
FixYT - turbo_pax
http://fixyt.com/
======
zokier
I think this is completely wrong approach. We as a community should stop
giving G/YT our traffic if their stuff does not please us instead of making an
effort to give them more traffic.

~~~
nashequilibrium
Sign me up, i want youtube to be killed dead!!!! Youtube is cool but google
jumps in and just ruins your experience. They asked me 4 time before to adjust
my name and i chose my current username....4 times. Now, for the last two
weeks i have been getting this pop again but now i must apparently sign up for
G+, when i try and comment, guess what that fu __ __popup again, i cannot
comment unless i join G+.I have been just closing the window and saying, "O
well that saves me some time wasting at least." Google is now as arrogant as
Microsoft was and don't care about what the consumer wants but where they want
to push you. I will never use G+, Google will save themselves the distraction
by shutting down that crap, but they so blinded by facebook that they losing
sight of the actual power they have.

They got this idea in their head that they need to create the complete
identity for users to target ads better. This idea came about when the press
and pundits where saying that facebook was so valuable because of realnames
and user identity. The issue is that it's been proven that you can build a
profile from a person's search history, even Target can predict if you are
pregnant. So why waste time with this shit, anger your users and destroy your
brands value?

~~~
rmc
So all you have to do is start a tech company that does this. When Google
knock on your doors, with _literally_ one and half billion dollars of Google
stock, you have to say "No".

Would you do that? Could you blame anyone else for doing that?

~~~
dylangs1030
I couldn't do it, but Snapchat's CEO turned down a cool $3 billion.

It can be done.

~~~
cenhyperion
>Snapchat's CEO turned down a cool $3 billion

Because word is he's getting offers for over $4 billion

~~~
dirkk0
And next week somebody will post that Apple offers $5 billion.

------
sequoia
It's nice but if you ever even appear to cut into their ad model they'll shut
ya down. Gotta pay the engineers, other employees, electric bill etc....
youtube ain't free ;)

EDIT: I really like the site & hope you flesh it out. Just not getting my
hopes up too high. :)

~~~
tehwebguy
Redisplaying YouTube content on other websites is explicitly allowed. Ads run
in the embedded player, which they made easily available and usable on
purpose.

What is NOT allowed, as far as I know, is using their API and player to make a
website that does nothing but show YouTube content.

~~~
wuliwong
Last time I checked if all your are doing is repackaging their content but not
adding any other content of substance to the page, it is against the TOS. This
was a couple years ago but that was my understanding.

~~~
ewillbefull
Yup, they can block your domain from embedding if they want.

------
ngoldbaum
As I'm involved with an open source analysis and visualization tool named yt
[1][2], this submission made my heart skip a beat.

[1] [http://yt-project.org](http://yt-project.org)

[2] Neal Stephenson reference.

~~~
tzury
yt-project looks interesting. thanks for sharing.

------
yangtheman
I love it. With all the horrible and bloated changes they have been making, I
thought there would be an opportunity to create simpler version of or
alternate of YouTube. I guess you are still using YouTube contents so they can
block you if they wish.

I still think there is an opportunity to create an alternate video sharing
site that's good enough.

Good job, though! I will be using your site instead of youtube as long as your
site is live.

~~~
smokinn
There's also Google's own version of trimmed down youtube:
[http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta](http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta)

After enabling that I've never looked back. No comments and loads way faster.

~~~
ghayes
This should be more well known. I just enabled it and don't plan on ever
looking back.

~~~
mburns
Until you want to watch a playlist or a channel without choosing each video
each time.

Feather Beta doesn't work with the "Play all" links or playlists in general.

~~~
dools
I created a little thing for making and sharing playlists:
[http://www.cueyoutube.com/](http://www.cueyoutube.com/)

I tweet my lists using the hashtag #cueyoutube which means I can always go
back and find them later using [http://snapbird.org/](http://snapbird.org/)

------
jff
Both this and Youtube's own Feather beta seem to lack support for playlists. I
like playlists for listening to music at work, for example Brad Neely's
"America, Now" videos
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPQrXUpvkuc&list=PLD8217FD2EE...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPQrXUpvkuc&list=PLD8217FD2EE6CEB23)).
Also useful for watching web series like Marble Hornets. I love a simpler
experience, but I think content creators will want playlists.

~~~
flyintothemoon
Got you covered. [http://huzzaz.com/search](http://huzzaz.com/search)

------
bschwarz
After getting fed up with the ongoing changes to subscriptions I created a
barebones tool to act as a replacement. No Google/Youtube account needed, new
videos are fetched using the API, setup is git clone and open in browser.

[https://github.com/adabei/tubeless/](https://github.com/adabei/tubeless/)

~~~
skore
Pro Tip: Just use github pages to instantly give people a demo. All you need
for that is to make a gh-pages branch and rename your main file to index.html.

