47

        It just sucks to know that even premium paying subscribers still get surveilled as aggressively as the free users. It's the same with Spotify, major news outlets, financial institutions, etc.

      • By dudus 2021-07-1723:106 reply

        Apparently there's a new version called google workspace individual. You keep an @gmail account pay a fee for some extra features.

        https://workspace.google.com/individual/

        Not sure if it's fully launched yet.

        • By tyingq 2021-07-180:421 reply

          Trying to figure out why "Individual" is $7.99/month, but "Business Starter" is $6.00/month. I see Business Starter is 30GB of storage. There's no figure cited for the Individual plan that I can see.

          You do need a domain for Business Starter, but that cost would be less than the savings over the Individual plan.

          • By guu 2021-07-1817:281 reply

            "Business Starter" accounts are a different category of account that can't join or create a family (To share YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, etc). Also, if you stop paying your email account gets suspended.

            Individual is a "normal" Google account and doesn't increase your storage from the default 15GB or support custom domains. But if you stop paying you still have a valid @gmail account and just lose access to the additional features.

            • By tyingq 2021-07-1817:52

              >Also, if you stop paying your email account gets suspended.

              "Business Starter" uses your own domain..."Custom email with your domain". So, yes, you would need to export the emails, but you retain your email address.

        • By sillysaurusx 2021-07-180:321 reply

          Do not buy any kind of gmail add on, subscription service, or anything.

          I did, and when Gmail turned off my billing (for my own protection), I lost the ability to send and receive emails, because I was exceeding my drive quota by 1,200%.

          I have to send them a passport photo (my ID is expired) and hope that they bless me with the ability to pay for additional storage again. But I realized it’s safer not to pay for anything.

        • By mkmk 2021-07-1723:18

          Calendly replacement, designed email templates, and video call collaboration features for $8/mo… interesting! So accustomed to Google’s “everything is free” approach that I’m curious to see how this does.

        • By TaylorAlexander 2021-07-180:191 reply

          My Gmail has been throwing up a “Workspace” splash screen when it launches. I think I’m paying a few dollars a year for Drive storage, so maybe they rolled me in to that.

          • By dudus 2021-07-180:45

            I have that too but it's just google One. A different thing that only gives you extra storage, some photo editing features and some support.

            Google workspace individual seems like a different thing. Kinda confusing to be honest.

        • By crooked-v 2021-07-1723:20

          Neat. How long until they abruptly shut it down, though?

        • By cassonmars 2021-07-1723:27

          Doesn’t fix the problem where when you make all the services you depend on use your gmail address for validation and Google arbitrarily decides to shut your account down with no recourse or contact to resolve it, you’re just screwed. Stop letting Google eat the web.

      • By pg5 2021-07-183:00

        I switched from Gmail to using a Microsoft O365 business subscription with my personal domain name. I don't like the UX or the fact I can't append +<any string> to my address to have infinite test emails, but at least I'm paying for a product instead of being the product.

      • By Rd6n6 2021-07-194:53

        Just use fastmail or ProtonMail

    • By perryizgr8 2021-07-1917:30

      > I would add that if you hate advertisements, you can pay for YouTube Red or whatever they call it, and remove them.

      This only removes the ads inserted by YouTube. Nowadays even moderately successful you tubers are inserting their own ads into their videos. This will not be skipped using youtube red.

    • By netr0ute 2021-07-181:27

      If you can't afford to keep videos with ads, then your business is junk to begin with.

    • By mkroman 2021-07-1813:081 reply

      Unfortunately YouTube Premium is an extremely expensive solution just to remove ads :(

      • By npteljes 2021-07-1822:09

        Under which economy could it be considered expensive?

    • By antonzabirko 2021-07-180:25

      I don't think fairness has anything to do with the endless push to drive profits higher. Which is what youtube must do.

    • By 908087 2021-07-183:36

      You can pay for "ad-free" Youtube, but that still doesn't stop them from tracking your behavior/usage.

    • By Terretta 2021-07-180:12

      The cost to subscriber is out of line with the expense to provider.

      Same is true of digital newspapers, magazines, etc., the subscription fees are way out of proportion to what they made from ads per reader in print or made in CPM online.

