this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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Well, if they want to make everyone either buy Rokus or watch YT either in Edge on Windows (the official way to watch Netflix on PC currently) or on another Android device than a Roku with the official YT app, they could just implement a full Widevine L1 lockdown, and sadly, just buying a Roku to watch YT on or watching it on a pre-existing Roku along with the paid streaming services, is probably what most people would actually do if they locked it down like that.
Basically, Google would win the ad blocker and third-party front-end war by locking YT into pre-approved apps or devices, and as an added bonus (for them), they'd snuff out any competing platforms as Widevine L1 would also kill the ability to mirror one's YT channel to one of the alternative platforms, and I guarantee most people who just post any random thing on YT don't store their source video files locally to be able to to re-upload on PeerTube, Odysee, or Rumble, if anything, they're likely just filming and posting straight from their phones.
Now, the people with nice studio setups probably do have a local copy of their source files stored somewhere that they could re-up on their alternative platform of choice, but average Joes filming from a phone outnumber them.
I don’t think L1/PlayReady SL3K will happen. Imagine Google telling people that in order to view content on their website they need to use a competitor’s browser. Sure, technical people like you and I understand what’s happening behind the scenes, but average joe will just think Google fumbled it and can’t make it work with their own browser, it’s bad press for them. I also think that at least for now there’s too many desktop users to be able to pull it off. They’ll have to tell all the desktop users to go fuck themselves in order to do that, and that will get a good amount of people pissed off.
You know YouTube Revanced?