First time this happens to me. With a German protonvpn server.
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Bots can’t watch videos anymore? Anti-droid discrimination
It’s a VPN thing. I have a work VPN that gives me the same error on piped API front ends like piped.video
If I use my regular device without a VPN the alt front ends work fine.
SmartTube, my go-to way to watch, is having issues again today too. I presume it is to make people subscribe to YouTube premium but my first thought was to use Nebula instead.
This has always gone away for me when I change my location in my vpn.
This can be a soft limit where Youtube limits the connection rate so that artificially inflating view count becomes more costly. There are inexpensive ‘services’ especially in India or Pakistan where you can buy human (like a whole internet cafe) view times to your scam video to make it float in suggestions and to promote a channel.
I don’t work for youtube so it is just a guess.
“Protecting our community” isn’t even a good excuse, you can’t leave comments without an account…
Protecting our
communityprofits
This helps protect our
communityrevenue.YouTube doesn’t like VPNs. Harder to track you (and sell/monetize your data) if they can’t tell who you are.
I go the other way. My youtube account is used across my family. My recommendation is a fucking mess.
So, the home page includes Peppa pig videos alongside with gruesome skateboarding accident compilations. Something for everyone!
I desperately want a viable alternative to come along. There’s a lot of great content on YouTube, but the platform is increasingly being enshitified.
There’s platforms like Nebula that noticed the decline and also wanted to give creators the freedom to create without needing to deal with an ever changing algorithm
I’ve considered Nebula a few times. That could absolutely be the alternative I’m looking for if they keep adding creators and topics and variety.
Pornhub.
They have the technology and many of the features in place.
Third party app without an account maybe? Freetube on the desktop and newpipe on the phone is what I like to use. There’s stuff like grayjay, tubearchivist, and pinchflat as well. Or just go straight yt-dlp.
It’s a gigantic money sink, it’s going to be extremely hard to come up with a profitable (or break even) alternative.
I agree. We just haven’t gotten to the point quite yet. Where the creators revolt. But that stage should appear somewhat shortly.
Youtube does a ton of evil stuff, but this one is more tame. I suspect the VPN was used to bot and got banned, so the sign-in is required to better target where the traffic is allowed to go, instead of blanket banning everybody using the service.
I suspect the VPN was used to bot
There are plenty of sources, including even in this thread, indicating that that this is not the problem. Quit making excuses for them.
uhhh… what?
It’s not just you. I’m tired of the whole team of people who are always standing by to bring out similar excuses any time someone decides that in their quest to stop invidious from existing — or whatever google is actually aiming at — it’s acceptable to just mass-block all the VPN users as collateral damage.
It’s not an excuse though. It’s right there in the error message.
Where are people getting the impression I think google is some kind of saint who can do no wrong? I don’t even see the “proof” that is being used to say I’m coming to google’s defense. Just a few anecdotal theories… just like I provided.
Ah, so it’s not you coming up with the stupid excuse that they have legit reasons to think the user might be a nefarious “bot”, you’re just passing along the stupid excuse as you interpret it from the meaningless message direct from Google. That explains where you got the idea that “viewbots” had anything to do with it, I guess.
So what they can bot with VPN without signing in?
Bot can automate views. It’s why Youtube keeps trying to move towards “engagement”. Comments, likes, etc, all require an account, which is an extra hurdle for bots.
Then I will they just doing half the work. They can just get the site account walled for that goal, not a half patch work of blocking VPN users.
deleted by creator
Been seeing that a fair bit too lately. Freetube, Grayjay, and Newpipe seem so sometimes get around it, even if the error is in the browser the video will sometimes load in those apps from the same IP. If you get lucky and find a working invidious/piped instance that might work too.
Otherwise, turning on a VPN and switching between servers will usually eventually lead to a working one. That, and if you’re up for it, check to see if your favorite creators are on places like Peertube, Odysee, or Rumble that don’t block IPs like YouTube does.
Try Freetube, it still works well, even with videos that are age limited.
Try clicking the sign in button, then navigating back to the video without actually signing in. Seems to work every time I’ve tried it so far.
This is the result of them blocking invidious. They targeted large Datacenter nodes and check for the number of requests from those datacenters that aren’t logged in, and block them until that number meets a certain threshold. This also causes people with VPNs to get this message. The solution is to connect to smaller self-hosted invidious instances or using proxies hosted on normal residential ips.
Yea, been having this BIGTIME. Even occurs on grayjay, and pipe apps (newpipe, etc.) Its aggravating. Can’t even download vids either, and the ones u have downloaded are held ransom until u turn it off too 😂 at least in my case. Fuck google.
the stupidest thing about this is that I literally am signed into youtube (yeah yeah, I know), and I still get this shit!
Have you considered trying out NewPipe or its fork Tubular (with SponsorBlocck built in)?
Unfortunately NewPipe will not help with that. I get this message in a browser and in NewPipe.
Have you tried if yt-dlp works? Cuz if that also doesnt, then maybe they actually temporarily blocked your IP?
I have never gotten this message on yt so cant test it.
Tubular works like a charm like 98% of the time (which is way more than YouTube apps, LOL).
Yeah when google breaks something newpipe and its forks usually get updated within a day or two. I really gotta donate to them again.
