Listen at this point, we either re-upload our favorite creator’s content to other platforms. Convince them to join alternatives or help out *their replacements" on those alternative platforms to grow.
Either way I do not respect content-creators that do not support alternative platforms (& decentralization) on principle
I vote for all of what you said
Listen at this point, we either re-upload our favorite creator’s content to other platforms. Convince them to join alternatives or help out their replacements on thise alternative platforms to grow.
I am with this, tired of using a yt frontend to watch videos (sometimes real website), and no reuploads nor have alternatives.
“This will allow Youtube to locate the best content” 🤡
But I don’t want the best content.
I want the old YouTube
It’s so insulting they add flavour text like this as if to call you a fucking moron to your face
“We know what’s best for you”
I mean… detecting (some) VPNs is as trivial as
fetch('https://github.com/NazgulCoder/IPLists/raw/refs/heads/main/output/vpn-ipv4.txt').then( res => res.text() ).then( res => console.log( res.includes( "1.2.3.4" ) ) )thanks to https://github.com/NazgulCoder/IPLists/
FWIW though I did try, connected via a random VPN from ProtonVPN from Argentina… and it wasn’t in that list. So it’s not perfect. Also ProtonVPN has apparently today 13K servers according to https://protonvpn.com/vpn-servers
That being said I can imagine that Google, which is literally built on crawling the Web, has all the infrastructure and expertise needed to have such lists and up to date ones.
I’m not justifying blocking VPN here, only trying to clarify that unless you self-host in a rather specific setup (i.e. not relying a popular cloud provider but truly self hosting) it’s technically not hard to block VPNs.
Understanding is the first step to fighting draconian policies.
Yeah, detecting the VPN isn’t really difficult at all. VPN providers sometimes try to cycle through IP addresses to make it harder, but there’s only so much they can do.
This isn’t really noteworthy, especially when you consider how many services require a sign in when you’re on a VPN anyways. It’s shitty, but not really surprising; They want to be able to tie your traffic to you, not just to a random VPN server. Hell, even without signing in, they probably have your browser fingerprinted. If you’re privacy focused, you probably have a lot of privacy based extensions, in a privacy based browser. And that makes you easy to fingerprint.
Many websites now just block a large range of cloud and VPS services in order to reduce DDOS from AI crawlers. For youtube and reddit you can still access if you are logged in though.
They always could. What appears to be happening is that channels now have the option to turn on “a switch” so that content wont play if a VPN is detected. Most VPN ip addresses are well known, because they arent a secret. Everyone who uses the VPN goes through it.
If you come across the above message, its because the content creator turned it on. I had it come up with “stick to football”. Its the only thing that it comes up with. I just unsubbed and wont watch anymore. Im not turning off my VPN for anyone or anything. Id rather just go with out. I encourage all of you to do the same.
It’s time to switch to Newpipe or Invidious, YouTube clients focused on privacy, without adverts and without Google’s clutches.
newpipe won’t work for much longer. Google is mandating android apps be signed by them, and you can sure as shit bet that newpipe, which eats into their profits, ain’t gonna get signed
Oh no! I’ll miss you, Newpipe.
Been trying out Invidious lately. Nice stuff if it is not down for a reason or two.
Oh! Speaking of a devil. It is down right now!
The “best content” being ip-located ads, probably.
When I see content blocks like that anymore, I just leave the content behind and go elsewhere. Malicious companies will not get my clicks. They can fuck right off.
Good sign though, means they are getting desperate. It is our duty to starve them of traffic.
Sure, but there are also lots of other ways around it. Non-chrome browsers (or Chromium-based browsers) still allow for good extensions that can block YouTube ads.
Firefox + uBlock Origin still works great, even when all the front-ends are broken.
There sure are, and if necessary they can be applied and are good practices in general. As long as these web sites still see user traffic, monetized or not, even with users using workarounds, they’ll keep thinking what they are doing is cool, and the only problem is that they just have to monetize harder, and then “obviously” all those workaround users will fall in line and monetize like everyone else once they’ve “fixed the glitch”.
