YouTube-dl has an interpreter for a subset of JavaScript in 870 lines of Python

Re:YouTube-dl has an interpreter for a subset of JavaScript ... by ajkjk on Saturday September 10, 2022 @03:56PM (#32794101)

Wow:

   Overview of the control flow (already known):
   The Youtube API provides you with n - your video access token
   If their new changes apply to your client (they do for "web") then it is expected your client will modify n based on internal logic. This logic is inside player...base.js
   n is modified by a cryptic function
   Modified n is sent back to server as proof that we're an official client. If you send n unmodified, the server will eventually throttle you.

So they can always change the function to keep you on your toes, hence you need to be able to run semi-arbitrary JS in order to keep using the API.

Waste of human brainpower but I guess that energy is better spent imagining a world where Google isn't in charge instead of kvetching about what they're doing with their influence.

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Re:YouTube-dl has an interpreter for a subset of JavaScript ... by isatty on Saturday September 10, 2022 @10:22PM (#32796312)

There is a reason Google is able to serve the amount of video bandwidth, and also a reason why there are no worthwhile youtube clones. Some amount of scrape protection is absolutely essential.

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Re:YouTube-dl has an interpreter for a subset of JavaScript ... by Aperocky on Saturday September 10, 2022 @11:44PM (#32796650)

Seems like they ultimately failed, youtube-dl is available freely as a pip package, anyone with scraping intent would have been able to use it.

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