Comment by amadeuspagel
2 years ago
> Here's a fun experiment to try. Take an open source project such as yt-dlp and try to find it from a very generic term like "youtube downloader". You won't be able to find it because of all of the content farms that try to rank at the top for that term. Even though yt-dlp is probably actually what you want for a tool to download video from YouTube.
Is that true? Do most people want to install a command line tool to download youtube videos?
No. They want sites like savefrom.net - which is hit number one on Google.
Did you try using savefrom.net? You can type "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkYVmtgxebU" into the text box and hit "Download". Then you'll get a new tab that tries to get you to install malware. If you decline to install it, the new tab takes you to the malware's homepage. If you close the tab and go back to the original tab, savefrom.net presents you with an error message saying "The download link not found." and does not help you download the video.
I tried this. I went to savefrom.net. First thing it does is ask permission to send notifications.
After that there is a popup asking me if I want to continue in the browser or download their app. If I click download, it downloads a file called download_helper_2.3.27.apk.
Instead of downloading their app, if I paste a YouTube link, it tells me I can wait or download their APK to skip waiting. The download link downloads an older version called download_helper_2.3.19.apk.
When I do the process again, instead of the older APK link it gives me a Chrome extension link. But if you look at the instructions you see that it's not a Chrome extension, but a minified userscript. And it has `@include https://*` so it can basically run on any website regardless of clicking on an extension icon like regular browser extensions.
If I try to ignore all the distractions and wait for the download link, I can click it and it downloads the MP4 file. But it also opens a popunder with the domain https://refpamjeql.top/.
Not the best experience, and seems like a high risk of getting malware, but it does get an MP4 file at some point.
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You would think that a browser extension would be better than a website.... that's what I do with Soundcloud anyways....