Youtube General thread (formerly Youtube Censorship discussion thread)

[Mr. Racewar1488]

Can someone link me a confirmed age-restricted video? I've got a little test I want to run.

 

[Solid Hyrax]

Can someone link me a confirmed age-restricted video? I've got a little test I want to run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t0SqerlBA0

 

[30+GameOvers]

Online Youtube downloaders continue to fluctuate on daily, if not hourly bases, age restricted videos are unable to be downloaded or viewed outside of Youtube, Invidious is taking a complete shit and it barely works anymore, and Youtube itself continues getting shittier and shittier.
Is Google stationed in California? I genuinely hope their office burns.

I'm honestly surprised that even the coders are stumped on making a workaround on YT's age-restricted videos without either getting your account(s) blocked or the security risk that comes with it.
Never thought age-restricted vids would be like this since I had the mindset of "I'll get this later" on archiving everything else when YT went down the shitter earlier, that is on me.

Right now, if you absolutely have to archive something, I would recommend using OBS or something similar to literally screen capture the entire video. Very ghetto solution, but there isn't much else you can do. Oh, hope you have a Google account!

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Been wondering why the videos can't be downloaded from other sites. When did they crack down on this shit? Did MrBeast cause it

 

[30+GameOvers]

Been wondering why the videos can't be downloaded from other sites. When did they crack down on this shit? Did MrBeast cause it

They've been at war with alternatives like downloaders and Invidious for years. They want complete monopoly over how you view their content, so that the Toyota advertisers are happy when you are forced to sit thru 5 ads on a single 10 minute video. It's all about the money, always has been, Mr. Beast has nothing to do with this.
Secondary objective is information control, make archiving next to impossible so they can make content they don't like disappear forever and make it harder for blacklisted countries to have access to it as well.

 

[Samhain]

I am once again recommending yt-dlp for downloading YT videos. If you need a GUI, use tartube. Age restricted videos require a YT account to watch. If you want to download an age restricted video, you need to point yt-dlp to your YT cookies. Reference yt-dlp's readme. If you want to grab your YT cookies from your browser, use the Get cookies.txt LOCALLY browser extension.

yt-dlp (or tartube) remains the best method for downloading YT videos.

 

[cactus]

Is Google stationed in California? I genuinely hope their office burns.

Wrong part of the state. They're up north.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

They've been at war with alternatives like downloaders and Invidious for years. They want complete monopoly over how you view their content, so that the Toyota advertisers are happy when you are forced to sit thru 5 ads on a single 10 minute video. It's all about the money, always has been, Mr. Beast has nothing to do with this.
Secondary objective is information control, make archiving next to impossible so they can make content they don't like disappear forever and make it harder for blacklisted countries to have access to it as well.

Only recently a bunch of sites either stopped working or won't download the video. I noticed.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Only recently a bunch of sites either stopped working or won't download the video. I noticed.

that's because they all just use yt-dlp and were behind on updating their versions. the alternative to trying to find a random website that has updated their version of yt-dlp is just to update your version of yt-dlp

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

It's interesting to notice, that using yt-dlp on some videos that have ads in the stream... it enters on a strange "version" that appears to remove the ads within the video, locating the ads. I don't know if it is intelligent enough to do that, but I am using it through the original branch of yt-dlp.

Has anyone ever done it or noticed that? Pardon me for the ESL.

 

[MarqueeIsAFunnyWord]

Don't forget that media players like mpv or VLC have YouTube functionality. Usually works in a pinch when Freetube isn't cooperating.

 

[Spruce Supremacist]

One way I found to completely bypass their anti-adblocker and also make the page run smoother on older machines is to force the mobile version of the website, which you can do by going to https://m.youtube.com/?persist_app=1&app=m. It'll then always redirect you to the mobile version of the website until you clear your cookies. It seems the mobile version doesn't have the anti-adblock built into it, while still working with things like sponsorblock - the only drawback being that the controls are more wonky as they're aimed at touchscreens, plus no volume controls within the player itself.

