Ah I see! Thanks for the explainer, I see where I misunderstood it.

I thought invidious got the entire video stream and streamed it back to the viewer - not just the link to it. So even if YouTube sees the invidious instance ip as the one grabbing the link, it would still see your ip as the one actually watching the stream.

I guess the bot related error I mentioned comes from when the server tries to get the stream link.

I’m still quite new to this but it is my understanding that invidious does serve as a proxy IF you are using a public instance. This is, I believe, why many instances get hit by the “sign in to confirm you’re not a bot, this helps protect our community” error due to so much traffic from the instance IP.

If you’re hosting your own instance YouTube will be able to see your IP. Since while it’s technically proxying your video requests, it’s still on your network.

I’m new to invidious and networking stuff in general so if I’m wrong please correct me.