this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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What's the point of self-hosting YouTube frontends? (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by Illuminated_Humanoid@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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Okay, before you downvote me, hear me out.

I self-host quite a bit of services and am knee-deep in this hobby, like many of you are. I try my best to analyze what makes sense to self-host and what doesn't just so that I don't jump the gun and switch everything over to self-host just for the sake of doing it. I try to focus on what brings value to the table and what doesn't, and I just cannot see the value in self-hosting YouTube front ends. I tried my best to like it and force it on myself for several weeks, but it seems to hinder and ruin the YouTube experience rather than enhance it for me.

I find extensions on desktop such as YouTube Enhancer paired with uBlock Origin is a more enjoyable experience, and on mobile I prefer to use ReVanced. I feel these options are superior to piped/invidious etc.

So tell me, I'm curious. Why do you bother to self-host YouTube when there subjectively appears to be better options?

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[โ€“] cakee_ru@alien.top 2 points 1 year ago

I don't have a google account, so I use Invidious to discover videos from channels that I follow, then download them with my wrappers over yt-dlp that imports them catalogued to Jellyfin. right now I have like 4-6 TB of YT videos cached.

also I love the consistent UI of Invidious, without constant "new features" and popups. I'd love something similar for discord so I don't see popups for crap like "mega emojis" or whatever they call it.

[โ€“] utopiah@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I've been using youtube-local for maybe a year or more now. "ruin the YouTube experience" is the point for me. Namely I do NOT want a "pleasant" experience because if I do, I'll spend hours and HOURS on that platform instead of working, going out, skating, etc. So... sure if I need to watch a video, it works perfectly but I'm not going to get ANY suggestion, no front page, no recommendation, no autoplay, etc.