 

[FATTESTCUNT 2.0]

Online Youtube downloaders continue to fluctuate on daily, if not hourly bases, age restricted videos are unable to be downloaded or viewed outside of Youtube,

I know it's not free, but Internet Download Manager still works for downloading age restricted videos. I just tested it with the video that Solid Hyrax posted and it worked fine, giving me various options up to and including 4K/60.

 

[Civillian 18]

I know it's not free, but Internet Download Manager still works for downloading age restricted videos. I just tested it with the video that Solid Hyrax posted and it worked fine, giving me various options up to and including 4K/60.

Is this because it is hunting for your account credentials on your computer? The change was server-side on YouTube servers so if they can download the file, they are authenticating at some point, somewhere.

 

[FATTESTCUNT 2.0]

Is this because it is hunting for your account credentials on your computer? The change was server-side on YouTube servers so if they can download the file, they are authenticating at some point, somewhere.

Nope. You can clear all cookies related to YouTube and be logged out and it will still work. It has a 30 day trial if you wanna test it.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Dude YT is so cucked. I used to watch the old soundboard prank call community videos like over 15 years old at its peak, and now most of the videos are age restricted. No fun allowed anymore.
I also really miss profile customization. There were so many cool YT troll groups that did stuff with it.

 

[Civillian 18]

Nope. You can clear all cookies related to YouTube and be logged out and it will still work. It has a 30 day trial if you wanna test it.

Neat, I wonder how they are doing this then, does IDM run through a central server of sorts or cache things maybe? I use JDownloader as I did not want to fuck around with shareware even though it kinda waxes nostalgic.

 

[FATTESTCUNT 2.0]

Neat, I wonder how they are doing this then, does IDM run through a central server of sorts or cache things maybe? I use JDownloader as I did not want to fuck around with shareware even though it kinda waxes nostalgic.

It downloads YouTube videos from googlevideo.com. There is a ton of code before and after that URL, but that seems to be the source.

 

[Civillian 18]

It downloads YouTube videos from googlevideo.com. There is a ton of code before and after that URL, but that seems to be the source.

Interesting. That is where the YouTube videos are stored (obviously) but that 'ton of code' after the URL are parameters, so assumedly they have either found some 'evergreen' values that will result in the server accepting the request and replying with the data (like the old bypass which was 'pretend to be an Android TV' or something), they are (or did on install) extracting your age-verified cookies, or they have an API providing a big old pile of age-verified cookies somewhere.

 

[Turkey Beef]

Two months ago I lost a playlist. It was my original favorites list, I've had an account since late 2005. Many videos were lost over the years from attrition, deleted channels etc. the reason? "Child Endangerment" would they tell me the video? No. Was I able to appeal it? What do you think.
My only recorse was that they had a scrollable list of my videos I managed to copy paste the titles of videos to a text file. 5,000 videos. A list that took from 2006 to fill. I didn't even know you could max out a playlist.
There is wild shit on there. Was a it maybe a video of a guy in 2007 pranking a family member with a shock site like lemon party? I'll never know.

I started downloading everything. And I barely have the space for it.
What to archive? Smaller channels that mean much to me. Urinating Tree, Spax3, Gorbachev drama arhcives. THE RANTING COMMUNITY featuring such alumni like darknessthecurse, bigal2k6, lilylivers, randomDCE, classic ytp's like DINNER BLASTER, movies like War of the Servers, Gmod Idiot Box, Masiokas, stupid videos like Lotima Techno & early retsuprae. And so, so much music in large curated hours long mixes. Some of which I record to tape, shit I might as well start recording them to digital data streams on VHS's or finally get my DTO tape drive working again for some extra terrabytes of storage.p

There are so many cultural touchstones and little moments in YouTube that made up much of internet culture and collective culture disseminated over the last twenty years that I fear the day those data centers explode or get sold off as there's nobody willing to keep it forever as the rot slowly grows.

I don't know what else to say. But what the hell that's digital hell for you

If you still have the txt. fil at hand, I wouldn't mind garnering a look at it if you're comfortable with sharing it. I always have a soft spot for the ancient days of youtube.