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From: "Mason Hock" <chaosmonk@riseup.net>
To: "Cadence Ember" <cadence@disroot.org>, <~cadence/tube-devel@lists.sr.ht>
Subject: Re: YouTube rate limiting
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2020 12:38:25 -0700
Message-Id: <C5YEM49C7G97.1RUXYF1EHOOA9@libricia-thinkcentre>
In-Reply-To: <08cd8ca9-9140-4511-9707-c8eac2871b87@disroot.org>

On Sat Sep 26, 2020 at 4:43 PM PDT, Cadence Ember wrote:
> People can actually already manually change the backend Second or
> Invidious instance that the CloudTube frontend uses.

Nice!  I hadn't noticed that, but it's helpful.  Thanks.

> I plan to design a special rate limited error message page that
> explains the situation and directs the person to the settings page to
> select a new instance.

It might be a little smoother if from the error message page the user
could select and switch to a known working instance and immediately
start watching the video they were looking for using the new instance.
Cadence instances could have an internal list of known Invidious and
Second instances, and periodically check to see which are currently rate
limited by attempting to pull the information for a test video.

> I also plan to add support for anti-captcha to Second so that it can
> automatically unblock itself.

anti-captcha isn't automatic.  It is an online CAPTCHA sweatshop that
has human workers solve CAPTCHAs manually.  Some users and/or instance
admins may not be comfortable with this, so it would be nice to have
some alternative options as well.  Automatic instance switching to
spread the load across instances might reduce the frequency with which
instances get rate limited, and perhaps users could have the option of
occasionally solving a CAPTCHA or performing some action to attempt
getting an instance unblocked, similar to a script I recall being
prompted to run when encountering a blocked Bibliogram instance.

> Automatically switching instances may be possible, and I will consider
> this after I complete anti-captcha.

Thanks, and thanks for all your hard work.