For some time, trying to watch videos on Invidious or Freetube has been a pain. It has been oscillating day by day but now I get like 3 seconds of video for 8 seconds of loading time
Some days ago I saw a notice on top of the webpage in some Invidious instances stating something like “Youtube is trying to impede frontends”
Today i tried going to youtube.com and enabling some requests on uBO and videos loading freakin’ fast
Yeah hard times for privacy focused youtube alternatives… I don’t have any issues at the moment with LibreTube on android. But it’s bases on the Piped api.
But a few months back there were less working servers. Maybe because of youtube’s new policy? Have to investigate invidious and piped github’s issue page
I got sick of some of the various Invidious instances taking 5+ refreshes to load a video, so ended up installing my own instance and its been a much nicer experience
I suspect one of the ways that Google detects the invidious instances is with the instance’s behavior: if a lot of different clients use a given instance, it makes it stand out.
Therefore using your own instance is a good way to get around that problem. I think I’ll try that as well.
Seriously worth a go, takes minutes to setup if you’re already ready for docker containers. Restart it often (dailiy is the official guidance, i find it doesnt need that with only me as user, i just do it when it starts to feel sluggish) - and I’ve put it behind a reverse proxy with auth to keep it to myself
Well, I’ve been having slow issues on Youtube (I use adblocker) and Invidious. I think the fight against adblockers is related. After all, invidious is also a way to access content without those annoying ads.
damn, even with seeing the bot around here i forgot to try Piped these days
anyway, i’ve found a solution - i had “proxy videos through Invidious” turned on on Freetube (which was redundant since i’m behind a VPN). i’ve unchecked it and things seem fime now
Can’t say I’ve noticed myself with FreeTube to be honest, local API, I’ve been using it for years now and it’s probably as good as it’s ever been. The fallback for me if it ever doesn’t work is yt-dlp.
thanks everyone for the feedback. while unaware, I was still using Invidious in Freetube through the setting “Proxy videos through Invidious”. it’s turned off now and working fine
how can i find such “obscure” instances, tho? i’ve always picked one from the Invidious’ website public list and, upon testing, all of them seem slow right now
also, I had forgotten to try Piped, which is working fine
on a side note, I’d never understood why Piped was made, given that Invidious exists, but here it is, in case anyone wants to know
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