Discussion

ompogUe: So, Google's browser says downloading a tool to download files from Google's servers is "Suspicious"? Not surprising.

schiffern: By the same token, Chrome itself could also be described as "a tool to download files from Google's servers."Can Chrome only download from Google's servers? Of course not, but that same fact also applies to yt-dlp.Not "surprised" by this bad behavior, but we should still condemn Google for misleading users and browser monopoly abuse.

rdevilla: It's over. The internet culture of the 20th and early 21st century has been appropriated for profit.

thesuitonym: No it's not, and no it hasn't. That old Internet is still there, you just stopped going to it.

rdevilla: You going to assume my gender and race next? The bulk of my output on the internet is not on port 443.

throwaway_19sz: You are not under attack. It’s just someone disagreeing with you. Please keep things civil.

schiffern: So? By the same token, Chrome itself is "a tool to download files from Google's servers." Chrome doesn't only download from Google's servers, but the same thing applies to yt-dlp.I'm equally not "surprised" by their bad behavior, but that shouldn't stop us from condemning Google for unethically misleading people and engaging in browser monopoly abuse.

dryarzeg: > Chrome itself is "a tool to download files from Google's servers."...legitimately. While Google (I will reinforce: Google, not everyone) sees downloading of the videos and other content from the YouTube by third-party services as illegitimate because of YouTube's ToS. After all, they're making money from the YouTube Premium and "Download" option provided by it, so things like that are kinda expected to happen.And no, I don't agree that it's right. While I can understand the position of Google, the method they (allegedly) used here... Well... I don't even know what to say. That's plainly wrong, in my opinion. After all, "download" is defined as "To transfer (data or a program) from a central computer or website to a peripheral computer or device." by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th Edition), so when you just watch videos, you download them already, don't you? What about watching them in browser, somewhere in embed on some website? Does that constitute a legitimate client (I guess so, because most of embeds still use YouTube Player after all)? That just makes me laugh : )

waffletower: I am sure that RIAA lawyers would rofl at this yt-dlp labelling being an example of Google "... unethically misleading people and (committing) browser monopoly abuse". I want to live in that fantasy world with you though.

john_strinlai: for what it is worth, when downloading the latest .exe from github, firefox says "this file is not commonly downloaded" and i have to select "allow download".scans of it are fine.probably just a heuristic-based false-positive, and not a news-worthy story of chrome abusing their monopoly or whatever.

rdevilla: Where is the incivility? If anything it's coming from those who project their simplistic ideas of others unto the complexity of others' persons to pigeonhole them into their own idiosyncratic mental categories.

asveikau: The heuristics powering this, as well as the Windows Defender whitelisting, are terrible.My understanding is that a specific binary needs to become popular for it to stop being flagged. This creates a chicken and egg problem. Users are not incentivized to use the program with the warning. But removing the warning requires many people to ignore the warning.This is a big problem for anyone writing Windows software. An indie developer or small open source project is not going to do well with this.

jddecker: The binaries they offer are complied using PyInstaller, which can give false positives in anti virus software.

TheSkyHasEyes: Why would a browser(be designed to) care about this?

reactordev: [delayed]

sleepybrett: break this shit up, break all of this shit up.Google needs to be at least what four companies.. gcp, youtube, search, workspaces...Apple needs to be at least two hardware/os, music/tv+Microsoft, meta, etc, Monopolies are bad and our SEC/FTC/Government is doing a poor job of controlling them. At least as equally trecherous are these businesses that overly vertically integrate... anyways, we're fucked.

g947o: You could also ask why Android care about banning side loading to "prevent scams and spyware", and I honestly don't have an answer at all.

alsetmusic: Reminds me of how Bing search for Google takes people to a page meant to resemble Google.com. Can't trust huge companies.But as others have pointed out, it's probably a coincidence in this case. But who knows.

ddtaylor: "Never let a good tragedy go to waste"

ddtaylor: Google has been anti yt-dlp before it was forked. They also have rules that carve out tools like this from their extension store and at Android, except enforcement is lacking sometimes.Google is terrified of users having access users control to their video content.

nslsm: yt-dlp breaks YouTube’s DRM. They could easily get the repo removed under the DMCA. They don’t.

throwaway85825: Clear conflict of interest enabled by anti trust not being enforced.

fortran77: Firefox gives a similar warning.