Please just post simple YouTube links. It’s so much easier to just have them automatically open in LibreTube on my end than try to de-cruft the video link you were trying to share from whatever shoddy workaround you tried to implement.
Essential tools for those who need them:
URLCheck for removing tracking and redirects from URLs and selecting the application to open them
And for Firefox & Chromium there’s LibRedirect which works for a ton of different sites, including YouTube. You often do have to hop between instances to find one that works because they keep getting blocked (and some of the services they list don’t even have working privacy frontends anymore), but the extension makes it easy
I only recently learned that piefed actually has some decrufting built into the codebase directly. So, a user could make a post sharing a huge ugly youtube url, but it will be cleaned up when the post is made.
FWIW, this is the consensus in every thread I’ve seen the issue raised. And it’s not just because it’s the “lazy” option that everyone’s used to.
It also happens to be the most obvious solution to both (1) the more-technical user’s need for a canonical reference from which to redirect to their preferred frontend, and (2) the less-technical user’s need for a link that “just works” by default.
The criticism that it allows more traffic to YouTube is valid, but forcing traffic to a particular frontend/instance seems to create new problems for basically everyone, including instance admins who often aren’t prepared for major traffic spikes.
Please just post simple YouTube links. It’s so much easier to just have them automatically open in LibreTube on my end than try to de-cruft the video link you were trying to share from whatever shoddy workaround you tried to implement.
Essential tools for those who need them:
Also Libredirect if you are using it in the browser
And the chance that you invidious instance will break is quite a hit higher that YT will
And original links will probably be longer alive. (Even though you can deconstruct them)
And for Firefox & Chromium there’s LibRedirect which works for a ton of different sites, including YouTube. You often do have to hop between instances to find one that works because they keep getting blocked (and some of the services they list don’t even have working privacy frontends anymore), but the extension makes it easy
I only recently learned that piefed actually has some decrufting built into the codebase directly. So, a user could make a post sharing a huge ugly youtube url, but it will be cleaned up when the post is made.
FWIW, this is the consensus in every thread I’ve seen the issue raised. And it’s not just because it’s the “lazy” option that everyone’s used to.
It also happens to be the most obvious solution to both (1) the more-technical user’s need for a canonical reference from which to redirect to their preferred frontend, and (2) the less-technical user’s need for a link that “just works” by default.
The criticism that it allows more traffic to YouTube is valid, but forcing traffic to a particular frontend/instance seems to create new problems for basically everyone, including instance admins who often aren’t prepared for major traffic spikes.