I understand the sentiment, but gotta say YouTube is one service that is much better when logged in. I have my history and personalization disabled everywhere except YouTube. If I open YouTube’s front page in an incognito tab, it’s wall-to-wall trash on the level of Jerry Springer. Meanwhile I’ve been getting recommendations to my precise taste for years. Lots of good music found in the recs.
I don’t even open random YouTube links from social media under my account, so as to not mess up the recommendations. Always using an incognito tab instead (which is admittedly foiled by the ‘sign up’ thing when I have to use a vpn).
This was changed some time ago. This is YT front page when you’re logged out:
Which is exactly what I want to be recommended by YT.
Hmmm, you’re right, it now tells me to “search to get started”. Guess the onslaught of total unmitigated crap as the default page for a region was rather embarrassing. That’s the downside of using the greatest common factor as the starting point.
Thankfully I have my own interests instead, and taught them to Youtube. Works like a charm.
It’s less about privacy more about minimalism…
I don’t want too many accounts to manage… I just wanna watch a bunch of stuff and forget it
It’s automated testing to see if they can force you to login.
My VPN (mullvad) lets me use socks5 proxies for any exit node, so when I hit this I just change my freetube proxy number and it works. Annoying
It would be nice to integrate a list of socks5 proxies into freetube and have it auto rotate
Invidious is what I’ve been using forever. On mobile, PipePipe and a VPN set to Brazil or France is the best solution.
No, afaik every alternative frontend that still works with age-restricted videos works by letting you sign in with a Google account (which defeats the point). I’ve tried a few.
I just make an account for just the age-restricted videos. FreeTube still works for me for non-age restricted videos (if it doesn’t for you, try changing VPN countries a few times—also you need to restart FreeTube every time you change VPN servers, otherwise it doesn’t work from the new server, idk why).
I haven’t gotten FreeTube to load anything in forever. What tricks are you using?
Nothing, just using the latest FreeTube. Are you up to date? They’ve pushed out a few releases recently to get around new YouTube trickery. Your VPN server might also be blocked; I’ve had luck with Mullvad’s Swedish servers lately.
You could try Invidious, or another alternative front end.
Do any of these instances ever work ?
I loved invidious for a long time but I just gave up about 6 months ago.
Even hosting your own instance it was almost always not working waiting for a new release or workaround to be pushed.
inv.nadeko.net is the most reliable one, followed by yewtu.be. It gets broken every once in a while, but it always bounces back. I gotta admire that about the Invidious folks.
Its not the individual instances but the underlying project.
Its not even the maintainers fault. Its a cat and mouse game. The devs have done an epic job of keeping up, but ultimately all of these projects are unreliable.
yt-dlp is the gold standard and provides the back end for many of these projects, but its cli only.
Ive found freetube desktop app to be more reliable than invidious. Also pipepipe for Android.
I watched the side boobvideo on invaneko, for science, to ensure no barriers to the video.
But I agree, they’re at best inconsistent.
Video ownloader it works but not very convenient
Just using yt-dlp also works, but locally.
Unless I’m missing something, it doesn’t appear to:
Does it still work for you? for me it stopped working a while back
Yes, and all the download sites and tools don’t use anything else either. They all just wrap yt-dlp.
If it stopped working for you, you might have to read the docs on the specific error you’re getting to see how to get around it. YouTube does try to make it harder, but it’s technologically difficult to fully block. There are workarounds for basically every case as far as I’m aware.
I checked it now and it works fine if I don’t use VPN. but regular youtube also work fine without VPN.
If I switch to VPN both yt-dlp and normal youtube give same error “please login to prove you are not a bot” which is the problem OP is originally trying to find work around for
I find switching VPN endpoints works, bit whack-a-mole, but works. Actually I run a few with gluetun and just switch proxy port numbers.
Tested it, and can second that this does technically work.
That took one agonizing hour to download but the video seems to work.
Thanks.
If only there were videos on YouTube of people cleaning naked or trying transparent clothes.
Can’t find much in terms of a penis.
