RFE: poll on youtube alternatives, such as odysee, dlive, rumble etc

[herrdeh]

Checklist

• I checked, but didn't find any duplicates (open OR closed) of this issue in the repo.
• I have read the contribution guidelines given at https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/blob/HEAD/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md.
• This issue contains only one feature request. I will open one issue for every feature I want to request.

Describe the feature you want

With more and more censorship applied on youtube, we less and less can use it as a valuable source of information. More and more valuable sources evade to other platforms, such as rumble, odysee, dlive - and probably quite some other ones I'm not even aware of. I suggest to hold a poll which alternative video platforms should be supported in future, giving developers an estimation on priorities.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe it

• Performance of video platforms on browsers, especially on an older phone, can really be poor.
• Beloved features, like audio playback with screen turned off, are mostly not available.
• Administration of bookmarks over different tools is no fun.
• Guess, the author of The ability to add different video platforms #5889 has the same intention as I have.

Additional context

On the long run, my hope is that semi-monopolies like youtube will not survive. And I hope that NewPipe will encourage this process of independence from big tech companies - towards more variety, resilience and competition.
There are some related requests: #4733, #4854, #6031 and #434. These are focussed on adding lbry (odysse), but I think there are more platforms to consider.

How will you/everyone benefit from this feature?

Breaking the youtube semi-monopoly is a value of its own - and NewPipe team can help!

[evermind-zz]

You're on the wrong project here! The support for platforms is not in the NewPipe app but inside the NewPipeExtractor lib. For information about supporting other platforms look at the NewPipeExtractor issue tracker for example: TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor#325 (comment)

In short the NewPipe Team is not willing to add alternatives they think are places of misinformation.

Nevertheless I've added support for rumble and reworked support from @yashx bitchute support into a forked NewPipeExtractor. But at the moment I have no time to create a fork that leverages on this library.

[opusforlife2]

@evermind-zz Although you're right, any poll would be better off hosted on the far more well known NewPipe repo, where more users could respond.

[CharString]

@herrdeh FLOSS is so nice; people can fork their own alternative for consuming alternative facts. Nothing is too niche.

[degarb]

I will add that I cannot move off from youtube as a platform without newpipe.

1. I need to be able to listen to scores of hours of lecture audio when I driving or manually working. Else I cannot keep up and use the half wasted hours.
2. I can learn 50 percent more by watching at 2.7 speed, with silence taken out (some closed captions to aid in missed word understanding). Since the cell phone allows a form factor more suited to more situations than my laptop, newpipe is the only tool I have.
3. In early 2018, the ads on you tube were tolerable. But as new android versions arrived the ads started to choke out the content (just like on am radio, which I had to abandon because of the ads back in the 90s). Newpipe and brave are the only way I can stomach watching youtube anymore on the android platform.

Odysee feels better to me than bitcute. Bitcute lacked too many things that youtube had. I hope that I can somehow migrate away from youtube to odysee. I do not see how I can do it without NewPipe. If Newpipe team can't see the danger of youtub's double standards and cherry picking censorship, I don't know what to do, because I am not a computer programmer.
I do see it as essential for our children's future, that newpipe support other platforms than YT.

[foolkiller1999]

Lol misinformation? YouTube has CNN, MSNBC, late night "comedians" and you call rumble misinformation? 🤦‍♂️

[vehosah]

Like youtube is not full of misinformation 😂

[degarb]

The problem is that no mere mortal knows what is truth and what is misinformation, according to History and logic. It is misinformation, and historic ignorance, to blankly declare any one idea as absolute misinformation.

We only have some ideas that are more provable than other ideas. Mark my words and quote me: either the most provable idea will prevail, or the most profitable idea will prevail. The false disprovable, but very lucrative, idea will always prevail, and all competing ideas silenced by declaring them misinformation. .... For a time, at least.

[harmin-parra]

I would love to have this functionality implemented.

As YouTube decided to do censorship, some videos channels get banned from YouTube, which force video creators to publish their videos in other websites.

[harmin-parra]

@evermind-zz

In short the NewPipe Team is not willing to add alternatives they think are places of misinformation.

To my knowledge, Youtube has no problem allowing old videos about the false Iraq weapons of mass destruction claims that lead to that war.
Isn't that misinformation from the part of YouTube ? LOL

Well, I didn't know that the NewPipe Team was also going to decide for us what is misinformation and what is not. LOL

[litetex]

I don't think this issue is currently very helpful and won't be so in the future.

