Poke — Terms & Policies

Last updated: October 17, 2025

Poke functions as a privacy-friendly frontend for YouTube, providing an alternative interface to publicly available YouTube content. It allows users to watch videos, view metadata, and explore channels without being tracked, profiled, or exposed to intrusive advertisements.

All videos, thumbnails, and metadata are retrieved from YouTube’s public endpoints using reverse-engineered, community-understood protocols such as youtubei (used internally by YouTube’s own clients). We do not use the official YouTube Data API v3, nor have we ever agreed to Google’s API Terms of Service. Therefore, we are not contractually bound by those terms. A similar case involving the Invidious project was raised by YouTube’s legal team in 2023 (GitHub Issue #3872), and no legal action was taken, as such usage is within lawful grounds.

Under United States law (17 U.S.C. § 512(a)), part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), intermediaries that “transmit material through a system or network without modification of its content” are lawful. Poke qualifies under this protection because it only passes data between YouTube and the user without altering content.

In the European Union, the project is protected under Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament, which permits “temporary acts of reproduction that are transient or incidental and an integral part of a technological process” enabling network transmission. Poke’s operation — fetching, parsing, and displaying transient data — fully complies with this legal definition.

Poke is not illegal. It does not redistribute or rehost copyrighted material, nor does it bypass technological protection measures. It simply acts as a neutral layer for viewing publicly available YouTube data in a privacy-focused way.

Poke does not endorse, agree with, or moderate the videos, channels, or comments it displays. All such content originates directly from YouTube and remains under the control of its creators and YouTube itself. The Poke Project cannot verify, censor, or selectively remove content, as it merely provides a client-side proxy to what YouTube already serves publicly. Opinions expressed in YouTube videos do not represent the views of the Poke Project, its maintainers, or contributors.

If you encounter unlawful or infringing content, please report it directly to YouTube via their official tools. If you believe Poke is displaying something incorrectly, you may reach out to us at our issue tracker: https://codeberg.org/ashley/poke/issues

Last updated: October 17, 2025

The Poke Project strictly prohibits the use of its content, data, or media streams for training, fine-tuning, or feeding any form of artificial intelligence or machine learning models. This includes, but is not limited to, video content, metadata, comments, thumbnails, transcripts, and other data accessed through the Poke interface.

The materials displayed through Poke are subject to copyright owned by their respective creators and may not be reproduced or processed for automated learning systems. Using YouTube data or Poke’s interface for AI dataset creation would constitute unauthorized reuse of copyrighted works and therefore violates this policy. Any organization or individual found scraping, aggregating, or storing Poke content for AI training purposes will be considered in direct violation of this policy and may face reporting or blocking from our network services.

Last updated: October 17, 2025

Contributors to the Poke Project are welcome to use AI-assisted coding tools such as code autocompletion, linters, or assistants — provided that they understand and verify the code being submitted. Automated or unverified contributions that contain insecure, unclear, or copied proprietary code are not acceptable.

AI-assisted coding is allowed, but all contributors are responsible for ensuring their changes meet the project’s quality, security, and licensing requirements. The Poke maintainers cannot guarantee that AI-generated code will always be correct, safe, or efficient — contributors are expected to review and test thoroughly. AI-assisted coding is OK — but use it wisely, understand your code, and never rely on it blindly.

Last updated: October 17, 2025

The Poke Project values clean, readable, and consistent code across all modules and languages. Contributors are encouraged to:

• Use two spaces for indentation (no tabs).
• Keep lines under 100 characters when possible.
• Write clear variable names — no cryptic one-letter identifiers.
• Follow the existing structure and naming conventions of the project.
• Use comments sparingly but meaningfully — explain why something happens, not what it does.
• Keep code GPL-compliant and avoid importing non-free dependencies.

Code consistency helps keep Poke maintainable, accessible, and true to its free software ideals. Before submitting a pull request, contributors are encouraged to test their changes and make sure they integrate smoothly with the existing codebase.

Last updated: October 17, 2025

Poke is and shall always remain Free Software as defined by the Free Software Foundation. The project is permanently licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 (or later), ensuring users’ rights to use, study, modify, and share the software freely.

The core philosophy of Poke is freedom — not monetization. Poke will never include proprietary components, paywalls, or tracking scripts. The software and all its source code shall remain fully accessible to the public for all time.

Community mirrors, forks, and rehosts of Poke are explicitly allowed and encouraged, provided they follow the terms of the GNU GPLv3 license and maintain proper attribution to the Poke Project. These mirrors strengthen software freedom and accessibility.

Last updated: October 17, 2025

Poke is developed and maintained with love and care, but it is still provided entirely “as is.” We do not guarantee perfect performance, uninterrupted uptime, or freedom from bugs and technical glitches.

Poke is primarily developed and tested on Firefox and other standards-compliant browsers. While it should function on most modern browsers, full compatibility on Chromium-based or alternative browsers cannot be guaranteed.

The Poke team cannot promise that every feature will always function as expected or remain available in the future. Servers may experience downtime, network issues, or maintenance breaks without notice.

While we do our best to maintain stable service, no warranty is provided for uptime, speed, or data integrity. Your usage of Poke implies acceptance that unexpected behavior or interruptions may occur.

The project maintainers, contributors, and distributors are not liable for any damages, losses, or inconvenience caused directly or indirectly by using Poke, its APIs, or related software.

Poke does not offer any commercial guarantees, technical support, or service-level agreements. It is a volunteer-driven, community-based project made freely available for everyone.

Last updated: October 17, 2025

Poke includes an internal filter system that identifies commonly known disinformation and conspiracy sources such as InfoWars, Breitbart, Daily Mail, RT, and others. This system serves only as a warning mechanism to encourage users to verify what they read. You are free to access or view such content — the warning does not restrict access, censor, or block anything. It merely provides informational context based on publicly available fact-checking records.

Users are encouraged to cross-reference claims, verify sources through reliable outlets, and remain mindful of misinformation when browsing external links or content. The Poke Project does not control, filter, or prevent access to these domains; the warnings are purely educational in nature.