this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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So I created an open-source Lemmy bot to reply to posts/comments with YouTube links with converted Piped links to preserve your privacy.

Piped is an open-source alternative privacy-friendly frontend to YouTube. You can watch the same content from YouTube without connecting to Google's servers.

You can find the source code at: https://github.com/TeamPiped/lemmy-piped-link-bot

You can find Piped's source code at: https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped

PS: I'm the author of Piped :P

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[–] TiffyBelle@feddit.uk 51 points 1 year ago (4 children)

That's neat, but anyone using Piped on a regular basis should probably look into something like LibRedirect for their browser to redirect every YouTube link to Piped regardless of where they encounter them.

[–] theghostoutside_@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Thanks for this. I had just been manually replacing the youtube.com part of the URL to my favourite Piped instance. The breadth of the addon is great.

[–] Redoomed@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

To add on to this tip, for anyone who is reluctant to or cannot install an extension on their browser, you can copy and paste the YouTube link into the search bar of your favorite Piped instance and hit Enter.

[–] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Thnk you so very much for that recommendation!

[–] ashtrix@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Good suggestion, thanks!

[–] HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago

PS: I’m the author of Piped :P

Thank you so much OP!

[–] kras@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Omg I've wanted something like piped for so long!! Thanks for letting me know about it!

[–] kavin@feddit.rocks 4 points 1 year ago

You're welcome! Now, anyone who creates a post/comment with a YouTube link will know about it too :)

[–] pinedhuitre@feddit.rocks 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you @kavin@feddit.rocks! Thank you for piped and the bot. It is now activated on !france@lemmy.world.

[–] kavin@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago

Good to hear that :) Inviting the bot definitely helps it reach more communities, so thanks for that!

[–] lemann@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is the bot currently online looking for new YouTube links all over Lemmy, or do we need to start up our own if we're interested in using this in a community?

Just wondering as I couldn't see a readme on the repo to find out.

[–] kavin@feddit.rocks 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can now try sending it a message mentioning communities in the format [!community@instance.tld](/c/community@instance.tld) and it will try joining it :)

[–] kavin@feddit.rocks 2 points 1 year ago

You can find more information at https://feddit.rocks/comment/39147, it tries to look all over Lemmy, but doesn't have enough communities to scan :/

[–] snor10@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What is the difference between piped and invidious?

[–] kavin@feddit.rocks 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Piped can be more privacy friendly in a few cases, as you don't need an account for subscriptions or playlists.

Here are some differences to Invidious:

  • Subscriptions don't necessarily require an account
  • Playlists don't necessarily require an account
  • Piped supports Infinite scrolling
  • Piped supports Webm videos
  • Piped can stream videos from Odysee if the same video is available there.
  • Piped is a lot lighter on the server
  • Piped always proxies your traffic to Google's servers (most Invidious servers don't proxy videos to YouTube by default)
  • Piped has SponsorBlock integrated (DeArrow will be added soon)
  • Piped has ReturnYouTubeDislike support via RYD-Proxy
  • Piped can only be self-hosted on a server. Invidious on the other hand can work fine on local networks.
  • Piped is a lot easier to administer than Invidious as an instance operator.

I'll conclude by saying that I was once an Invidious user. I decided to write Piped at a time when Invidious was riddled with extremely odd bugs and performance issues. Some of these issues still persist to this day. I've always kept performance a top priority in Piped. I wanted to create a better alternative to YouTube than Invidious for my use case and threat model. I think I have succeeded in that :)

[–] Camus@jlai.lu 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you so much for your work!

[–] Myro@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Wow, that's nice! Looking forward to give it a try later today.

[–] cousinofjah@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Questions:

Is Piped something that you have to self host

Are there instances out there that this redirects to or a single server?

Is it a sort of P2P thing where different servers host different videos or parts of different videos?

How will this be affected by Youtube cracking down on adblockers?

[–] kavin@feddit.rocks 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is Piped something that you have to self host

No, you don't have to self-host it. You have a large number of public instances hosted generously by people! You may want to however self-host it however if you don't live close to an instance, or want to actually own your own data.

Are there instances out there that this redirects to or a single server?

You can switch instances directly from the preferences page. You don't need to change your URL for switching instances.

Is it a sort of P2P thing where different servers host different videos or parts of different videos?

No, Piped has no P2P aspects at all. What you describe is technically infeasible/difficult since we don't store videos at all, just proxying them.

How will this be affected by Youtube cracking down on adblockers?

Time will tell, so far we aren't affected. But, we could be affected when it fully rolls out rather than as an A/B test.

[–] cousinofjah@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the reply. I'll definitely have to check it out.

[–] chagall@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I love Piped. I use it so much every day. I just wanted to thank you for creating and maintaining the project. It’s huge.

Also, this bot is going to be great for me on iOS because access to extensions on safari are really limited.

Thanks Kavin!

[–] Mousepad@burggit.moe 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've tried a few different instances and videos will not play. I'm using Brave and a VPN: blacklisting issues?

[–] kavin@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There shouldn't be any, is this on iOS for the setup?

[–] Mousepad@burggit.moe 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] kavin@feddit.rocks 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would try looking at the JavaScript console for errors, and the network tab for issues with requests. Something seems oddly wrong, unfortunately.

[–] Mousepad@burggit.moe 3 points 1 year ago

Turns out I did not try enough instances! Piped.lunar.icu threw a certificate date error and piped.yt threw a js error (or semething). Piped.video works fine!

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