~~~
bschwarz
Thanks, that's a good idea. This would eliminate the need to download anything
and make it usable from mobile without any additional steps!

~~~
skore
Indeed! Did the same for my own youtube thingie:
[https://github.com/daviddeutsch/yt-
sanegrid/](https://github.com/daviddeutsch/yt-sanegrid/)

------
SeoxyS
I'm a big fan of toogles and its chrome extension.

[http://toogl.es/#/browse](http://toogl.es/#/browse)

~~~
trendoid
from [http://fixyt.com/about](http://fixyt.com/about) : "Thanks to toogl.es
for the like/dislike concept. Toogl.es is an awesome YouTube alternative too."

------
ChrisNorstrom
Thank you whoever you are. May the randomness of the Universe be in your
favor.

\- It's blazing fast, much faster than the original.

\- Doesn't have that stupid loading bar at the top.

\- No more glitched video page loads.

\- Isn't going to be redesigned every 5 months like YT.

\- The video player is center aligned and not left aligned.

\- Drops all the unnecessary UI elements and doesn't bother me to start using
my real name with G+.

I've become so pissed off at Google for the way it's been handling YT
redesigns (and Analytics redesigns too). It's like they get the most amateur
designers out of high school, and go on an a/b test spree by changing
absolutely everything they can. YT's gone through 3+ redesigns now. Each one
getting progressively more annoying than the last. And they just keep
tinkering with things that aren't broken. Remember the slideshow playlist at
the bottom of the screen a year back? And who in their right mind would left
align the div holding a video player?!

It's annoying when a company treats one of its flagship products like a never
ending science project experiment.

Good job on FixYT, my only suggestion: give me the option to turn the color
scheme black.

~~~
ajkjk
I very much agree. I feel like every Google product is going straight downhill
in similar ways.. even the ones unrelated to Google+. There must be some grand
design to the whole thing but I don't see how it can all be money.

------
cjstewart88
As always, I love sites that strip down YouTube. YouTube houses tons of great
content; however, they seem to be making their consumers pretty unhappy. Check
out [http://www.tubalr.com](http://www.tubalr.com) it's my app and focuses on
YouTube's music content.

Grats on hitting the front page and I hope you can retain users, its the
hardest part about websites like this.

~~~
calibwam
I would use tubalr more often, but whenever I need it, I can't remember what
it is called. I've liked you on Facebook, so my usual way of finding it is by
going there and finding you amongst my likes.

In other words, you should try to come further up on google searches for
"youtube music".

~~~
cjstewart88
I've heard this far to many times :( Thanks for being a user when you can
think of the name though!

------
martian
> "supports privacy and stores no information"

Interesting that there's still a Google Analytics tracking call on the page.

~~~
mgkimsal
but hey, fixyt themselves don't store the info, so... i guess it's fine,
right?

i'm getting a little tired of the 'privacy backlash' from many quarters, as I
don't really get what people are after. piggybacking on youtube, which needs
to generate revenue and does so by relevant ads... just strikes me as
juvenile.

You want "privacy" but you also want the fruits of non-private endeavors? Too
bad. Build an entire video hosting and streaming service, give it away for
free, focus on 'privacy', and see how far you get. But leeching off YT feels
wrong.

~~~
syllogism
The big privacy concern with YT is that your viewing history will be displayed
to your friends and acquaintances, attached to your real name.

People can say, "Don't be ridiculous! They would never!", but Google is so
utterly tone-deaf to user concerns that people, myself included, just can't
rule it out. And it makes us angry.

Think back to Buzz: suddenly, you could view all of your contacts' contacts!!
That's the level of deafness Google has to how you might want your data
displayed to people you know...and that's why this feature is so unacceptable
to pretty much everyone.

~~~
mgkimsal
Then that should be specifically highlighted as a concern and a fix.

I don't even know what people mean by 'privacy' anymore - it means so many
things to different people. A friend of mine started a 'social network focused
on privacy'. Except that when you signed up, your details were available to
anyone else who'd signed up - they could browse all existing members. Was that
'private'? I complained and he's changed the behavior, but the point is _his_
notion of 'privacy' was apparently radically different than mine.

------
bowlofpetunias
It's shocking that only now I realize just how incredibly bad YouTube has
become.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It's a consequence of google's empire-itis. If they view youtube in the mold
of their major business they see they can spend most of their effort working
on the technical problems, slap some ads on it, and then call it a day. Even
though this might provide a good platform for many people to host videos and
is probably revenue positive or at worst neutral for google, nevertheless it
doesn't do much to advance an entire new industry.

In many ways youtube would be better without google. The technological
problems would be more severe and a bigger challenge, but such a youtube would
likely be smarter about finding ways to better monetize content and to pass on
that monetization to creators (to create a virtual cycle of new content, and
so forth). As it stands now youtube barely acknowledges creators as anything
more than any other ordinary users of the site.

