Ytdl on termux has been broken for me. I've tried a few different formats but I always get hit with a 403 error. No update has been pushed.
If you still can download videos do it now as 100% they're deploying region by region.
It's concerning to hear that you are having problems with yt-dlp.
I've definitely been downloading as many videos as I can. it's time consuming and I need more space heh.
By the way: Did you try to use yt-dlp on a different video and make sure the 403 is not cause it's age restricted? If you don't mind what general region are you in?
So is yt-dl not even able to download 720p anymore? Because it's defaulting to 360p now?
I just tried yt-dlp in my region (North America) and did not find any issues. 1080p worked fine, 720p works fine etc.
Maybe I'm just lucky or maybe they're rolling it out region by region.
The companies have to spend money to defuse whatever tricks are invented to block ads. You're already in a winning position.
Exactly. It's an arms race -- YouTube versus their entire user base.
It's good to be optimistic but a realistic assessment would show we are not in a winning technological position.
Google can do what Twitch did (the nuclear option: inject the ads into the HLS stream) and there's no technical solution to blocking the ads.
This is why the best thing you can do is become self reliant, download the content you want, and make Google fear creating more people who don't give a shit about YouTube and spend that watch time elsewhere.
I see a lot of you guys in this thread are saying that you'll stop using YouTube altogether if they successfully break the Ad Blockers. But I wonder, what would you guys use instead? YouTube competitors like rumble and Story fire just cannot compete with the personalities on YouTube. Or would you guys just pick up a new hobby like cooking?
I'm planning on a combination of several things... Relying on my own content library, using other services like Kick, and spending that extra time on gardening and other hobbies.