This is an unfair double standard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMOSBZi6cHU&t=43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upxEK7dbYBI&t=55
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQXvRrLmS1E&t=131
Finally some real penises:
Not what OP asked for bur there was a mexican gal that would do carpentry naked
Here’s one with big areolas covered in sand!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0eYPftTXLM&t=88
But you know its tits because it looks like sandy tits.
Can you still vpn to a country that doesn’t have age laws
Such as?
I’m in PA, USA and afiak there are no such laws anyways… this is just youtube being a dick
Edit: Anyways, I found one comment mentioned this web downloader thingy https://app.ytdown.to/en23/
And it works… slow af but works.
But it wont be long before they break it again… ugh
VPN with a double hop ending in France or Brazil usually works for me.
Tried both, Doesn’t work.
Seems like the only way to bypass is using weird web-downloader sites which I presume use their own google accounts to get access which then it downloads onto their server.
Just try different countries in your VPN, you’ll probably stumble on a few that work.
Ok then did YouTube implement the age checks globally then that sucks a lot
The precise situation is that US states don’t have age verification laws right now but Texas tried to implement one on Jan 1 (Texas SB2420 - it got blocked by a judge as unconstitutional) and Louisiana and Utah have laws coming into effect soon.
So it’s both true that platforms are moving because of laws but there are no laws. The laws have been announced for many months. They aren’t trivial to implement so of course platforms are doing advance work. They might even want to test it before the laws come into effect, and see how badly it hurts them while they still have time to adjust and fiddle.
No company wants to do age verification IMO. There is no upside for them. Maybe if we actually prosecuted tech companies for harming children, there would be, but lolz.
If PipePipe can’t do it I doubt its possible. Unless their exists some region that u can VPN to that doesn’t require said sign in but I doubt it
Seems like internal A/B testing. happened to me few weeks ago in whatever device/front ends. I tried Tor but maybe it is already blocking Tor, still requires sign in. Using VPN finally works in few countries.
But 3 days later I can use NewPipe as normal.
Well except I think age-restricted videos are never accessible without login from any frontends
Unwatched app for those on ios
You can either wait or hop from VPN endpoint to endpoint, though both are workarounds. I’d suggest that we can expect more of this too.
I mean I even tried without VPN and still doesn’t work.
If that video contains some kind of nudity, it is possible to find it on a site like ytboob. Otherwise there is no way to watch it without an account.
It looks like that site needs an account too.
No. It is working fine for me.
It does not proxy the real video, they download and create a mirror. You do not connect to YouTube at all, directly or indirectly.
Weird, I must’ve clicked a bad link in the search. Teach me to be complacent. Lol
Have you tried making an account, lying about your age and signing in?
That’s a great way to give Google your location, email address and phone number.
Ehhh…yeah but all of that can be faked though…
You’re lying about your age for a reason kiddo,.you’ve got to do the whole thing or nothing at all.
Tell me how you fake your phone number, they won’t accept paid (or unpaid) burner numbers.
Still requires you to log in.
No it doesn’t. I’m using it right now without an account.
Is it regional or something? Videos are still blocked for me:
Also, funny bug in that the recommended videos are still there, but just not visible, so tapping anywhere opens a new video.
Nothing can bypass age restricted videos AFAIK.
There do appear to be a couple services that use their own accounts (see here), but in general, that was my understanding too.
I use it with Mullvad. When I hit a block, I reconnect to a different server, and that usually fixes it.
I’ve found that works with the “Are you a bot?” blocks, but never the age restrictions.
Hmm, I’ve mostly been able to watch age restricted videos. I think it’s a bit of a tortoise and hare scenario. The workarounds eventually get there. I honestly don’t understand all of the technical details
PipePipe allows me to watch videos without signing in that ask for “sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” on the normal YouTube interface.
There may be videos that are age-restricted or otherwise account-locked that it can’t access I think, but I haven’t run into them.
The age restricted videos like what OP asked about are unfortunately pretty common with topics like history, or games - anything that may have any amount of violence. So far as I know, the only way to bypass them is by proxy.
