Invidious Seems to be Nearing 'End of Life' After Repeated Crackdowns by Google/Alphabet/YouTube
Almost no Invidious instance works anymore (as of this morning, none)
It's with great regret or almost remorse that I find myself having to nearly give up; it's not just Invidious either, it's everything that uses YouTube APIs and at the start of the week I spent nearly two hours trying to download a video of the Assange talk (in vain). Tomorrow we'll have a second video of it. But it's getting harder and harder. Sometimes it's almost impossible.
Invidious was always sort of "at the mercy"; now it's at the "end of life" and people should not exclusively upload to YouTube, for it's getting problematic not just for Invidious users.
People assume this is a matter of viewing alone. But no...
This also makes it very difficult to download anything, even one's own videos. Invidious helped provide a path for Free software users, but Google hates Free software and moves towards DRM/attestation with proprietary blobs. YouTube is becoming more like Netflix.
Today I cannot get Invidious to work. All instances are failing. YouTube also blocks me (for blocking ads).
It seems it's not just me, either. My wife tested the same thing.
This was tested on two machines by two people for a long time this morning, repeatedly even, using all instances:
Nothing works.
And the last/latest patch isn't suggestive of a fix/workaround in the pipeline:
The main person maintaining the project is there. His own instance (yewtu.be) pretty much gave up on YouTube and it seems like all past Invidious links in Techrights won't work anymore.
It seems very unlikely that YouTube will loosen its restrictions. Over time it only tightens them.
To Free software users, YouTube ought to become a "no-no". Spread the word. Consider PeerTube. █