I’ve been having some weird issues over the last few days with not being able to search for things in YouTube when I’m logged in via SmartTube account.
So I decided to try accessing it directly. Well guess what? It looks like YouTube now requires age verification in AU.
Sorry Google… I’m not uploading my passport, drivers licence or govt id to watch your shit. I am however now very incentivized to use Tube archivist and Jellyfin, plus cron job to scrape your shit with gleeful abandon.
EDIT: Rather than bitching about it, I did something and made Smarttube work without a google account. If that floats your boat, have at it. It supports direct import of your saved playlists via Google Takeout ZIP file, subscriptions etc without needing a youtube account.
Also, remember the excellent TubeArchivist exists if you want even more control.
Do be careful about TubeArchivist. If you just go to town on it, there’s a good chance they’ll just block your IP. I don’t get why some get blocked and others don’t. The cell phone tower at my kids school has been blocked, you have to log in when coming from that ip, Waiting outside to pick him up, I have to can and bring my own content :)
That happens to me when I use FreeTube. After a few videos, I get an error that my IP address has been blocked.
The blocked my IP some time ago after a binge of yt-dlp. I unplugged my fiber ONT over the weekend and got a new ip, i’ve been more careful with that one :)
I’ve rebooted my modem to get a new IP, though I have to wait a while before restarting or I’d get the same one. Usually if I just wait a while (a few hours?), YT unblocks me again. But it’s irritating.
Yep, that’s a good point. I actually have a battle plan in place (if it comes to that) using a mixture of 540-720p videos (to reduce download sizes) and then AI upscaling as needed using an NVIDIA shield or on site compute.
They really, really don’t like it when you don’t log in, huh? 🤣
Fun game of cat and mouse aside, if it all ever goes to shit…I’ll miss niche YT channels but there are other alternatives.
Would be cook if tube archivist was decentralized, so when one person downloaded the video, others could do a peer-tube style p2p on it.
Would be cook if tube archivist was decentralized, so when one person downloaded the video, others could do a peer-tube style p2p on it.
that isn’t far in the future where we will literally pirate youtube video to escape youtube’s paywall / login wall
Everyone here shitting on YouTube, but the AU government is to blame here really. I’m really scared that we are next on this stupid privacy killing trend (we -> Europe). Without privacy there is no democracy.
I wish some hacker activitist would make their life goal to dox the christofascist associations’ members and supporting politicians. And publish every fucking detail of them, so they would get to know what risks they are exposing people to on their own skin.
Here you go.
I…don’t know who that is. Should I be insulted, bemused or … scaroused?
Just someone who’s job is to fuck shit up and make a big fucking mess. (Viscera Cleanup Detail—game on steam). But he’s a old wrestler lol
I just went through this with ebay. No. Fuck you.
I spent way too long trying to parse what’s clearly a fake barcode.
Bro…
Use a VPN with an exit node in Albania. Youtube cannot force a signin or ads due to Albanian laws.
I use it daily. Try it. It works
I did this one day just because Albania was the first country that showed up alphabetically after the exit node in my home country started requiring age verification in many places. Always thought it was dumb luck, not because of anything specific about Albania, TIL. Based 🇦🇱
Only location I use for YT
Doesn’t work for Apple TV unfortunately
Yeah it has to be a device you can use a VPN with; or you have to install a VPN router between your machine and the internet
Doesn’t work for Apple TV unfortunately
Everybody needs to keep in mind: YouTube can’t kill themselves solely with this.
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I’m pretty sure my original Google account is over 18 years old. How is that not considered proof of age?
Because its never been about proving ones age.
Always a bit amusing of steam sometimes still requiring me to enter my birthday on some store pages, when my steam account is 23 years old
Yeah that part is bullshit…
Ditto. And, apparently, no.
You OP are a saint
I updated the fork overnight, so now you can download your Google Takeout data as a ZIP, import it, wait about 5 minutes, and voila - all your playlists are available locally. You can add to them locally, obviously, but those changes won’t sync back to YouTube. “Likes” and “Comments” obviously don’t work either.
