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Comment by yreg | Hacker News Reader

I've always felt that YouTube is also breaking this rule by making background playback a Premium feature.

Know why you've always felt that way?

Because YouTube is breaking that rule by monetizing background operation.

I'm not seeing how that would be a violation. Youtube has never been a "download files to my device" service. It has always been a "stream video from our servers" service. I don't see how the fact that they added the ability to save a file and gated it by a subscription would be a violation.

Can you explain how you see it as one?

This isn’t about downloading videos for offline use but about background playback.

YouTube recently blocked the ability to play a video in the background (or with the screen turned off) unless you pay for premium. It just turns off the video if you leave the app, unlike other media on my iPhone.

AFAIK you can open the video in Firefox, which allows you to stream in the background. of course not that seamless, but at least there's still a work-around.

Orion browser on iOS supports this very seamlessly, both pip and background.

I haven’t been able to do background play in YouTube without Premium for at least 4 years. I also recall finding Reddit threads of people having the same issue.

So… not exactly new for iPhone users.

Just because someone broke the rule in the past, persisted in breaking the rule and is still breaking the rule today doesn't mean they get a free pass to break the rule.

Yep, and I'm saying that those four years ago (or whatever time it was) I was convinced that it is against this specific App Store guideline, but alas Apple has approved it.

> "download files to my device"

> they added the ability to save a file

Since when?

Oh, you mean pre-caching it and allowing the cache to play off-line?

It is not "downloading" or "saving" a file if I don't get an actual file on my file system I can use. I hate the abuse of this term.

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