This hotfix release fixes HTTP 403 errors in the middle of YouTube videos.
New
[SoundCloud] Add support for on.soundcloud.com URLs TeamNewPipe/NewPipeExtractor#1179
Improved
[Bandcamp] Show addi...
To elaborate, while the errors in the middle of videos were because of general anti-bot measures, the errors at the beginning of videos were caused by a change that specifically targets third-party clients like NewPipe and youtube-dl. This is definitely part of an arms race.
It's inevitable that youtube will go the way of twitter and reddit, closing down their API. I'm surprised it's taking them this long to start the process.
Definitely is. Newpipe also allows downloads and less than a month ago, they had to release a hotfix because Google broke external viewers, like Newpipe and Invidious. I've noticed 2 days ago that Newpipe stopped playing and downloading videos, so I figured it must've been Google again