[jgtrosh]

Technically, all interesting.

Ethically, if you don't only think “fuck Google”, I feel like it's reasonable to stop after the first optimization (“pass the real browser test to get regular browser speeds”). There you're not “wasting” any more of YouTube's resources than a browser user with ad-block.

Getting full Gb/s without paying anything feels to me like you're pushing all the ad-blocked users' luck.

But then again, fuck Google I guess?

[mrtksn]

Technically, everyone pays for connecting to the network. I wouldn't say it's unethical to slam YouTube with full speed downloads but at the same time I wouldn't judge YouTube if they take measures against it.

I'm using a browser extension to show full size of images on social media when hover and Instagram went crazy about it, warning about unusual activities and threatening to lock my account. I looked into it to see if the extension does any scrapping behind but no, it all seems fine. My assumption is that Meta detects requests happening in wrong order which might indicate data scrapping due to the non-standart client behaviour.

So, measures and countermeasures. I guess it's up to YouTube to implement their counter measures and push the scrappers to implement theirs but overall at some point they should be able to limit downloading to the playback*2 speed because a legitimate consumption wouldn't happen any faster on a legitimate client.

But honestly, downloading shouldn't be restricted. The contents are protected by laws anyways and most people have legitimate reasons for downloading videos. It could be for archiving purposes because the video has some value for you, it could be for analysis or it could be about creating content based on the vide content(like downloading a movie trailer to extract parts for you movie review video). The content in YouTube is not created in vacuum and once published they create the new environment where new videos will be made and this creative freedom is important unless we want the current videos be the last videos ever made.

[bmicraft]

> I'm using a browser extension to show full size of images on social media when hover and Instagram went crazy about it, warning about unusual activities and threatening to lock my account. I looked into it to see if the extension does any scrapping behind but no, it all seems fine.

I've used such an extension and found dragging the curser over your screen might fire like 25 requests. You might simply be rate-limited.

[mrtksn]

Maybe, I just speculate over the reason of course but I haven't noticed anything strange like that. That said, the pattern of requests from the client should be obvious to the backend, the preventive measures can be designed around it and the rate Is one of the obvious signals.

Removed the extension anyway

[planede]

I wonder how abusive this is though. In the end you are downloading the same amount of data, but in a shorter time. You are utilizing more bandwidth but you go away earlier.

I think the original browser use case is tuned for the common occurrence of not watching the whole video. But if you intend to watch (and archive) the whole video to begin with then I don't think this eats away Google's bandwidth more. OTOH it probably has more overhead due to the amount of connections.

[CydeWeys]

> I wonder how abusive this is though. In the end you are downloading the same amount of data, but in a shorter time.

In the end you're downloading a lot more data in total, as what ends up happening is you're downloading all sorts of stuff that you never end up getting around to actually watching (data hoarder syndrome). Whereas if you could only watch that stuff during life playback, you'd be downloading much less data in total as there's no bytes wasted amassing a library that never gets viewed.

[planede]

> In the end you're downloading a lot more data in total, as what ends up happening is you're downloading all sorts of stuff that you never end up getting around to actually watching (data hoarder syndrome).

Well that's an assumption on the intent of downloading. I don't download videos that I don't eventually watch. But typically it's for archival, I just hate my favorite videos going away.

[CydeWeys]

> I don't download videos that I don't eventually watch.

I doubt it.

[Applejinx]

Well, you go away unless you're another organization that proposes to mirror all of YouTube and eat its lunch.

Google can't only think about humans, it's got to also think about competing organizations. That complicates things.

[thousand_nights]

that's their problem to deal with. why is everyone here going all 'think of the poor corporations'

[apetresc]

Well, when they "deal with it", we'll all be complaining even harder. The fact that they've gone relatively light on obfuscation and security against things like yt-dlp for such a long time is basically tacit approval at this point. I wouldn't want to bite that hand.

[kodra]

By the same logic, fare evasion is "metro company's problem to deal with".

It technically is, but if someone makes a programmer's salary and still jumps over turnstiles, I consider it a big red flag over their personality.

[stavros]

I think you're reading it as "as a user, you must not do this because...", when the GP meant it as "as Google, the reason I'm doing this is because..."

