It does matter, because that Google integration didn't happen by magic. Whatever the site is, they chose to do things that way.

The only way Google stops things like this is if they get actual pushback, and the only realistic way to achieve that is to make the people using their service reconsider.

ah, that explains it...i half-remembered that something is off about that site, but couldn't remember what it was...thanks for the heads up!

What are good alternatives?

As far as I know, Cloudflare doesn't use reCaptcha. I think they use a version of hCaptcha running on their own workers.

Depending on your configuration, your experience will differ greatly.

As mentioned in another comment I made, Freetube relies heavily on either directly connecting to YouTube’s API or proxying through an Invidious instance, perhaps try a different Invidious instance, but in my case Freetube + Invidious works 9 times out of 10 for me.

There are two ways of using Freetube, either with YouTube’s APi or with Invidious’s APi.

When using YouTube’s APi you won’t get the same ad-blocking and proxying benefits compared to Invidious’s API.

One bonus of using Invidious is that your traffic is combined with everyone else’s who use that same instance, for example if you use https://inv.nadeko.net/ your traffic will be masked along side everyone else’s who happens to use that same instance making it harder for big corporations to track you, in this case Google.

Yes, every time the topic comes up, this same idea comes up of making individuals bear the financial burden of hosting and bandwidth, without an ounce of understanding how that will never, ever, create a viable youtube alternative.

And once those problems come up, someone will have the great idea of gathering people into collectives to lower the prices and increase bargaining power.

Then after that someone will have the idea of reducing costs by moving their individual videos into the same rack, so the costs of hardware, storage, maintenance go down and stability and uptime goes up.

and before long you arrive back at a youtube like platform, and you've just become the equivalent of techbro reinventing the concept of a train for the 380th time.

I think I know who you are talking about, I recall seeing something about her making more money posting on pornhub than youtube because of greater advertising sharing or something.

Afaik pornhub actually pays way more than YouTube. There are also lots of people uploading SFW content to the hub.

We're talking about youtube competition, self hosting isnt ever going to compete with youtube.

It’s a fairly common phrase. Language can change and have regional differences. This isn’t Quebec defending their weird version of French as the only “correct” way to speak.

What's "regular English"? Only words you personally know? https://www.oed.com/...

I think he just left to go work on fulu, no bad blood as far as i'm concerned. Anyways grayjay is pretty good, and when the new newpipe comes out that might be an even better choice maybe (but who knows when that'll be?? Tell me).

Ya, there's no way Apple would allow it in their app store

you know who else has documentaries?

PBS.

support your local public broadcasting stations, people.

I just avoid algorithms. If I want documentaries there are places for those.