With Reddit shutting down its API setting a precedent in the corporate tech world (and Reddit was a major outlier in that a ton of their users are technical minded and support third party clients, YouTube does not have that kind of userbase and will not get backlash for it), Twitter doing whatever the fuck they’re doing, and Google already hellbent on destroying ad blockers, the days of Newpipe, Invidious, and Freetube are numbered. Wouldn’t be surprised if they implement Netflix level DRM tomorrow that makes alt clients impossible. I say savour your alt clients while you can guys, you won’t be able to soon.
idk, i wonder if youtube could even work if you always had to be logged in. when i imagine what most of youtube’s activity is, i think of the foreign music videos with billions of views. could their ad model with those kinds of numbers possibly work if they put account auth barriers in front of it? how many hotel lobbies, barber shops, etc are playing youtube on loop logged out worldwide? netflix level drm would radically change the platform.