Sorry, I couldn’t figure out how to do local avatars or progress indicator bar for the import (well, I mean, I could…I just couldn’t be arsed to spend another 4-5hrs doing it, then testing it etc etc).
Enjoy your pirate youtubez, yarr!
Yes let’s send our id cards to an american big tech corporation, what could possibly go wrong there.
the way people are yawning at this – including this community – makes you wonder why the libertarians among us are cool w it.
There were more people that you’d expect who basically said the same thing about much of Linux (systemd) receiving age verification mechanics. To me, those arguments in favor of age verification seemed even louder because the change could be dismissed as “optional” and “open-source,” although the layman cannot easily drop or replace a computer operating system, and it would take significant political capital to change the source of systemd back to its pre-age-verification state.
Because libertarians secretly like sucking the cock of daddy big tech
People just need to stop using American Big Tech bullshit & go with better alternatives.
“People” unfortunately are still captured by existing systems. As much as I like Curiosity, Odysee, PeerTube etc if the content is locked into Youtube, then we need to build bridges, not walls.
I signed to for Nebula last night. It’s only built 20-30 minute form content but i think they did a nice job with the front end.
peertube
Rather than bitching about it, I did something and made Smarttube work without a google account. If that floats your boat, have at it.
To those of you advocating VPN…eat while the eating is good. .
A static image doesn’t bypass this. Vendors want a real-time selfie–access to a internet-connected camera responding to prompts in real-time, such as “turn your head to the right,” or “open and close your mouth”. It would be trivial on a libre-system to send it a simulated-feed of a puppet-ed prop in such a way that would be indistinguishable from a real human head–if you had capable hardware. This is what intelligence agencies do now, but it’s possible on high-end consumer hardware too. For the modest computer user it would be viable to feed it a simplified–but still meeting the criteria of a “face” as deemed by the computer–puppet, akin to what vtubers use. That’s on a libre-system. A system that obeys the user and that can not be tolerated, because users lie.
They give you a QR code to scan with a mobile-computer, because mobile-computers are the least free of all computers. The majority of mobile-computers are Google’s Android mobile-computer. Google redirects you to a computer that is entirely controlled by… Google. Surprise!
The boot-licking continues. This isn’t something forced on Google by authoritarian, nanny-state governments. This is Google’s will. Google is an authoritarian corporation that profits via surveillance-capitalism. Keep licking their boots and defending them. How dumb can you be?
Google wants to verify your ID.
Google redirects you to a Google Android slave-computer via a QR code, precisely because there’s too much freedom on traditional desktop-computers and outputs can be trivially simulated.
Oh, poor Google for…
…what? Collecting even more data about internet users? This is their bread and butter: surveillance-capitalism.
The unique thing about the Australian-context is that the liberal party began a project: to create a facial-recognition system that would underpin a virtual market of “identity providers”. From my perspective this is fraud, because underneath each identity provider was this governmental-department that would send a “yes” or “no” in response to a query: does this face belong to Johe Bloe. Their system doesn’t even deserve a critique because it’s from the party of blatant grifters and looters, but it’s now what we have and things don’t just disappear, especially when it’s a system that’s been in the works for decades and with bipartisan ‘support’.
Google is an upstanding corporate-citizen providing identity services in a free-market. It’s just capitalism, folks.
Like usual the morons will loudly blame Labor when the fruits of the liberal party turn rotten. The wider, global context is rising fascism which creates an environment where obeying remote prompts to wiggle your tongue and open and close your mouth is deemed ‘expected’ behaviour when all you want to do is watch cat videos on the internet.
Liberate your computers. Hack your mobile-computers and send dummie feeds. It only gets harder from here on. Push back now. It’s rather easy too: don’t use Google. Actively avoid it.
You can trick it easily for now. I haven’t because I worry it gives the system more legitimacy than it deserves. No, not doing it at all. Closing your site and going somewhere else.
How can you trick it?
