documentation/content/docs/why/index.md

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Why	4	Why did I create Piped?

Why did I create Piped?

YouTube has an extremely invasive privacy policy which relies on using user data in unethical ways.

Here are some things about YouTube:

• Tracking via third-party cookies for other purposes without your consent.
• YouTube can delete your content if you violate the terms
• Reduction of legal period for cause of action
• YouTube may use your personal information for marketing purposes
• YouTube can view your browser history
• YouTube can use your content for all their existing and future services
• YouTube gathers information about you through third parties
• YouTube can license user content to third parties
• YouTube provider makes no warranty regarding uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free service
• Deleted videos are not really deleted
• Your data may be processed and stored anywhere in the world
• YouTube is only available to users over a certain age
• YouTube can suspend your account for several reasons
• YouTube has non-exclusive use of your content
• The court of law governing the terms is in the US
• YouTube collects your IP address for location use

Source: https://tosdr.org/en/service/274

A lot of inspiration came from NewPipe and Invidious.

I created Piped to fix issues in NewPipe and Invidious which are architectural issues and cannot be fixed easily.

NewPipe

• Your IP is exposed to YouTube.
• Feeds are slow to load.

Invidious

• Uses way too much resources.
• Total bandwidth limited by the peak capacity of the load balancer.
• Coded in Crystal, a language that is relatively hard for beginners.
• Caching is done at a backend level.
• Invidious was a learning project.
• Invidious crashes all the time.
• Various hacks are required to keep an instance running at a reasonable stablity.

However, there are some drawbacks of Piped:

• JavaScript is required
• Browsers without Service-Workers support will feel significantly slower. Eg: Tor Browser