Why?

• There is a lot of off-topic discussion about YT. If you annoyed about what YT does, discuss it somewhere else - we just implement/provide it as a source.
  • I also noticed that those off-topic conversations do not cite any sources
• You failed to realize that NewPipe is already (partial) controlled by the userbase. GitHub e.g. allows to give issues upvotes or let the user create a PR. The userbase is also mainly using Youtube. Where do I know that from? Well most issues that we get are about YT:

Service/Keyword inside issue	Open and closed issues updated since 2021	Percentage of issues
YT	284+652	84%
Soundcloud	33+44	7%
media.ccc.de	5+9	1%
Peertube	21+35	5%
Bandcamp	14+14	3%

• There are a ton of service requests inside NewPipe Extractor some are open since a long time, however nobody implements them - which is likely caused by the fact that not much people care about them
• The "beta" services are already poorly maintained and I think adding more services would make the situation worse

TL;DR
I see no reasons for a vote and what it should be good for.
I'm to 100% sure that if we now start a vote here it would be distorted by a crying minority and most people - who are fine with NewPipe - won't vote.
Similar patterns can be observed when we e.g. switch to a newer Android version and drop support for a outdated one: Most people don't care because they are up-to-date but a small amount of users who would be affected starts a comment war in the issue.

[Lee-Carre]

There is a lot of off-topic discussion about YT. If you annoyed about what YT does, discuss it somewhere else - we just implement/provide it as a source.

Yet, that sentiment somehow (magically) doesn't apply when it comes to Bitchute. Funny, that.

People are only going to take policy-sounding or policy-like statements when they're (internally-)consistent, and (intellectually-)honest.

Re ‘if you want it then implement it yourself’.

People tried, and those PRs were rejected.

Besides, there are far more users than developers.

The argument about YT being popular is potentially self-reinforcing (if not self-fulfilling). Chicken & egg problem.

People know that they can likely rely on NewPipe for YT access, but evidently have to use other software for accessing non-legacy video-hosting sites (other than PeerTube).

Collecting opinions of interested users is useful to know which features are desired, to keep development relevant.

If NewPipe isn't about being useful software to real-world users (as inconvenient as humans may be, sometimes), then what is its purpose?

[litetex]

There is a lot of off-topic discussion about YT. If you annoyed about what YT does, discuss it somewhere else - we just implement/provide it as a source.

Yet, that sentiment somehow (magically) doesn't apply when it comes to Bitchute. Funny, that.

I meant the discussions here and not the content of the site.
Btw, I just opened the bitbuchte homepage and >90% of all videos I saw are about conspiracy theories (mostly COVID). So I totally understand why the implementation was declined.

Besides, there are far more users than developers.

Unexpected

People know that they can likely rely on NewPipe for YT access,

As I mentioned above: Most users are using YT therefore YT is the most maintained service.

but evidently have to use other software for accessing non-legacy video-hosting sites (other than PeerTube).

I'm not undestanding what this is about but yes if the service is not implemented in NewPipe you can't use it.

Collecting opinions of interested users is useful to know which features are desired, to keep development relevant.

As I mentioned above this is e.g. done by GitHub upvotes.

If NewPipe isn't about being useful software to real-world users (as inconvenient as humans may be, sometimes), then what is its purpose?

I can't see how this is related to my above comment.

[alxlg]

@litetex do you know that there is a fork called BraveNewPipe that added a pretty decent support to Bitchute and Rumble? That support could be upstreamed to NewPipe but developers (any FOSS project is controlled by the userbase, come on) decided that they want to boycott those platforms because of personal beliefs.

[opusforlife2]

but developers decided they want to boycott those platforms because of personal beliefs.

Really? From the Readme of https://github.com/bravenewpipe/NewPipe:

platforms that promote pornography or other degrading things will NOT be included here

Hypocrisy much?

any FOSS project is controlled by the userbase, come on

Never forget Gab: How the biggest decentralized social network is dealing with its Nazi problem

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We apologise that this issue stayed open for so long and encouraged all the off-topic comments. There was never any point in commenting here. We debate the merits of adding or refusing to add a service on a per-service basis, not as a group of services representing a theme or idea.

So if you would like to point out the merits/demerits of a particular service, please go to the issue for that service in the Extractor repo here: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor/issues. If it doesn't already exist, then create a new one.