Hey y’all,

I have a problem: sometimes I find a cool video on Youtube and I want to post it in a community I moderate. So I create a post, put the Youtube link in the URL field, and several options get added to the form:

  • Copy suggested title: <whatever title the video has on Youtube>
  • archive.org archive link
  • ghostarchive.org archive link
  • archive.today archive link

I click on the first one to copy the title, no problem. And usually that’s it: I post, the post’s preview shows a snapshot from the video and clicking on it sends me to the Youtube video. Great!

Now here’s my problem: I would prefer not to link to Youtube directly So I tried replacing the direct link with any of the 3 proposed links, and it doesn’t go all that well:

  • The archive.org link seemingly never works
  • The ghostarchive.org link works but no preview image is generated, which makes the post a bit boring
  • The archive.today link redirects to a archive.ph link which is account-walled

Does anybody know how to create a post with a preview image that links to a Youtube video archived someplace else?

And yes, I’m aware that I could also report the video on my PeerTube. The problem is, SDF only has limited resources and I’d rather not upload huge videos there. They don’t need the burden.

  • Max-P
    2•3 months ago

    Don’t worry about it, the frontends usually take care of using alternate sources if you want to:

    Example of suggested alternative links when viewing a YouTube link

    • @ExtremeDullardOP
      1•3 months ago

      I’m aware of this. My own browser is setup to redirect Youtube links to FreeTube. But that doesn’t address the reasons why I would prefer not linking to Youtube:

      • Reducing links that rely on Google services and loosening Google’s grip on everything ever so slightly
      • Saving the video for posterity in case it gets pulled out, either by Youtube’s algorithm or by the person who posted it