this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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Someone give it to me straight, what is the endgame of this cat and mouse game? I know yt-dlp and invidious have been quite crafty at adapting to these changes, but the scales seem to be tipping.
It feels like Google will dominate the game into submission the same way it did with AOSP and Chrome. I know I'm being dramatic but it's really starting to feel like we're being cornered into a hopeless situation
Well the problem for google is that Youtube MUST be accessible to almost any internet user in the world - that's a key reason why it's so ubiquitous.
The reason this cat and mouse game has lasted as long as it has in the first place is because any method that is currently being quashed has a solution lying in another user agent that youtube can't kill.
If one day YT sets a "minimum requirements" page on their website to access their content, they've immediately ceded market share to the next upstart. Imagine if they broke viewing for all of the countless cheap (and e-waste) phones, tablets, low end IOT devices, "smart TVs", and so on because they place a requirement that the device cannot meet. Those users will not throw away their hardware - they'll migrate to the first available alternative way to watch content.
As long as YT caters to the lowest common denominator (Their business model essentially binds them to do so), there will always be a software/hardware environment that these tools can spoof. The moment that stops being the case, people look for other options.
A similar analogy would be how Microsoft handled the windows 11 requirements - the strict requirements locking out years upon years of hardware has resulted in a substantial amount of users finding workarounds for their machines (like windows 10 IOT LTSC), or to even jump to linux entirely. They abandoned the entry level users, so entry level users are abandoning them.
This all incorrectly assumes that there exists any viable competition to switch to. YouTube ran at a net loss for over a decade to get the reach they currently have, only because Google was one of the very few companies who could feasibly afford to do so. Nobody else with the resources to compete with YouTube is willing to compete with YouTube, because of the massive cost required to get even a fraction of that user base, let alone a critical mass.
And most of the content people access YouTube for is only found on YouTube, so those hypothetical users aren't going to switch to a new platform, they're going to either just flat-out stop watching or will replace their devices.
Users replacing their devices isn't feasible in many parts of the world, especially outside of the west.
You are correct that a service similar in scale and scope would not appear out of the aether due to the cost, but to say nothing would make a grab for those underserved users would be foolish.
Again - the entry level cost conscious users do constitute a large part of Youtube's userbase, so even if they are burdensome to support (due to ad blocking rates, required legacy features to upkeep, and so on), they are a core part of the audience that youtube serves. In an economic environment where people cannot afford to abandon their hardware, there is no chance they will opt out of receiving information and entertainment entirely because of their devices being unsupported by google's sites. They will move to the next service in the chain, either existing or new. To google's investors, that shrinkage in userbase may be untenable.
PeerTube or LBRY (The protocol, not Odysee) might help in that. As in decentralized instances focussing on specific content. All connected via hubs/open-protocols.
Basically Decentralized or distributed networks are key. The next hurdle is populating those platforms with content.
Not just populating with content, but also create revenue in some way. Otherwise creators won't post their content there, they have to make a living from whatever platforms they're on after all
Would be cool if someone started a thread/post, where we could discuss & debate this.
As in how obe can build a good content platform that can truly challenge big tech.
Unfortunately video platforms are also much harder on small hosts. More storage, more bandwidth, harder to moderate.
I feel like the solution might be a media management company, like buffer, offering to host videos directly and over a open protocols for a small upgrade in addition to posting to YT et all.
Not-so-fun fact, this is exactly what ATSC 3 is trying to do for OTA broadcast TV.
ATSC 3 ? Never heard of that, but I'm curious.
New broadcast standard which if implemented as intended, will use Widevine DRM to encrypt/decrypt streams, and require a web connection to view previously free OTA broadcasts, also that DRM will limit what you can do with it, as Rossmann puts it early on in his 'this is why I show these things in my vids' vid. https://peertube.gravitywell.xyz/videos/watch/61332f1b-9a15-46b6-8a97-c4e378fbce72
Same as usual: the mouse loses unless it assembles and unionizes with other mouses and they bring in a guillotine.
They turn it into an app-only platform just like with many PRC-based apps. Literally, some of those platforms doesn't even have a web or desktop mode.
I tried using Baidu Maps web to look at my old neighborhood (I was born in mainland China) for nostalgia, and the site repeatedly automatically attempts to download the .apk like every tap I make on the site. Wtf lol. The site probably detected the useragent and keeps nagging me about their app.
I tried browsing a random popular online store to see what it's like for curiosity (天猫), but it asked for a sign in. Like wut? Even Amazon, Ebay, Bestbuy doesn't do that. PRC is actually just late stage cyberpunk capitalism.
This is gonna be the future for every big-corp stuff. App only, real ID and phone number verification required. Probably even scan your face.
We need a Meshtastic-based "internet" to actually decouple from big corps have control our infrastructure to have real freedom.
Good luck blocking alt OSes on PC if Windows goes the route you're describing though, unless MS pulls some strings to force Pluton platform-wide on PC and stamp out alt OSes altogether.
Also, good luck blocking decentralized and self-hostable platforms, at least easily.
lol. microsoft manages the preinstalled signing keys for secure boot. all it needs to do is require motherboard makers to not allow disabling secure boot or installing a machine owner key.
Good luck trying that with loose mainboards for custom builds unless they can just preinstall Windows in ROM at that point or push to get the current desktop form factors axed in favor of mini PCs from the big OEMs.