If they see a void of user traffic, that gets their attention. Of course, for the person viewing the content, the person has to make a conscious choice to go elsewhere/watch something else/do something else. Would be a good time for content creators to start shifting as well. Patreon even lists a bunch of video services that are not YouTube: https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046704651-What-are-my-video-hosting-options
VPNs aren’t hard to detect, especially if you’re using a major service.
100% this, I work in cyber sec and it’s very easy these days for services to detect this.
What about TOR browser?
That’s even easier. The list of exit nodes is public.
I have a Tridactyl rule to rewrite YouTube URL to
youtube-local(repository https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local/ ) e.g. https://www.youtube.com/ becomes http://localhost:9999/https://www.youtube.com but as others have suggested, I do my bet to avoid YouTube entirely, because Google is bad, Big Tech is bad.I watched youtube religously 10-15 years ago. Now when I try to enjoy some content, I struggle to find anything of quality that’s in my feed. Sometimes I’m scrolling for 10 minutes and give up. Their algorithm for what might interest me was so much better back then.
My ISP has started throttling YouTube to ~2mbps when viewed from desktop. Using a VPN gets around this and lets me watch in HD. Luckily I’ve not encountered this error yet, but if I do I guess it’s no more YouTube for me, 480p is just way too blurry to put up with.
Why would your ISP do that?
They’re 5g based, so I suspect it’s within the terms of service somewhere that they can limit the streaming quality? Historically I’d only ever noticed deprioritization, never a hard bandwidth limit.
Rip net neutrality
to save bandwidth
I wonder if there’s any workaround besides VPNs like changing DNS or something?
I use 1.1.1.1 so I don’t think it’s easily ignored by changing DNS. But interestingly while using Revanced and NewPipe on my phone I don’t have any of the same problems. Maybe my computer is ignoring my router’s DNS? Maybe mobile YouTube is delivered from a different server? I wish I knew but ultimately using a VPN still works for me and is a very low effort fix.
What I don’t get is why it’s only YouTube they choose to throttle. I’ve never noticed any issues on other streaming websites and fast.com which literally uses Netflix servers is also full speed.
Everything detects VPNs. Reddit has an error screen I’ve never seen before about network activity when I use a VPN and I’m not logged in. YouTube refuses to let me watch embedded videos when I’m on my VPN. Many pages simply refuse to load.
Reddit?! Okay, that’s pretty terrible. It’s one thing to have region-locked copyright for stuff, but disallowing VPNs for a web forum? While we don’t need more evidence that they’ve turned heel, that’s an awful big red flag.
Not to defend that shithole, but honestly, it’s probably just to enforce IP based bans.
Tip: Peertube Companion is a good extension for directing you to duplicates of the video you’re trying to watch if it can be found elsewhere.
Well, they need to make sure the right people are watching the right propaganda.
They lobby both parties, people are just talking about the Trump donations now as he is currently in power
That only covers political donations, not outright payoffs.
If money is speech, what is a company “saying” when it donates to both parties?
It’s just lobbying to get their interests. They aren’t specifically pro rep or pro dem they are pro google
This isnt new. Its been happening for years. There is a post about this on lemmy every few weeks. It just doesnt happen consistently, so people always think that they “discovered” this for the first time.
But this is even dumber than before, you can’t even login to bypass. What about people living in a country where youtube is blocked. I guess Google just says “fuck 'em”?
What about people living in a country where youtube is blocked. I guess Google just says “fuck 'em”?
Yyep.
If you’re using a VPN, you’re likely anonymized and not directly making YouTube any money. Those are leeches, as far as a Google accountant is concerned.
They said logging in doesn’t make it go away. Being logged in means they can already track you, so this is pretty ridiculous of them tbh.
Probably part of the age verification bullshit
A few days ago I gotta message from google saying they “can’t verify my age” (meaning they want gov ID I’m sure) so I’m forced to use safe search and other stuff too.
Fuck. That!
I see. I havent had a Google account for like 8 years, so i didnt notice the difference.
