This Star Trek video (Spock's Brain) on YT asked me to sign in to confirm my age, but played on HT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDwNuawSUmM
https://hooktube.com/watch?v=LDwNuawSUmM
I don't know why you'd need age verification to watch Star Trek, but that HT is still up and saying that it is YT light makes me wonder is there is more to this. Maybe YT bought it or there are exceptions it can take advantage of.
Hooktube as a website is still alive, but they're just embedding youtube's vids now. That means youtube can still do all the analytics that they do on their home site.
Google's beef with hooktube is not that they direct traffic away from their site. If anything that actually saves them some money on bandwidth. Their issue its that hooktube was designed to neuter the metadata collection that made google into the monolith it is today.
On a side note, any age-restricted video on youtube can be bypassed by opening the video as an embed. You just have to move the URL around to this format.
I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.
It was never a real alternative, but it did demonstrate the desire for one.
Maybe it will inspire someone to create something more sustainable.
There are already alternatives out there but yt is a behemoth at this point. Its getting others to use alternatives consistently that's the problem.
There may be other video hosts, but I am not aware of anything that can compete with youtubes feature set.
Many of the creators have been griping for a while, but there is nothing that can fill their need.
"YouTube API features are back but #HookTube is no longer useful for protecting your data from Google or unblocking videos due to the implementation of a standard YT embed (after legal threats). Was a good run, on to other things."
Good, voat needs more link rot. LMAO.