i recently stopped using the main youtube and reddit websites, and instead use invidious and redlib. heres why:

Invidious:

invidious is an open source, privacy friendly frontend to youtube. i dont use it for privacy, however, i use it because the youtube website and way to heavy and is making terrible design changes.

Why I switched:

I don't use the recommended feed, i turned it off and used ublock origin to block the rest of the annoying features (like related videos, shorts feed, notifications...) and even when you do that, the website is WAY to heavy. what finally made me do the switch is the new video player design, it looked WAY to out of place from the rest of the website, it looked like something straight outta youtube kids, and that annoyed me so much that i switched to invidious because its lightweight, no annoying features, design that just works, and no ads.

Why not use Piped?

first of all, piped doesnt work 80% of the time, it just loads infinity on all instances, i only got it to work one time. second of all, the ui feels WAY to cluttered, it looked more like the actual youtube website (which as you know, i dont like) and it was still pretty heavy.

You shouldn't switch if:

You use a lot of the social features. when you use invidious, you are not using a google account, and so you cant comment, like, or live chat on videos. you can still subscribe, but that doesnt count towards the subscriber counter, it just adds the channel to your subscriptions feed.

You watch a lot of livestreams. currently, livestreams do not work with the invidious companion, and there has not been a fix in forever.

You want an experience exactly like the youtube website. if you want that, you should probably use piped.

Redlib:

redlib is an open source, privacy friendly frontend to reddit, which originated from the now dead libreddit. like invidious, i also dont use it for privacy, i use it because reddit kept blocking regular users because they had firefox useragents and ublocked origin installed.

Why I switched:

i use firefox with ublock origin, and for some reason, reddit keep blocking firefox users with ublock origin installed and forcing them to sign in with an account. as someone who doesnt post or comment on reddit anymore, this was very annoying because i need an account for benefits i wont use. i remembered seeing a video a long time ago of a person talking about icecat, a web browser which comes with a few extensions, one of them being privacy redirect. (privacy redirect is very old and you should be using libredirect instead) it redirects reddit links to a services called libreddit, which is now redlib. the people that host the instance dont block people for using "not normal browsers" (they may have a captcha, but thats to block scappers from being lazy flooding hosters with requests instead of just hosting their own instance smh)

You shouldn't switch if:

You use social features. this is one of the biggest downsides of alternative frontends, especially with services like reddit. you can't sign in with a reddit account, and therefore you can't post, comment, or vote. 

You want an experience exactly like reddit. Just like invidious, it wont be just like reddit. you dont get a fyp, the front page is just r/popular. if you want one, you should just use old.reddit.com.

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