[X-post] [URGENT] A micro post on why Invidious proxies and NewPipe is not working right now, and methods to workaround this. - Lemmy

Hello! Just a quick update, since all of us use these services, and everyone is suddenly thrown off. YouTube has introduced a change in layout of videos. Until now, we could see videos sorted in chronological (ascending or descending) orders, or popular. Now, we can only see “popular” and “recently uploaded” sorted videos due to YouTube’s latest change. Invidious proxies (method which Newpipe uses to fetch video information) only show “oldest”, “newest” and “popular” sorted videos. The former 2 sorting methods no longer work, which Invidious proxies show by default. It is unclear why YouTube removed the chronological sorting, which has always been useful. A conspiratorial guess being made is that YouTube can remove older videos or videos with no ads or demonetised channel videos. You can do few things, like: # METHOD 1 For this method, having https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.trianguloy.urlchecker/ [https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.trianguloy.urlchecker/] on your Android phone is very handy, because of quick URL string manipulation accessibility. YouTube provides system playlists with user uploads: you can access them by taking the channel ID (not the user ID or the handle) (for instance, UCTwECeGqMZee77BjdoYtI2Q is the channel ID for the channel URL https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTwECeGqMZee77BjdoYtI2Q [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTwECeGqMZee77BjdoYtI2Q]), replacing the first two characters, UC, by UU, and appending the result to https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list= [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=] (for my example above, the resulting URL is https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUTwECeGqMZee77BjdoYtI2Q [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUTwECeGqMZee77BjdoYtI2Q]). Then open the link you get in NewPipe/Invidious This has some limitations (again, yes): you can’t see the view count and the upload date (these informations are not returned on playlists), but the first video of the playlist is the most recent one. However, age-restricted videos are included in these playlists. # METHOD 2 You can use Invidious proxies in web browser, and search your favourite YouTube channel or content. The first 10-20 search results should have recent videos listed for relevance. # METHOD 3 Using YouTube.com [http://YouTube.com] and use boolean operators for chronological search: > exact match [“search term”] > search terms in the name of the video [intitle:”search term”] > Date: AFTER:YYYY Only videos after YYYY year > BEFORE: Only videos before YYYY year # CONCLUSION We could be entering an era of censorship, not by direct deletion of old or controversial content, but by obscurity and omission of argument tactics. Looking through older content, or dislikes on videos, is made difficult for reasons without a doubt. It is not a random change, so make the best of what you have right now. Times are changing very rapidly.