YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by swiley » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #239

pkulak wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that Google is going to do something bad with your credit card, it's that because it's Google, they are training people to be okay with it everywhere else. Like when my bank sends me an email with a link to an external domain because I have a "secure" message.

Actually Google is going to do something very bad with your credit card - link your online nym to your meatspace identity so they can better surveil you. That's much worse than having to deal with a few fraudulent charges, which at most requires mailing in an affidavit.

I don't know why this is down voted. Maybe because at this point creating a Google account now requires such a link?

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

#292

Post by jwitthuhn » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #165

tosbalok2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you, by chance, using Brave? I've noticed that recently with Brave as well. Didn't seem to happen in Chrome even when viewing the same videos on the same machine.

Firefox. Dark pattern to get people to use Chrome?

I've also been seeing this in Firefox for the past couple weeks or so.

The video quality will default to "Auto-1080p" or similar but it will be visibly much worse than 1080p quality. Switching to 1080p manually seems to be the only way to get good quality.

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

#293

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #237

I had a similar issue few days ago, but managed to do it with downloading my youtube account cookies with Chrome extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-cookiestxt/bga... This is the command I have used: ./youtube-dl -f best -a test.txt --cookies ./youtube.com.cookies -a test.txt - i had a bunch of URL in text file.

[deleted]

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

#294

Post by rhizome » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

emteycz wrote: post #245

4ec0755f5522 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this happen on a gaming forum, they upgraded to new forum software and pushed users through a 'update your account' flow. I accidentally set my year to the wrong number and ended up locked out of what had been a long-term username. It was bad, actually, because they had developed a system where your username on the system was tied to your in-game nickname as well so I ended up locked out of both and had to crea…

> The admin of the website literally said "there's nothing I can do". I'm sure this isn't to do with the law specifically but just some limitation of their tools. At the gaming forum I helped to run around 10 years ago we consulted a lawyer and this [asking for birthdate but not allowing birthdate changes] was the only way to keep out of serious trouble and to not need ID verification.

Hah, that probably explains all the age-disclaimers on dating sites. I had assumed it was just "login with Facebook" people not being allowed to change their birthdate by Facebook, but as it turns out that may have been unjust (though FB itself might also prevent bday changes for the same reason).

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

#295

Post by bejelentkezni » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #53

bencollier49 wrote: post #34

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.

All the videos start in potato quality for me now. What is going on? Surely they can afford the bandwidth of all services?

If you mean a low resolution, you can use any of several browser extensions (I like Iridium) to automatically "manually" select the resolution right when the page loads for every video, and this will also increase your maximum buffer from 20 seconds (?) to 2 minutes, which is nice if you're on wifi. If you mean on high resolutions the videos still look terrible, that's because the av1 versions of many videos look very bad above 720p on purpose if they're mostly watched in certain countries (can't find the source now, so treat as hearsay) where most viewers are on smartphones. You can mitigate this by going to settings > playback and performance and select "Prefer AV1 for SD."

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

#296

Post by technick » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

sharken wrote: post #246

swiley wrote: 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."

On the more humorous side they could have implemented an age check similar to the one from Leisure Suit Larry. Although the questions were a lot harder back in 1991 when the Internet was not at your disposal. http://www.classicgaming.cc/pc/leisure-suit-larry/age-quiz

I had to solve these questions back in 95-96 (when I was 15) after buying these games used from a pawn shop. I used various sources from multiple BBS's and teachers at my high school.

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

#297

Post by michaelmrose » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

delusional wrote: post #198

jeroenhd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK the age restriction credit card thing (inside the EU) is the result of some stupid law change (the Audiovisual Media Services Directive). Google probably doesn't want to validate users' age (because selling ads to impressionable kids is very lucrative) but they have to now.

I'm so tired of tech people saying "it has to suck because the law requires it", when they clearly haven't read it. You hear it all the time when discussing tracking banners or ID verification. NO, the law does NOT require your implementation to suck, and most laws give you plenty of leeway in how you implement it. This is really not personal, but I HATE the argument. Take this as an example. The AVMSD isn't new, it…

How do you even define content that "might" seriously impair the physical, mental, or moral development of minors. This is so subjective I don't see how you could get away with marking anything that wouldn't in the US be rated PG.

At that point in order to ensure that such content isn't shown to minors you have to require a credit card or an ID because any reasonably kid would figure out how to set his or her age to a reasonable age of majority to avoid being pigeonholed into kid stuff.

Can you give me an example of an alternative strategy that would be legal and more reasonable?

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

#298

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

cdubzzz wrote: post #210

anfogoat wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently you'll need to scan an ID if you don't have a credit card, and I bet the EU has millions of young adults without a credit card. Either way, the end result is that you cannot use a video service without exposing your real identity to the service provider. And for what? Is there an epidemic of video clips wrecking children's minds I'm not aware of? Lacking that, this doesn't seem even remotely justified. All…

> And for what? Is there an epidemic of video clips wrecking children's minds I'm not aware of? I mean... maybe. I have young children and have no desire to have them anywhere near YouTube for essentially as long as possible _because_ of that very concern.

You can already restrict YouTube on any sort of computing device you might give kids. Parental controls are built in to Android and iOS. There's no need for every website to duplicate that. However, there's a great "need" for the EU to constantly generate massive floods of legislation because they have ~30,000 civil servants they "need" to keep employed, many of whom earn more than the British Prime Minister.

And unfortunately the EU loves coming up with reasons to fine tech firms because they managed to ensure there are none in Europe itself, so it looks a lot like free money, to an organization that's desperate for it (huge budget hole now UK has left + fines go straight into the EU spending pot).

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

#299

Post by Krasnol » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #81

wyager wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is parents’ job, not Google’s. If you legally require Google to act like a parent, they have to do it to everyone.

Sounds good. Say I'm a non-technical parent that wants to give my child access to YouTube but not allow them to watch content that they're not old enough to consume on their own. How should I do this? I want to give them the freedom to explore topics they're interested in so downloading some pre-approved videos isn't going to work. And my kid is smart and will realize that any account-specific setting can trivially b…

You should sit down with your kid and watch it watch the content until it's grown so far that you won't be able to keep it from finding the dirt on the net. By then you've hopefully educated it enough so you can be sure that no harm will come to it after it watched the adult stuff.

Because one thing is sure: your kid WILL see it all because it's 2021.

I mean seriously...you're not closing off all lakes because some kids could drown in them. You teach them how to swim.

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

#300

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Jun 01, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

bruiseralmighty wrote: post #199

thethimble wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 centralizati…

I think you make a good point that centralization provides a lot of value today. However, if the protocols that youtube used where open-source then it would be easier to create generic user interfaces open to all content makers. Similar to what another poster said about RSS feeds. I think one of the deeper critiques you and several others have made is that someone still has to pay for storage and streaming. Today I a…

Well maybe. But the YouTube "protocol" keeps changing. The problems yt-dl has are related to trying to keep up with the protocol's enormous surface area and, as we can see here, sometimes changes have to be made quickly in response to legislation.