------
LukeWalsh
I use a browser plugin that strips down the actual site to a minimal version
[http://www.clea.nr](http://www.clea.nr)

It's by far the best solution I've found since it stays out of the way, and
when I click on a Youtube link the page is much nicer.

~~~
bjtitus
There's also YouTube's own Feather beta:
[http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta](http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta)

~~~
thinkalone
And [https://youtube.com/tv](https://youtube.com/tv)

------
zalew
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-
cente...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-center/) is
useful, especially fixing buffering and quality.

------
albrtc
[http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta](http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta)

------
kunai
The overbloatiness of YouTube and the artsy-fartsy nature of Vimeo have left a
vacuum for something that would be similar to the imgur of videos. I wouldn't
be so surprised if someone applied to a venture capital firm with this sort of
thing.

------
lionheart
Does this get around the issue of local ISPs caching the content and then
causing the video download to be extremely slow?

I've heard there's a way get your browser to always connect directly to
YouTube's servers, but I could never get it to work.

~~~
amalag
It is just youtube embedded plays. The whole thing will not work if a video
has disabled embedding.

------
skizm
I mentioned this in another thread but YouTube feather (beta) is pretty much
this. It strips down everything but the video and the recommendations on the
side. Also it is an official Google feature.

~~~
rexreed
For those interested:
[https://www.youtube.com/feather_beta](https://www.youtube.com/feather_beta)

------
zapt02
I love how channels are presented. Now I can actually see the new videos.

Will use this instead of YouTube for a while!

PS Can you make "load more" optional? I just want stuff to be loaded as I
scroll automagically. :)

------
kapitalx
Finally, related videos that are related to the video!

For some reason google decided to show videos 'relevant' to me. But all I want
is videos related to what i'm watching.

Thanks, I really like it.

------
calbear81
On my recent trip, I wanted to watch some YouTube videos in the air but there
wasn't WiFi on my flight. I found an app called MxTube for iPad and it blew my
mind how much cleaner, faster, and more intuitive it was than the REAL YouTube
app. Added benefit - You can cache videos for offline playback. I happily paid
the $1.99 pro upgrade to support the developer.

------
timl88
If it could get around youtube's annoying DASH and buffer the entire video
while paused I would use it!

~~~
jamesbritt
Look for the Youtube Center addon or extension. Among the many options is
disabling DASH.

~~~
skore
Careful, though - Google is fighting back against this and in many cases, you
don't get all resolutions when disabling dash.

------
tehwebguy
Looks like the YouTube specific autocomplete uses an undocumented Google API
at suggestqueries.google.com

Someone documented it here:

[http://shreyaschand.com/blog/2013/01/03/google-
autocomplete-...](http://shreyaschand.com/blog/2013/01/03/google-autocomplete-
api/)

------
ytNumbers
Fantastic! There's so much wrong with Youtube these days. It's great that
someone is trying to fix it! Now, a nitpick... Your about page has a typo.
You've got the word recommendation with only one m. If it were my site, I'd
want someone to tell me.

------
rocky1138
I thought about doing something similar a few years ago but gave up after
reading in their TOS that in order for embedding to be allowed, the page
cannot be specifically about the video but instead must simply use the video
to enhance the original content on the page.

------
mikecane
I've been using Toogles all this time. This seems even faster. Will switch
between both as each have their points. Thanks.

And Googlers, you've run YouTube into the ground with clutter. Stop. Roll
back. And get rid of tying of it to G+. We don't want that.

------
lignuist
Recommendations are actually nice, but the problem on YT is how they are based
on the current video and my personal browsing history at the same time. I
think in earlier days they were just based on the current video and this made
much more sense to me.

------
znowi
This is what YouTube should be like (or how it once was actually).

However, I agree with others that building a UI on top of it is not much of
innovation. I'd rather see new and better apps instead of new and better props
for the old and ugly services.

------
trendoid
All the videos that require sign in due to "rated content", seems to be not
working since they require sign in. I dont even get a sign in option, just
"error occurred".

------
__hudson__
I don't have a youtube account so this site is a good way to watch youtube
videos with content restrictions.

------
benmorris
Simply awesome, in an instant I remembered all of the reasons I used to like
youtube.

------
iancarroll
What's the real purpose behind this site? All I see is YouTube with Bootstrap.

~~~
sinak
Read about the purpose here: [http://fixyt.com/about](http://fixyt.com/about)

------
carlesfe
Thank you, now I can watch yt videos without any flash player!

------
nighthawk24
This is so good! Hoping YouTube takes a clue or two

------
WoodenChair
That Noah movie looks absolutely "epic".

------
salient
Seems so much faster than Youtube.

------
lukasm
Did they just fix the comment?

------
vishaldpatel
Shameless plug for playr.me

------
lanbird
already watched and hide it would be great!

------
agumonkey
where can I comment ?

just kidding, great job

------
ye
It's completely useless to me. All the important content discovery features
are gone. The search is horrible, all the nice filtering options YT has aren't
there.

