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 :)
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
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
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.
Well, you must have got in before the new faceID scan. Trying now redirects you to a QR code, which only works on phone. Which then very politely asks to use your selfie cam / won’t accept camera roll.
Use your selfie camera to take a photo of a computer screen in highest quality you can. 4k recommended.
No, stop giving the system legitimacy. Reject it and leave their platform if it is required.
Don’t even log into YouTube.
If I remove YouTube I might as well remove the internet as a whole, YouTube is most of what I’m online for and that isn’t changing.
