Used through all of the apps and personally there's little incentive for me not to use Firefox/Fennec. The only issue is that background playing is flaky, not sure it only works on my Poco F7 and not my S23, or if it randomly starts pausing the video when leaving de browser or even if it's a browser or OS power saving settings. But when it works it works flawlessly.
In any case, there needs to be a huge problem to justify installing an android app. I prefer to keep them to a minimum and focus solely on the browser. Browsers are the only OS-vendor-safe option which I can use to bail entirely on Google's Android or iOS and go some place else.
But pipepipe runs on my phone and it's open source, so it's possible it has access to free infrastructure to build and distribute. I still don't understand which costs you are talking about. Is it YouTube's for storing and serving videos?
If this is the case you need to understand that all this is happening because YouTube is a monopoly. They lock-in creators and their userbase by requiring daily updates without which the algorithm won't promote the creator. This is surely to increase video volume, thus views and ad revenue, but a side effect is that effectively the content creator has no time to try to move the user base to another platform.
YouTube is a monopoly and one that's already abusing its position. These alternative apps and adblockers/sponsorblock hurts Google and it's good, a monopoly needs to hurt in order to break.
But the most important thing to remember is that this is self inflicted. Google could have played fair and opened up competition and instead of building a fortress they could have just... invested in making a better product to compete as it's how capitalism works. Monopolies destroy capitalism so it's morally justified for us citizens to club monopolies into smithereens by resisting corporation mandates.
Using alternative apps consumes less of YouTube's ressources than watching videos on their website directly. These wrapper apps download only the videos, thumbnails and texts - not the other resources, so the impact is actually less on their servers.
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
In any case, there needs to be a huge problem to justify installing an android app. I prefer to keep them to a minimum and focus solely on the browser. Browsers are the only OS-vendor-safe option which I can use to bail entirely on Google's Android or iOS and go some place else.
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
gchamonlive · · focus · HN ↗
If this is the case you need to understand that all this is happening because YouTube is a monopoly. They lock-in creators and their userbase by requiring daily updates without which the algorithm won't promote the creator. This is surely to increase video volume, thus views and ad revenue, but a side effect is that effectively the content creator has no time to try to move the user base to another platform.
YouTube is a monopoly and one that's already abusing its position. These alternative apps and adblockers/sponsorblock hurts Google and it's good, a monopoly needs to hurt in order to break.
But the most important thing to remember is that this is self inflicted. Google could have played fair and opened up competition and instead of building a fortress they could have just... invested in making a better product to compete as it's how capitalism works. Monopolies destroy capitalism so it's morally justified for us citizens to club monopolies into smithereens by resisting corporation mandates.
HungryYeti · · focus · HN ↗