# Looks Like YouTube Won...

2024-07-14 - [53] 4:26

A few days ago, I opened up my RSS feed reader and noticed that the YouTube videos in the YouTube RSS feeds I'm following wouldn't load in my video player. I used a combination of mpv and yt-dlp to load and play YouTube videos for a while now.

The issue seems to be that YouTube has changed API things to make YouTube video downloaders stop working.

Before I continue, I'll note a few points quick:

- YouTube does NOT owe me access to their videos
- YouTube does NOT owe me the ability to see their videos without using their website or app
- YouTube does NOT owe me the ability to see their videos without ads

I used to watch a lot of YouTube before, especially as entertainment when I was bored. Eventually, the site started getting slower for me, likely for multiple reasons. The site also was CPU and RAM intensive, would reset my speed preferences, and would constantly reset autoplay. Eventually, I got rid of my YouTube account and set my web browser to clear cache and cookies after closing. This made the already unstable settings even more unstable, which I knew would happen.

While I used to use the recommendations and search functions of YouTube to watch videos as a form of entertainment, eventually I just followed a few YouTube channels over the built in RSS feeds (that I think YouTube forgot exist...). This still allowed me to watch YouTube videos as a form of mostly mindless entertainment.

Following yt-dlp and a few other programs breaking for YouTube, I have decided to stop watching YouTube videos as a form of entertainment. My RSS feed reader no longer checks the YouTube channel RSS feeds, which now means I can check my RSS feed once a week or month instead of multiple times a day.

I have come to the conclusion that YouTube is simply a video hosting platform. Some resources I may run into will be videos that are hosted on YouTube. If I need to see those resources, I will do so on YouTube's terms using their website and possibly even turning off my adblocker if I have to. With that said, YouTube being demoted to only being a video hosting platform means I won't go out of my way to search for videos or watch videos for the purpose of entertainment.

YouTube won... They want me to use their site in a very particular way, so as a result I will just use their site as little as I possibly can. This means I won't be seeing the cool projects friends of mine are working on if they only post about it on YouTube.

There will likely be a continuing game of cat and mouse for tools like yt-dlp to work with YouTube, but I just don't feel like playing that game.

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