NewPipe (FOSS available on F-Droid) is nice alternative to ads-infested YouTube. I disabled YouTube and YouTube Music apps on my mobile, and I use NewPipe instead. You can even download YT videos or audio from YT videos using it.
Pipepipe stopped downloading audio or video when I was using it a couple of years back.
I switched over to NewPipe as it was better maintained and worked well.
Since past few months, NewPipe is not automatically showing latest YT videos, but it opens the video if I type in the video's source url. Downloads are working fine though, which is what I mainly use it for.
Will try Pipepipe again next weekend if it fares better.
Google is trying to suppress all these FOSS alternatives to its ads-overloaded apps.
What's going on with NewPipe? Their F-droid repository is down. Their domain is down. Their github repository is up, but it links to their domain, which isn't. Are they dying?
Google pays content creators so little they have all started including ads in their videos. Si technically as long as you are counted they get paid. Meanwhile, Google is more and more aggressive with their own ads interrupting videos and pushing you to subscribe to their expensive offer.
Some people, like me, have just stopped watching YouTube. Other are turning to blocking ads.
It's the usual tug of war between revenues and UX but I don't think consumers have to feel bad about not playing by Google's rules.
I will be downvoted, but I'm not fooling myself. I don't care. As long as uBlock and yt-dlp still work, I'll use them. If Google breaks them, I'll resort to some automated screengrabbing + maybe some AI automation to click "skip" in a virtual machine or something.
People will use all sorts of excuses, like the ads are about gambling, or contain viruses, or are detrimental to mental health, or whatever. No, don't use these excuses. You just don't want ads, and it is still possible to not see them. That's respectable.
I'm not sure how those are "excuses". They are reasons to not want ads. Ads are fundamentally malicious, so you should remove them from your life. I don't view attempting to "influence" me as a valid way to make a living, and am unconcerned with those who want to do it in the same way that I'm unconcerned about what would happen if someone tried to scam people with early wins in a shell game, but people just took the early win and walked instead of placing a big bet. That's just comeuppance.
