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Browse YouTube with Open RSS feeds (openrss.org)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Current YouTube RSS Feeds leave much to be desired, so we're improving them

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

The only mentioned benefit seems to be privacy.

Apparently it prevents this auto embedding:

YouTube injects their video link directly in its RSS feeds in a way that will cause some RSS Readers to automatically embed the YouTube video

But it is just a media link. It isn't like YouTube is doing something nefarious. This are just doing RSS (somewhat) like intended. If your feed reader renders these links without any confirmation it is an issue that will affect all feeds and you should change the settings on your feed reader.

In general I like openness providing feeds for sites that don't have them but this seems a little pointless. I guess it is basically a proxy service that hides your IP at this point?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I checked this out when I ditched the yt frontend, but it was very limited in how many videos it could show you, and there was still no way to filter out shorts, I think.

A few ugly python scripts now take care of all that for me using newsboat.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Doesnt this just outsource privacy to another website? Also youtube RSS links are all identical except for the last bit, and that is easy to get by for example opening the channel on any piped instance and copying the string at the end.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Doesnt this just outsource privacy to another website?

You are not in a privacy-focused community. The goal of the project is to improve existing RSS feeds, not offer any extra privacy. Moreover, this actually worsens your privacy because YouTube isn't the only entity that knows what channels you are subscribed to now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It doesnt really worsen it no. I would assume its comparable to a VPN. Because all the requests for RSS feeds come from openrss.org, it is impossible for google to individually track users. Youtube still sees the total sum of all the channels being requested but openrss.org gets the per user specifics now.

You are not in a privacy-focused community

Privacy is not really an "option", its a core human right and should be considered for every proposed software solution on the internet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

It doesnt really worsen it no. I would assume its comparable to a VPN. Because all the requests for RSS feeds come from openrss.org, it is impossible for google to individually track users. Youtube still sees the total sum of all the channels being requested but openrss.org gets the per user specifics now.

But of course. Still, you requests RSS feeds because you want to get the content on Youtube, right? So you would still share data with Youtube, but you would also have to trust OpenRSS to refrain from doing questionable things privacy-wise.

Privacy is not really an "option", its a core human right and should be considered for every proposed software solution on the internet.

You misunderstood why I replied like that. The way you worded the original comment was unappropriate, in my humble opinion, because this is not a privacy community and the tool was never advertised as being privacy-respecting but rather as a technically better alternative to native Youtube RSS feeds.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Maybe i misunderstood what this site does but isnt the point of it that instead of directly pulling the RSS feed from youtube.com, you instead tell openrss.org to pull it from youtube.com and then forward the requested content to your rss reader? You wouldnt actually be directly talking to any google server like this.