Just the other day there was a story posted on hn[0][1] that said YouTube secretly wants downloaders to work.

It's it's always been very apparent that YouTube are doing _just enough_ to stop downloads while also supporting a global audience of 3 billion users.

If the world all had modern iPhones or Android devices you'd bet they'd straight up DRM all content

[0] https://windowsread.me/p/best-youtube-downloaders

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45300810

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trenchpilgrim 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

More specifically, yt-dlp uses legacy API features supported for older smart TVs which don't receive software updates. Eventually once that traffic drops to near zero those features will go away.

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knowitnone3 3 days ago | parent [-]

So more people using yt-dlp will increase the likelihood of Youtube keeping legacy APIs?

	▲	ddtaylor 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		They probably have metrics they track, such as purchases or customer activity.

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Aurornis 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That conspiracy theory never even made sense to me. Why would anyone think that a payment and ad-supported content platform secretly wants their content to be leaked through ad and payment free means?

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judge2020 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Mainly the theory that, if you can’t use downloaders to download videos, then people will no longer see YT as the go-to platform for any video hosting and will consider alternatives.

And I call that a theory for a reason. Creators can still download their videos from YT Studio, I'm not sure how much importance there is on being able to download any video ever (and worst case scenario people could screen recording videos)

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Liquix 3 days ago | parent [-]

i'd argue that 95%+ of users (creators and viewers) couldn't care less about downloading videos. creators use youtube because it's where the viewers and money are, viewers use youtube because it's where all the content is. none of them are going to jump ship if yt-dlp dies.

also, one could assume that the remaining 5% are either watching with vlc/mpv/etc or running an adblocker. so it's not like google is going to lose ad revenue by breaking downloaders like yt-dlp. grandparent comment (legacy smart TV support) is the much more likely explanation

	▲	dredmorbius 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's not the 95% you're concerned about, it's the 1%, or 0.0001%, who are top content creators, who both archive their own production and use YT as a research tool themselves (whether simple "reply videos" or something more substantive). Ultimately Google will kill the goose and lose the eggs. Those creators are what drive the the bulk of viewers to the platform. Though, come to think of it, as YT's become increasingly obnoxious to use (the native Web client is utterly intolerable, front-ends such as Invidious are increasingly fragile/broken, yt-dlp is as TFA notes becoming bogged down in greater dependencies) I simply find myself watching (or as my preference generally is, listening) to far less from the platform. I may be well ahead of the pack, but others may reach similar conclusions in 5--10 years. Or when a less-annoying alternative clearly presents itself.

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DecentShoes 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree, all I can think of is that durely alot of commentary YouTubers rely on YouTube downloaders to use fair-use snippets of other people's videos in their commentary videos?

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attila-lendvai 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

being a de facto monopoly has a lot of value that is hard to quantify...

e.g. censorship, metadata, real time society-wide trends, etc...

google is way-way more than just a company.