[planede]

That organization would probably parallelize the download on multiple video level, not necessarily on subrange level on a single video.

[mrighele]

What is complicated about throttling downloads, let’s say X times the bitrate of the video? I am sure Google’s engineers can implement something ever more complex

[secondcoming]

Is it technically or financially feasible to mirror YouTube?

[abwizz]

yea, i also don't think that the increased rate is a problem per se, but i also doubt that a majority of youtube views cover the entire length of the video, hence downloaders do probably use more data.

[Applejinx]

Any youtuber, myself included, can attest that a majority of youtube views demonstrably don't. A key factor in finding success as a youtuber is getting better at retention, hence all the ridiculousness and MrBeastness: some people specialize in retention, and they do better.

It's weird from the standpoint of someone who sets out to watch an entire thing, but almost nobody sticks around while watching videos. It seems like the mass of youtube viewerdom are bouncing around like mad, all the time.

[abwizz]

not unlike "zapping" tv channels

[nradov]

It's FOMO on a second-by-second basis. No matter what you're watching now you could be watching something better. The UI even somewhat encourages this with the way it displays a list of additional videos below what's playing now.

[majewsky]

By default, it's even right next to what's playing now. It's only below when you're in theater mode.

[no_time]

>Ethically, if you don't only think “fuck Google"

Companies do not have ethics, only interests. It's only natural I behave similarly.

[benterix]

> Companies do not have ethics, only interests.

While that's certainly true (although an simplification - they are just managed by people with low ethics), we can do better. If I behaved like managers of Google, Meta or Microsoft, I'd be ashamed of myself.

[sph]

I despise this philosophy. Megacorps are shit, so we should be better than them? It's a popular theme because it makes one feel like they have control over the world around them: they just have to be better than it.

No. I shouldn't have to work harder myself to somehow cancel out the evil in the world. Because if we were less cowards and calling them for what they are - evil - they wouldn't hold so much power over us.

Reminds me of that scene from Mr. Inbetween about bullies. Bullies exist because we're told to ignore them and get punished if we retaliate, so they get away with it.

--

But without getting sidetracked. Companies have no emotion, no particular sense of ethics, and least of all, they don't need people to defend them, unless they're called a lawyer.

[js8]

> No. I shouldn't have to work harder myself to somehow cancel out the evil in the world.

Not only you should, but you should also support countermeasures that make it harder for evil, so you eventually wouldn't have to work harder.

If there is one reason, do it for your kids, to show them that a better world is possible.

[hilbert42]

"Because if we were less cowards and calling them for what they are - evil - they wouldn't hold so much power over us."

Exactly, if we held public demonstrations outside the offices of book publishers, Sony, RIAA, and similar greedy bastards, and it became the norm to snub our noses at their employees then things would soon change.

For instance, we ought to be demonstrating in the streets over how these bastards are hounding the Internet Archive, but we're not.

If we were, then these companies would quickly change their tune and think twice before launching such lawsuits.

Trouble is we're not out there demonstrating. And it's only a tiny minority of the population who actually care about such things—those of us posting here on HN etc.—who do. We're such a small force we couldn't escape from a wet paper bag on the deck of a sinking ship let alone take on the might of these greedy corporations.

Cory Doctorow has said this many times although he's not been as blunt about it as I am. I've followed this for decades and I reckon it's essentially a lost cause.

Even if we could get politicians to agree to change laws they could only do so around the edges as they've signed international treaties, Berne, WIPO, etc. which prohibit signatories from exiting. Any country that left the treaties would have sanctions placed against it.

These corporations have not only won but they've implemented a system that's irreversible, like a ratchet, every one of their cog-like actions squeezes us consumers further and there's fuck-all we can do about it.

[deltarholamda]

Agree very much with this. To mix metaphors, megacorps see you as cattle to be fleeced. Any public good they might do is a public relations stunt or to take advantage of something, e.g. open source development. Yes, there are people in charge, but their duty is to the corporation. Corporations do not have ethics. They cannot have ethics.

A person should be ethical to another person, because that person can reciprocate. A person should only interact with a corporation in terms of legal frameworks, which are also amoral, because that is the only "moral" framework within which a corporation can act. The fictional personhood of a corporation is just that, a fiction.

