Cobalt is bypassing protections to allow legitimate Youtube users to download single videos without causing harm and with no monetary incentives. Bytedance is mass downloading thounsands of videos, all for monetary incentives while heavily breaking the TOS and potentially ignoring copyright laws. Similar, but one is doing way more harm than the other.

> and with no monetary incentives

Donations are a monetary incentive

> while heavily breaking the TOS and potentially ignoring copyright laws

Cobalt also breaks the TOS and ignores copyright laws, personally I don't think that matters but having a double standard when one company does it "It's ok when they do it" and when one you don't like does it you try to use copyright laws and TOS as a weapon just makes me think it really isn't about TOS or copyright is it.

Also just gives YouTube ammunition to impose stricter protection against smaller violators like cobalt, like self running yt-dlp