      While this might not matter for one publisher, it prevents users from accepting pay-for-use as an alternative model across the range of media they consume unless through an aggregate subscription like the one acquired by Apple.

      (While on the subject, the various ad-free streaming providers litter the offerings with more and more ads to the point you can’t trust your shows will indeed be ad free. It’s hard to say if this is on purpose to undermine and kill that model or not.)

  • By mcrittenden 2021-07-180:313 reply

    For what it's worth, I built something very similar to this and it ran for 7 years until Google shut it down for violating the terms of service. Here's a blog post I wrote with specifics, I case it also applies to your service. https://critter.blog/2020/08/04/a-farewell-to-toogles/

    • By gopiandcode 2021-07-181:211 reply

      I think the difference here is that Piped is using a custom backend server (piped-backend) which scrapes youtube html to obtain the video content/metadata (a-la invidious), while your app was using the youtube API. Google is allowed to shut your app down, but AFAIK can't police who can and can't consume their publicly available HTML.

    • By animesh 2021-07-1812:25

      I remember your project. It was written in AngularJS then to showcase its power. It was a very refreshing demo. Good luck.

    • By Jgrubb 2021-07-181:061 reply

      My very first thought was "wonder how long before YouTube shuts this down somehow"..

      Also, old drupal crew represent

      • By mcrittenden 2021-07-2621:58

        Represent! I only stopped working with Drupal about 6 months ago.

  • By notafraudster 2021-07-1722:543 reply

    I can't tell based on the GitHub description whether this is a website or some code you run locally. Like, I don't really know what a replacement front-end is. Is it a Chrome extension? I clicked the documentation and that didn't really answer anything for me. It's a Java backend, a Golang proxy, and a JS frontend? How do I actually use it?

    I tried Googling "piped" and "piped youtube" and couldn't find any reference so I assume it's not a website. I could imagine using this, but not if I have to run it myself.

    • By cyounkins 2021-07-1722:58

      I think it is what is running at https://piped.kavin.rocks/

    • By andrewzah 2021-07-1723:371 reply

      Essentially you self-host it and it operates, I assume, via YouTube’s API or scraping.

      Invidious is another alternative frontend to youtube. I use it because it loads much faster than YT and it has an API that makes it easy for me to batch download my playlists. However it occasionally gets authentication errors and I have to restart the service manually.

      • By hi5eyes 2021-07-180:17

        invidio.us is a much cleaner experience compared to default youtube/cancer youtube search too

    • By emanuelpina 2021-07-180:221 reply

      There're two instances at the moment: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped/wiki/Instances

      Here's the documentation, including how to self-host an instance: https://piped-docs.kavin.rocks/

      • By denton-scratch 2021-07-188:111 reply

        Ah, Docker. Looks like you have to run a minimum of TWO servers (or containers). You need a Java 11 server, and at least one golang proxy. Looks like "self-hosting" means, in practice, cloud hosting.

        • By danielheath 2021-07-188:301 reply

          I mean, two docker containers isn’t zero overhead but it’s a long way from “needs multiple boxes and you have to pay someone to manage it”.

          A systemd unit file to run a docker container isn’t a hard thing to write.

          • By denton-scratch 2021-07-189:512 reply

            I don't use Docker or systemd. I don't need to rehearse my objections to systemd; I object to Docker because it's a proprietary skin wrapped around open-source container mechanisms.

            I run Xen VMs, and I don't want to dedicate two VMs to something like this (my VM host has 16GB of RAM).

            I'm not saying this solution is no good; it's just not a match for me.

            • By nargek 2021-07-199:471 reply

              Why would you have to dedicate two vm ? You can use containers (LXC) and that's it.

              • By denton-scratch 2021-07-1912:26

                I could use LXC; I looked into it about 5 years ago, and it looked reasonable. But I can only administer a limited number of technology bundles, and I went with Xen for virtual hosting. If I deployed Piped as LXC, I'd have to figure out how to do it (LXC is not The Docker Way, and the installation instructions are for Docker).

                I don't mind admin work - I quite like it - but for me, it's pure overhead, since I run nothing else under LXC.

            • By maccolgan 2021-07-202:10

              Try Podman, I think you'll like it.

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