(There is somewhat of a sliding scale on this, in that a small corporation formed to protect a fruit stand or something is certainly not Microsoft and shouldn't be treated as a Microsoft.)

[thfuran]

>Megacorps are shit, so we should be better than them?

To do otherwise plainly makes you shit as well.

[cryptonector]

> Because if we were less cowards and calling them for what they are - evil - they wouldn't hold so much power over us.

three years of covid nonsense -> crickets

video download speed throttle -> rage

Something is wrong here.

[midoridensha]

That's because there was a very good reason for that Covid "nonsense" as you put it: reducing infection rates and keeping healthcare systems from collapsing. If you disagree with that, then I'm sorry you aren't living in reality and believe in idiotic conspiracy theories and microchips in vaccines and the like.

(That said, there really was some real nonsense, such as certain dumb countries that penalized people for going on bicycle rides in rural areas by themselves.)

There's no good-for-society reason behind throttling video download speeds.

[cryptonector]

> There's no good-for-society reason behind throttling video download speeds.

Google certainly would disagree. Their argument (I assume) would go something like: if people don't pay for content up front and also don't watch the ads then these services can't exist, therefore if these services existing is better for society than them not existing, then it follows that <DRM, etc., fill in the blank> is good for society.

You might not like it but a great deal of our economy is built on that premise, so a lot of people and companies have a stake in holding onto such arguments.

Such an argument is a serious and honest one, and should be responded to with some care. Outright dismissal is not interesting.

> That's because there was a very good reason for that Covid "nonsense" as you put it: reducing infection rates and keeping healthcare systems from collapsing.

That definitely turns out to have been false. The models were vastly wrong. We definitely have differential handling of the pandemic, from Sweden, Africa, and some states in the U.S. for example, and those that went all out did not do better than those that didn't.

Many people warned that this was overblown, but also many people greatly enjoyed exercising authority, and others greatly enjoyed a sense of moral virtue ("saving grandma") that was unjustified.

[rolph]

If I behaved like managers of Google, Meta or Microsoft, not only would i be ashamed of myself; I would not leave my lunch or coffee out of my sight.

[ohgodplsno]

Allow me to wire 500k+ in your account every year, and you'll see that your morals are easily bought.

[mrguyorama]

No, fuck that. There are many people I know who have explicitly rejected a payoff to do the right thing.

If your morals go away when they actually matter, you didn't actually have morals, you just had an excuse why you weren't already rich. A person is judged by what they do, explicitly and especially when it actually matters.

[justinclift]

> It's only natural I behave similarly.

Are you meaning towards everyone? Or are you meaning your behaviour back towards those companies?

[midoridensha]

I hope he means back toward those companies, in which case he's exactly right.

You wouldn't treat a deranged serial killer with respect and courtesy. Why should poorly-behaved amoral corporations be treated as you would treat normal humans?

Corporations should be treated in accordance with their own behavior. The mom-n-pop shop down the street that uses an LLC for legal purposes and treats you like a valued customer? You should treat them with respect and kindness. The evil megacorp that tries to lobby for shitty laws to screw you over? You should screw them over too. (And alternatively, the big corporation that makes good products for decent prices and doesn't seem to be actively trying to blatantly harm society and twist things to their advantage with legal tricks or lobbying? You should treat them respectfully too.)

[miyuru]

> YouTube's resources

> Getting full Gb/s

Technically most of the time video is served on the same network(ISP) as youtube has caches with almost all ISPs, IXes in the world. It might be the largest CDN built to date.

Case in point, the authors YT URLs point to Canadian ISP Videotron.

https://bgp.he.net/dns/rr1---sn-8qu-t0aee.googlevideo.com

[p0w3n3d]

technically you should be able to download video and you should not be prevented from this, at least to have a proof somebody was spreading hate speech or insulting you or your relatives. Of course you can camcord the screen but this sounds like a stone age solution.

Do you know for example that you cannot take screenshots of netflix in your browser on Mac, and therefore cannot make a meme, which is a fair use that has been taken from you?

[nradov]

What does hate speech have to do with anything? The content has no bearing on the legality or ethics of downloading or bypassing throttling controls.

[thrashh]

It's the cost of doing business?