GNU Home / Philosophy / Essays & articles / Cultural & social issues / Network services /

What's Wrong with YouTube

Normal use of YouTube involves running nonfree software.

The YouTube video player is a nonfree JavaScript program. Some videos also require the nonfree Adobe DRM software that has been incorporated into proprietary browsers and Firefox, but not into the GNU browsers, including IceCat.

However, there are ways to watch YouTube videos without running any nonfree software:

  • Invidious intermediary sites. Some of them allow visits via Tor, or even have an onion URL. As of 2025, the instances that are listed in the Invidious documentation try to keep AI crawlers away with a JavaScript CAPTCHA program. This program is free, but we recommend enabling the LibreJS add-on as a matter of precaution, should they use a nonfree program in the future.

  • The free ViewTube add-on, which permits direct access to videos on YouTube in various browsers. It is preinstalled in GNU IceCat, and you can load it into Firefox. But youtube.com is likely to block this means of access if you come via Tor.

YouTube tries to stop people from downloading copies.

The nonfree JavaScript code does not allow browsers to save a copy, even when the video is under a license that allows redistribution. This is a form of DRM that can't even pretend to “enforce copyright.”

As for the mobile app, which is nonfree as well, it graciously lets paying Premium users store videos for up to 30 days, after which it deletes those copies. These are stored with DRM, meaning they can only be played inside the app, and cannot be played from external software or transferred to an external device.

However, some free programs bypass this block:

  • yt-dlp , which in spite of being hosted on GitHub can be downloaded with a browser without running JavaScript. It can also be downloaded from the command line. For example:

    $ curl -L https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/download/2025.05.22/yt-dlp_linux -o yt-dlp

  • The ViewTube add-on.

Free/libre access methods may not work in the future.

As a result of the access methods above, posting videos on YouTube does not currently put them off limits to the free world. That is good, and we hope it lasts, but we cannot count on them to keep working. The ViewTube add-on broke once in 2019 because of some change in YouTube. That time, a corrected add-on was released after a few weeks. Next time, who knows? Thus, posting on YouTube is a fragile solution unless/until Google commits to supporting libre access.

If nevertheless you do post a video on YouTube, please don't use the host name youtube.com (or its aliases) to refer to it. Instead, refer to one of the Invidious intermediary sites that accepts visits via Tor (test it!). That is fail-safe: if anything breaks, your link will fail, rather than lead people to run nonfree software.

To post a video without requiring nonfree software to view it, you can place the video as an Ogg Theora or WebM file on an ordinary web site. If you are concerned there will be a lot of download traffic, you can seed a torrent and suggest people download through that.

Another way to publish videos on the web using free software is GNU MediaGoblin. Ideally you will set up your own server, or run one for your family and friends. You may also be able to post on public servers that are run by some organizations for specific purposes. For example, the FSF's MediaGoblin instance hosts media from the yearly LibrePlanet conference and other events.

Please contribute to GNU MediaGoblin if you can.

One thing about YouTube that is not a moral strike against it is nonfree software on YouTube servers—if there is any. We as possible users of YouTube can't tell whether the servers run any nonfree software, because that has no effect on us—therefore it doesn't do any wrong to us.

If there are any nonfree programs running on YouTube servers, they mistreat Google by denying Google control of that aspect of its computing. We hope that Google will reclaim its freedom by ceasing to use those nonfree programs, if any. But those programs do not mistreat the users of YouTube, so they are not a reason to refuse to use that service.

It is also possible that all the software running on YouTube servers is free—either published free software or private unreleased free software.