Newpipe: Add donations links for channels

[theScrabi]

I thought about this for a while, NewPipe is currently blocking any advertisement on Youtube, which on one site is good, because advertisement is annoying, and can be manipulating, on the other site NewPipe so far only respected the consumer of the video, but not the creators. However the creators of videos are the reason NewPipe exist, therefore I'd like to add something that will help supporting them.

Many channel feature links to donations sites on their overview. These links mostly lead to sites like patreon or paypal.

We could get those links and display them on the channel view, or even below a video.

This could also be combined with affiliate links/NewPipe lite, so we earn money which which we could eventually hire part time developer. ... which is some idea I played with for a while now.

@TheAssassin @TobiGr @karyogamy @mauriciocolli @wb9688 what are your thoughts about this?

[TheAssassin]

Auto-parsing links is not the best idea. Imagine they're leading to malware. Do you really want to display such links in NewPipe? I doubt it. Without some whitelisting of donation services, and some _really_ good URL parsing, this can't be implemented safely.

IMO anyone who's trying to "earn" money on YouTube doesn't really deserve it. It's Google's platform, so it's some kind of "blood money", isn't it? Go get a better business model, if you need to produce a lot of populist content to generate "clicks"...

The reason NewPipe exists is not the people who create content on YouTube. I highly disagree with this statement. The reason NewPipe exists is that @theScrabi didn't feel comfortable with Google's/YouTube's business model, selling users' most intimate assets, their data, for money. Be it advertising, or the really annoying tracking, or whatever they'll invent next to spy on people. _That_ is the reason NewPipe exists, trying to fix these issues.

So, no, I'm not convinced of this idea. With that whitelisting of URLs, it might work, though.

[ag-eitilt]

That's... both cynical and remarkably entitled. Without those content creators, NewPipe would barely have an audience in SoundCloud listeners. Even leaving that debt aside, those alternate donation sources are how people are breaking free from Google's blood money, as you put it, and I would love to see NewPipe advertise them much more prominantly than small icons on a page you aren't going to be accessing frequently by the time you know you want to support someone.

I do agree about the potential for abuse -- not so much on YouTube which probably does a decent job at keeping things clean, but on SoundCloud or other future sources. My recommendation would be something inspired by MusicBrainz: use conservative regexes to match sites that are going to be safe, and separate and clearly mark any other links. Someone has a link to Patreon?, put it under "Donate"; SoundCloud or YouTube or BandCamp or Twitch or...?, we'll need a better name than "Other content", but put it there anyway; someone has a link to YauTube?, it's not going to be pulled out of "Uncategorized" (and shouldn't be given an icon, either), so everyone who's used to seeing alternate channels in one place will be a bit suspicious.

[theScrabi]

conservative regexes to match sites that are going to be safe

This is what i thought of. Create a whitelist of domains we can display, but don't display everything.

IMO anyone who's trying to "earn" money on YouTube doesn't really deserve it.

Why do you expect quality content to exist for free? I think there is nothing wrong about earning money, it's maybe just the way you do it.

@ag-etilt the way you described it sounds like the way i would like to implement it :D

[TheAssassin]

Without those content creators, NewPipe would barely have an audience in SoundCloud listeners

Think about that statement. SoundCloud's living from advertising as well, isn't it? I don't know how users on SoundCloud earn money though, but the "YouTube business model" isn't really unique.

[theScrabi]

Yea and thats why we should emended the donation links in order to get the creators a little money. So far they earn nothing with NewPipe. :D

[TomJansen]

Aren't the donation links in the description of videos anyway?

[theScrabi]

Depends, on youtube you can add special links to the channel header. Its actually thought for linking together social media, but many people also use it for putting donations there.

However this or that way, I am pretty sure if we display donation links a bit more obvious than hiding them in the description it would make more people think about donating :)

It does not have to be jumping right in your fase tho, and maybe we can deactivate it in the settings.

[theScrabi]

So I took a look weather i could pull out donation links form the channel website.
Turns out we still retrieve the old YouTube website, and that seems to now feature donation links. This or that way, I could not check it since I din't find a way to load the old youtube design again.

[mauriciocolli]

Turns out we still retrieve the old YouTube website

I din't find a way to load the old youtube design again

wat

But anyway, YouTube is giving us the old version just because we are using a User-Agent of an old browser.

If you just want to load the old version in your current computer, and don't want to bother with that, just add this parameter to the url (notice the separator when adding): disable_polymer=true

[theScrabi]

wat

xD I deserve this. Thanks for help.

So yea the old design also features retrieving donation links. So you can basically forget what I said earlier.

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