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 removed 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.
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
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.
What’s to stop a kid from grabbing his dad’s credit card to sign in?
performative adjective uk /pəˈfɔː.mə.tɪv/ u
not sincere but intended to impress someone, prove that something is true, etc
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.
How many gigabytes was the binge, out if curiosity? I’m trying to figure out what the download threshold is.
I’m honestly not sure, since then, i’ve been careful not to greatly exceed real time vs downloaded time accounting that my wife and kids may be watching as well
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.
That sounds like PeerTube with extra steps :) I’m down for it.
I’ll probably end up using Pinchflat over Tube Archivist myself (a bit lighter to keep running as always on service on my Raspberry pi) but p2p seeding should work just the same.
Peertube would be fantastic, except you’re exposed, hanging in the wind. we need some kind of abstraction. If google connected up a client and saw all the ips hosting, they’d immediately block us all :)
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
Maybe these type of things will finally push people away from these platforms and toward more open / non-centeralized platforms.
You OP are a saint
Cheers big ears!
PS: 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!
About a year ago I bypassed YouTube’s facial recognition by using a YouTube video and just taking a photo of that. So many big youtubers just talk directly to the camera and that made it pretty easy
Could we use AI to gen a fake ID ? Using their own weapon against them ?
I was just thinking about using a picture or a video found online. Nice to know it works.
I imagine it works “for now”. I can see this becoming “verified govt id only” soon enough. There’s precedent for that IIRC
When that happens, it’s going to be a great day to de-google permanently.
youtube is the only thing I still have of theirs, maybe that is 1 too many.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting with alternate video sites such as Odysee, PeerTube, and Nebula. I think I might manage without YT. There’s plenty enough to watch elsewhere. Haven’t made the switch yet, but I feel well prepared.
I have looked at other video sites in the past and never found one that ticks the boxes, things change though, and there really does need to be other options.
The public TV normally has a homepage with news, documentaries, series and movies on demand for free (at least in the EU, use VPN or proxie if country restricted content) eg.RTVE in Spain or ARD/ZDF in Germany, same in Pluto TV which is free also a lot of free content in Rakuten TV. For music there is Bandcamp, https://www.internet-radio.com/, Pixabay (yes, it has also music, above free downloadable (all CC license) or also the FMA. Odysee also is growing a lot in last years with content creators which have emigrated from YT. Search content in your search engine, not in YT.
Certainly if you are looking for cat videos, clickbait shorts or AI slope, then there are really no alternatives to YT.
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.
There’s a way to solve this, just look for “delete my account”
Probably have to verify yourself to reach that button.
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.
I used a sample id from the WA DoT that had a picture of Mr bean and the name “Sam s sample” on discord and it worked perfectly. Didn’t work for Reddit, but I’ve stopped using Reddit anyways. VPN works for porn.
Can’t you use something like Freetube? Yeah you can’t comment on videos, but haven’t signed into my account in years
I use Freetube and I consider not being able to comment (and comments being hidden by default) as a bonus feature.
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
Is that Sergeant Slaughter?
Yep lol
Damn… I haven’t thought about that guy in 25+ years. Thanks for the flashbacks!
choose how to verify your age
use your credit card
huh? why credit card?
You can only get a credit card if your 18+, and therefore proves your age. A debit card does not do this since a minor can have a debit card
Except I had a credit card when I was a minor, and used it to verify my age everywhere
This is different in different countries.
