For one, even if I wanted to use it, piped never works for me.
Second, on mobile, my alternative of choice doesn’t recognize everyone’s non-yt links, so it removes my choice in the matter.
Third, I have no reason to trust the weird-ass domains I see, and to un-fuck the url takes much more time then just handing out the original YT links and letting people choose for themselves how they view the video.
Most people post YouTube links, which are replaced by bots to privacy respecting front ends.
This is because the mods understand YouTube is a blood sucking vampire.
I think these bots clutter the threads. I wish there was a cleaner method.
It’s fine to have frontend bots. I post youtube links and let people decide where they want to watch it. For me I click on the YouTube link but it opens up in libretube, which uses youtube piped frontends.