[fr] optional YT login to circumvent IP bans

[throwaway242685]

Checklist

• I made sure that there are no existing issues - open or closed - which I could contribute my information to.
• I have read the FAQ and my problem isn't listed.
• I'm aware that this is a request for NewPipe itself and that requests for adding a new service need to be made at NewPipeExtractor.
• I have taken the time to fill in all the required details. I understand that the feature request will be dismissed otherwise.
• This issue contains only one feature request.
• I have read and understood the contribution guidelines.

Feature description

an option to login with our YT credentials would be great to circumvent IP bans on NewPipe.

yes, I know that the point of NewPipe is to be as much as privacy-oriented as possible.

but with all the aggressive changes that Google has done recently, I don't think there's any other alternative.

when you get hit with an IP ban, the app literally becomes completely unusable.

you can't watch any videos, everything throws an error.

Why do you want this feature?

when you get hit with an IP ban, you can't watch any videos.

everything throws an error.

Additional information

No response.

[KyrbySwiUtch]

Could Newpipe use a built in proxy (or other workaround) to bypass IP bans? I was very randomly hit with an IP ban today and have no way of telling if its permanent. I can circumvent this with almost any VPN I tested (inclouding free ones, but do that at your own risk) but this slows down the experience. I have never had this happen before and I assume this is a new thing that google is doing to reduce the usage of third party apps.

While I think this should not be solved by adding a log in option (since enough other services already allow that and Newpipe does not want to require or offer log in) I do think this is something that requires a reaction, since from what I've read this IP banning is also randomly affecting others and knowing google this will probably only get worse.

For now, Grayjay's fallback circumvents this (at least for me) So I can recommend using that (altough it is very much different from Newpipe because it is an entirely different service with different goals, but it does stream YT videos) or using VPN(s).

[XilinJia]

I'm probably getting this these couple of days.
@KyrbySwiUtch what is Grayjay's fallback ?

[KyrbySwiUtch]

@XilinJia Grayjay uses a fallback login feature if playback fails, this is often used to play videos that are restricted by youtube. This also gets around IP blocks. I don't know all the details of what exactly they do but they seem to use a spoof account or something to fetch these videos for the end user, without the end user having to log in. (And yes, Grayjay does allow login, again: They are a very different service to Newpipe and Newpipes forks)

I don't want to adverstise for Grayjay in a thread for a Newpipe Issue so I won't be talking about it any further. Grayjay is fully available on Github if you want to look into that. Sry for "advertising" ig.

[thomaskrol]

duplicate of #1322

[hollownights]

@KyrbySwiUtch

Could Newpipe use a built in proxy (or other workaround) to bypass IP bans?

No. Piped was/is an YouTube proxy (which was/is used by LibreTube), but it is now pretty much defunct, because having a bunch of people behind the same proxy is a really easy target for YouTube.

@tom22k

duplicate of #1322

This is not a duplicate issue. That issue was about account use and management, this one is about making sure NewPipe can keep working. Without a login path, NewPipe will be dead by the end of the year.

Since the last update, NewPipe already has to use an WebView instance running in the background to get poTokens, so, running the same instance for login (NOT the same as account use and management inside the app) is a logical and needed next step.

[Thompson3142]

#8696 (comment) here a comment from somebody that is on the team. It is also literally the second question in the FAQ.

[throwaway242685]

#8696 (comment) here a comment from somebody that is on the team. It is also literally the second question in the FAQ.

this is not about account management/sync, this is about circumventing IP bans.

Squawker also had to implement a login option to be able to keep working, but it was not implemented to sync things with your Twitter account (that's not even a feature), it was only implemented because there was no other way to keep using the app anonymously anymore.

[Thompson3142]

"NewPipe's goal is to as effectively as possible protect its users' privacy. This means, the app only sends information to external servers which is needed to access content like videos or search results.

Having said this, the developers of NewPipe hope it is understandable that they will not implement any form of authentication which might allow tracking users" what is so hard to understand about that.
If NewPipe can work in any way without it than it will not change that. IP bans are currently not on the scale that it would completely stop working. It would require a whole fundamental debate when the issue is big enough to consider this as a last resort. There are already forks that do implement logins though so if the problem persists for you, you can use those.

[hollownights]

@Thompson3142

Yes, everyone who ended up using NewPipe has done so because it doesn’t have ads and provides greater privacy…

But that time of greater privacy ended with the introduction of poTokens. By using (or, having to use) poTokens, every single user is being tracked already, because these tokens act as authentication, which is derived from the user’s hardware and software at use. If before, when using NewPipe, YouTube only saw an IP address and a user-agent, now it sees just as much Google sees when we visit a website with Google Analytics (in terms of fingerprinting capabilities). YouTube now knows every single NewPipe user and probably can very easily correlate a NewPipe user with its Google account, even if not using it in/through NewPipe. In other words: we are being barred because we are not logged, despite the fact that YouTube/Google is already tracking us and know who we are.

If NewPipe can circumvent this problem without a login path, great; if not, there is no reason for denial around privacy.

[hollownights]

Bunch of issues opened here in the last few weeks due to YouTube blocking non-logged users. Probably related to the last attack on ad blockers.