I don't think it would be that hard. Microsoft could just change the UEFI certification process. Alternative UEFI firmware could solve it (unless that too is tied to verification like qualcomm does on android), but nearly no modern motherboards have any alternative firmware. I think there was 2 ASUS motherboards with built in wifi capability, but that's it.
Can they really get away with banning Linux from hardware though? It's not like there are only 12 of us anymore.
Plus unless they discontinue all the modular desktop form factors in favor of mini PCs where everything is soldered, and turn the PC platform into yet another Mac clone controlled by a single entity, you can still just build your own PC and install whatever OS you want at that point since custom builds don't generally ship with an OS and expect the builder to provide it themselves.
I don't think we are in meaningful numbers. not yet.
We have OEMs building systems that run Linux. Loads of servers run Linux, quite a few jobs require Linux experience - just annoyingly none near me at a level I can get.
The internet gets turned into packetized cable tv with bonus panopticon features.
Android is different because there are no alternatives to cellphones except Apple. On the web, there are other ways to share video. So Google can maybe lock YouTube down, but it can't lock you down.
Many of us use 3rd party browsers a stop-gap measure. We'd like to leave the platform entirely, but we are still interested in some of the content there, so we're OK with the cat-and-mouse game for now, knowing that if Google goes hardcore blocking mode that we will walk away and be better human beings for it.
You got Linux phones but those are rough to be nice about it.
They are glorified toys to be blunt. Cellphones just require too much proprietary tech and licensing. Shits never goanna be viable as anything more than a hobbyist toy.
If you already use your phone as nothing more then a toy then it's a easy switch. But most people don't.
Flip phones
Not to mention, carriers can dictate who can get connected. Australia already banned any IMEIs not "approved" by them, not even for emergency calls.
In contrast, all that a computer would need is working wifi, and for now at least, we still control wifi hardware and the ISP can't dictate what devices you connect. (unless they start forcing their "gateways" Modem/Router devices)
Jolla with sailfish is the best. https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-community-phone
What makes it the "best" over Ubuntu Touch, etc.?
i heard there is something called murena
https://murena.com/products/smartphones/
no idea how these are, but i have previous generation fairphone and it has been decent, even if that one has android. I'll propably get one at some point since i dont want to use android. the price of fairphones is a bit high, but that is how it is when you dont use slavery to produce them.
Technically you don't need a smartphone. A tethered mobile device would do. For just cellular calls, there are dumbphones. That Youtube does or doesn't work doesn't concern me. They always ask to login on VPN which is always on for me. Thanks, just no.
A mandatory account with paid subscription.
The end game is to take full control. If Google implements Widevine on YT, and especially Widevine L1, that'll be their Hiroshima bomb for both third-party front-ends and downloaders, and even non-Android, ChromeOS, Apple, or Windows platforms as far as OS goes and non-Chrome or Edge browsers.
Like, say Google implemented Widevine L1 on YT streams at some point in the future, it would be entirely feasible that you'd be looking at Netflix-style lockdowns to Edge on Win11, or even Chrome on Win11 for that matter, with both SecureBoot and TPM2 in place, if you wanted to watch YT on PC in the future, else you'd be limited to Rokus to watch it.
That would be their poison pill. Youtube's advantage is in it's ubiquity. Lose that, you lose countless users.
They'd sooner replace those users with home-grown AI slop the way they're moving right now.
The perfect business case: AI users watching AI ads before AI videos. No pesky users to deal with👍
But also, they're not real users watching those ads and getting impressions. Unless people are using an agent system that could be convinced to buy the product, it doesn't seem like it would be that useful.
You may as well serve ads to standard viewbot at that point.
I'm pretty sure they were sarcastic.
Probably like every other victim of enshittification:
You pay or you don't consume.
Your new monitor likely has DRM features built in that are already being utilized by Netflix and others. Youtube is next on the line
Yeah, I think Netflix has like a few thousand movies and a couple thousand TV shows, and some of us here have similarly sized Jellyfin libraries. On the other hand, YouTube has billions of videos. It seems DRM would be a significantly more difficult and costly problem for YouTube.
DRM is expensive. Very expensive in fact because it is basically non-trivial encryption.
A website with as much traffic as YouTube cannot afford to DRM every single video stream. There just isn't enough processing power and electricity available.
Netflix et al. have a tiny fraction of YouTube's traffic with more income per user due to subscriptions.
Plus YouTube's storage demands are many orders of magnitude larger. A maximum upper bound for Netflix is 1 PB I'd imagine. Archiveteam alone has selectively downloaded more than 3 PB. YouTube has, I'd imagine, a double digit exabyte amount of data stored + backups.
And yet, youtube uses resource intensive compression methods for said exabytes
Do we know this?
I suspect they usually compress videos at most a couple times (for each resolution) and then keep the results cached somewhere. At least for popular videos that combined take up 99% of bandwidth. For 0 views videos I'd imagine they only store the highest resolution and compress it further down on demand.
I'd argue DRMing all those popular videos would take up so much computing power it cannot be offset by ads.
Whatever the latest version of HDCP is, sure. HDCP is a core feature of the HDMI spec.
I was actually thinking of DisplayPort since I haven't used HDMI for quite some time now, but pretty much the same thing, except for name - DPCP, but supposedly DP also supports HDCP.
Maybe total DRM enforcement, and clients without widevine only get garbage quality. That'd end yt-dlp for youtube