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YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

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Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#111

I've found YouTube increasingly unusable in general over the last few months. It seems to be pushing absolute rubbish at me. There's a gap in the market for a music-only video service.

YouTube is finally at the point where it has grown into the only and largest video sharing service in the world. All that growth cost them a lot of money, and now they are pushing to turn that growth into profit. They'll slowly ratchet down the quality of videos, then add "original quality / high quality" video viewing to YouTube Premium.

Pretty soon, youtube-dl won't work at all

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#112
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You work so hard explaining to your friends good infosec practice like not just typing their credit card in because some site wants to "verify their age" and then Google and Apple just go and fuck around with stuff like this. At this point the best advice you can give your friends is "stay the fuck away from computers unless you're willing to sit down and read a bunch of FOSSS manuals."

Interesting, when does Apple ask for a cc for age verification? I don't think I've come across that UI. Edit: Looks like it might be an EU thing?

I set my age to about 3 months old in Skype and got locked out. They need my CC to verify my age because of COPA (child online protection act in the US) or something.

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#113
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had that too. A 14 year old account, with Google Cloud and Google One billing, plus many Google Store purchases and they still wanted me to prove my age. WTF?

That totally makes sense from a software engineering point of view. The age check was probably implemented as a "verified_age" column somewhere, and they didn't bother backfilling it with your existing google account info.

That's very convenient for them, if so, but I very much doubt that's the reason.

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#114

Recently, my 15 year old Google account started to nag me for my birthday. If Google was smart, they could have worked out that I'm old enough by now! (The account is older than 13 so definitely not a kid behind it, lol)

But maybe your parents created the account for you, when you were not born yet?

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#115
post #8

Title seems misleading, it can download it as long as you provide logged in account info. I think the correct title is: youtube-dl can no longer be used to bypass youtube's age verification checks

> Title seems misleading, it can download it as long as you provide logged in account info ... assuming that you have provided YouTube with a scan of your ID card to prove that you are 18+ ...

...only in some jurisdictions where it's required by law.

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#116

I remember http://nsfwyoutube.com/ hasn't been working for sometime. Maybe it is related. Is there still a way to anonymously watch restricted videos on youtube? I don't want to login to google to watch videos.

It works for me for maybe 2 out of 3 videos, then about half of those that don't work will work with their backup method (which I guess is maybe a download to their servers and then served from there).

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#117

Hmm, it's such a shame that we have a single point of failure for so much of internet culture, not to mention people's actual creative lives. This is one of the reasons I started using youtube-dl. I wanted to create an independent backup of all my favorite creators and contributors in the event that they have to leave or delete their channels. This content should belong to everyone. I wish I could trust that all my f…

Sorry I have the opposite perspectives as you:

I don’t want to visit independent creators’ websites to find their content - all with different UIs, etc. YouTube gives me a clean, centralized way to access content where I know I will be able to stream 4K and view content offline. This feels massively more convenient to me than having to maintain a catalog of offline videos…

While I think we all agree that centralization of control isn’t great, the consumer gets tremendous value from centralization and this value doesn’t get talked about enough.

Finally your assertion of “this content should belong to everyone” is idealistic. Who is going to pay to store and stream this content? What about the copyright of the actual content creators?

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#118
post #38
post #14

A few days ago, I clicked an age restricted video on Youtube and usually I just state that I am above 18 but now they ask for a credit card number or an identity card to prove it. I am not going to send this just to watch some random video clip that users have declared not appropriate to a young audience because it features a zombie. Seriously!

Same situation here. This, the 2/3 ads being forced down me which are of no interest at all and the constant upselling of YouTube music and the recent shoot down of ad blockers on the desktop browser front really makes it a hostile place to be a consumer of media. I have experimentally uninstalled the YT app off my phone and not used the web site and I haven’t missed it a bit.

On Android there's Newpipe that's really good. But now they're gonna face the same problems as youtube-dl with age-gated videos.

The only real solution is to move out of the walled garden alltogether. Peertube, anyone?

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#119
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That totally makes sense from a software engineering point of view. The age check was probably implemented as a "verified_age" column somewhere, and they didn't bother backfilling it with your existing google account info.

It doesn't make sense for a trillion-dollar company known for some of the best software engineering. There are remarkable lapses in UX with Google products.

Google is the new IBM. There are certainly amazing things being done but 90% of the employees are just doing boring CRUD and have never done anything special.

Re: YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos

#120
post #14

A few days ago, I clicked an age restricted video on Youtube and usually I just state that I am above 18 but now they ask for a credit card number or an identity card to prove it. I am not going to send this just to watch some random video clip that users have declared not appropriate to a young audience because it features a zombie. Seriously!

> now they ask for a credit card number or an identity card to prove it Related, I can’t install my telco’s app because it’s region-locked to Australia and Google Play Store seems to think I’m in the USA—never mind that my account was created in Australia over fifteen years ago and it’s only been to America twice for a total of less than three months, and that my phone was bought in Australia and set up in Australia,…

Create a new account from an Australian IP, sign it in to your Android phone as a secondary account, and then switch to the new account in Play to install the app. (Once installed, use of the app is not tied to the secondary account in any way.)
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