I dont know what to think, really.
The Dekaif channel has 434 videos, but YouTube is only showing 275 to clients, whether logged in or not, whether yt-dlp or official access.
This isn’t the first channel I’ve witnessed this, and weirder stuff, on. Another example is this video - “Belt” meme - it is accessible on Grayjay, yet not on YouTube, meaning (I think) that publicly shared videos are being deindexed, and yet they are still hosted.
You used to be able to take the video code from the URL (everything after ‘?v=’ and before ‘&’) and get the exact video in search results. Not now. The second YouTuber, Sparky, has 35 uploads, only 9 of which are visible. And I can attest that at least one of the remaining 26 is hosted, but invisible. I don’t even know how it came up using Grayjay but not YouTube or Revanced.
Basically, there’s a TON of shady underhanded shit happening at YTHQ and everyone needs to jump ship to Odysee, Peertube or some platform that won’t be clogged with AI. This is bad for everyone.
I’m posting it here mainly because I verified my findings with yt-dlp, and this new bs is successfully thwarting my attempts to archive.
3rd Oct edit: I am seeing massive differences in indexed videos versus archived videos. I am currently aggregating but the definitely affected videos range from 10% to 50%
YouTube is not doing good. I get flickering on Apple TV. On my Mac videos play without sound (computer isn’t muted) or they take way too long to load. Granted I don’t pay, but wow. Google is not doing so well.
That sounds like it could be a codec issue, have not experienced any of that on my TV’s or Linux boxes.
I too see issues, but my clients are all some form of alternate app so I don’t have a true baseline. On Grayjay some videos just stop loading halfway through, and I can’t view it unless I switch to one of the other clients, and SmartTubeNext and YouTube with Sponsorblock both give me about a minute of black screen. NGL I prefer the black to unnecessarily invasive advertising
You shouldn’t really have to pay, not when advertising is the way Google funds everything. Iirc advertising is 90% of their substantial income.
I am seeing more rules and system changes hurt creators, and more creators quit, complain about it, and/or actively recommend adblockers and Patreon donations.
When you pay there is no advertising, except the damn “creators” putting their own midroll ads and merch/subscription begging in - which infuriates me.
SponsorBlock gets rid of most of the ads that the uploaders put in their videos.
I just read somewhere that it’s because clients need to wait until the pre-roll ad ends. until that the servers will block requests to the actual video for your client