Had this question in my mind for a while now, after going through the recent Reddit API drama.

I am a big FOSS advocate, and have moved away from YouTube (but not the contents, lol) because of its invasive tracking practice.

I have been using NewPipe on my phone for a long time now, and I think it’s an excellent piece of work.

I believe I also read somewhere that unlike other third party YouTube Apps, NewPipe doesn’t use YouTube’s API, but instead retrieves data by scraping the website via an Extractor.

Recently I came across LibreTube - which I believe has a slightly different approach. It points to a “Piped API” which acts as an “intermediary” between YouTube and LibreTube ( and I think I also heard that Piped API uses NewPipe Extractor underneath) - I am not hugely tech-savvy, so correct me if I sound weird.

All these said and done - in case YouTube decides to turn rogue one fine morning (like Reddit) - will any of these Apps be impacted?

(And while we are here, can anybody please ELI5 for me the differences between Invidious and Piped?)

Thanks in advance !

  • @ZikejiEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    I also read that the original Invidious Dev (Omar Roth) has shut down his instance in 2020, and is also taking a break from active development. Other Invidious instances might still be around, but for now it’s not the most interesting thing to check out, at least for me.

    The project itself is under active development, with plenty of active instances. I personally don’t use it but I don’t blame the original dev for shutting down their own instance, as hosting a project is a completely different beast from developing it.