Usage Instructions

1. Install Python

Make sure you have Python 3.8+ installed. You can check by opening a terminal/command prompt and typing:

python --version
# or
python3 --version

If you don’t have Python installed, download it from python.org.

2. Install Dependencies

Open a terminal in the folder containing the script and run:

pip install google-api-python-client

This will install the required library for accessing the YouTube API.

3. Get a YouTube API Key

1. Go to the Google Cloud Console.
2. Create a project (if you don’t already have one).
3. Enable the YouTube Data API v3 for your project.
4. Generate an API key and copy it somewhere safe.

4. Running the Script

Use the following command in your terminal:

python yt_pedo_finder_v1.3.py --api-key YOUR_API_KEY CHANNEL_URL

Example:

python yt_pedo_finder_v1.3.py --api-key AIza...xyz https://www.youtube.com/@YouTube

5. Optional Arguments

• --max-depth – How far the crawler should follow links (default: 2) - for a deep scan, I recommend ~8
• --max-videos – How many recent videos to check per channel (default: 5) - I generally use ~10
• --greedy – Crawl all linked channels, even if no matches are found - I don't recommend this, more false positives, slower, uses up a lot of your API quota

Example with Options:

python yt_pedo_finder_v1.3.py https://www.youtube.com/@SomeChannel \
  --api-key YOUR_API_KEY \
  --max-depth 8 \
  --max-videos 10 \
  --greedy

6. Output

At the end of the crawl, the script will:

• Print a summary of channels it found matches in.
• Ask if you want to save results (CSV, HTML, and any Mega links).
• Save reports in a folder named after the start channel and settings used.

Troubleshooting

• If python doesn’t work, try python3 instead.
• If pip doesn’t work, try pip3.
• Make sure you copied your API key correctly and it has YouTube Data API v3 enabled.