Anyone else have horrible user experiences with Piped?
With the Youtube adblock debacle going on, and my account on Firefox+Ublock getting the dreaded popup, I was trying out the Piped alternative frontends for Youtube. If you're unaware, this is basically lets you browse Youtube without using the actual Youtube site or your Google account, and there's no ads. Whenever this adblock issue comes up, everyone starts pushing other frontends like Piped as the solution. There's also a dedicated bot that automatically replies with the Piped link when anyone posts a Youtube link on Lemmy. People seem to think very highly of this site! The simping for it can be very strong.
I tried using the main instance, https://piped.video, but it was laggy! Completely, unusably slow. I've also had it crash whenever I try to watch certain videos. I heard there were other instances that would have less users and less pressure on the servers, so I tried out the other public instances. One of them worked great for a couple days, now it just stopped loading videos all of a sudden. All the other instances I've tried either don't load videos, or the domain is down.
Are they cracking down on Piped now, or are all these instances just not good and you need to self-host to get anything out of Piped? Are there any other alternative frontends that you've liked?
The problem that you are going to face is simply this:
As long as a service is crappy or unusable and fails to get a foothold and the only people using it are doing so essentially out of spite, it does not matter. Once it becomes nice and people start adopting it, then YouTube will focus on it and kill it (through API changes, cease and desist like they did with vanced, or the eventual Web Environment Integrity stuff). Any service that you enjoy that is good is going to be temporary at best.
For what it is worth, I am using ReVanced for the time being and it is fine. It can't cast, but it does block ads and has an incognito mode. That is good enough for the little amount that I use it.
I was able to find a tampermonkey script that replaces the youtube frame with its embeded counterpart (The way you'd watch a youtube video on an external website) They haven't added the add-blocker message to these, yet, so I am still getting a nearly identical, ad-free experience directly on youtube.
I tried Piped last night because it appeared on HackerNews. The Trending page (front page) loaded so quickly but the videos failed to load for me on various browsers. Maybe the main instance (which already has over 200k registered users) was just getting overwhelmed (HN hug of death).
I just now tried other instances (with very low numbers of registered users) and the performance has been great. Even the main instance is working well for me now.
I haven't gotten the dreaded YT adblocker message yet but am collecting and testing various other options for when the time comes. These are links I have saved to followup on YT Frontend alternatives. They all link to HN because the comment area is loaded with many (possible) solutions (which I may have to experiment with down the line):
Piped works great until it doesn't. On some days everything loads and works with zero issues, but then sometimes it just randomly completely stops working and I have to switch to regular YouTube website.
The advice I read on Lemmy/kbin was to:
Click the uBlock Origin icon on Firefox's menu bar
You'll see a three-gear icon at the bottom right. Click this to open the dashboard.
Click the "Purge all caches" button at the top.
Click the "Update now" button at the top.
I know that people also use Invidious (similar to Piped). I use Newpipe mostly (it's an app I downloaded from F-droid).
I also just read that people have been able to use FF with their adblocker still working by either watching YT in a private window or opening up the video in a new tab.
And someone else on Lemmy have this advice: "After I got blocked from watching further videos, I disabled uBlock on Firefox, clicked any video and then enabled uBlock again. For some reason neither the blocking nor the pop-ups came back after reloading or since." This probably updated the filter list.
This fixed it for me too, thanks!
I personally find NewPipe way better than anything else I have tried including ReVanced.
Have you tried it?
https://newpipe.net/
It is still early days, but you might want to keep an eye on Grayjay. You can watch the video from Louis Rossmann to see what it is and why. TLDR: one privacy-respecting and open source app for all video platforms, which focuses on following creators, not creators on specific platforms. Again, it has some issues for now but certainly an app to keep an eye on IMO.
I use freetube, which is good if you're alright with electron apps. It has the option of using either a youtube or invidous backend, and can import subscriptions and playlists from youtube, and in general is very configurable, which is nice