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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

#331
post #52
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> the recent shoot down of ad blockers on the desktop browser Mobile browsers have been affected as well. uBlock Origin on Firefox for Android has been letting the ads through recently. Fortunately, NewPipe exists, but it depends on youtube-dl so, while it remains free of ads, it's also affected by this change surrounding age-restricted content. Hopefully people start moving somewhere else within the next few years,…

> Fortunately, NewPipe exists, but it depends on youtube-dl so, while it remains free of ads, it's also affected by this change surrounding age-restricted content.

Issue thread is here.[0]

[0] https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/issues/6403

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm so tired of tech people saying "it has to suck because the law requires it", when they clearly haven't read it. [..] The AVMSD isn't new, it was codified in 2010. It has a website[1] You know, if you were going to rant about people not reading things, you probably should have first validated your own assumptions. AVMSD was just updated ( https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/revision-a... ) which ju…

> if you were going to rant about people not reading things, you probably should have first validated your own assumptions I did, but I didn't stumble on this revision. Now that you linked it, I see hints everywhere that I should have noticed the first time around. Thanks for bringing it up. Although, I'm rather unhappy if my rant was taken to be about reading comprehension though. It really wasn't. I'm annoyed at pe…

> I don't think it's on my to find a better implementation for YouTube, but with all the smart engineers they have access to, I would think they could come up with something less intrusive.

The sentiment behind this sentence is the driving motivation for almost every single bad tech law on the Internet. Programmers aren't magic, there are limits to what they can and can't do.

Almost every bad tech law starts out with someone saying, "I don't know how this is going to work, but you're required to make it work, and if it falls apart it's your fault." You see this show up in the encryption debates, in the copyright directives, in debates about moderating content and identifying abuse, in the debates about age restrictions. It's universal, it comes from this belief that if you just require things, they'll magically happen because people can "nerd harder".

It is, of course, usually very good for tech laws to legislate outcomes rather than methodology. However, that doesn't get rid of the obligation to determine whether the outcomes being legislated are actually possible.

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

#334
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."

Related anecdote: A few years ago, my father bought a android tablet to my grand parents (both 85+). After watching them use it for a few minutes, I realized how user hostile the technical world has become: tons of ads popping up and asking for your attention (“click me”, “download x”, “make your device run faster”, etc). This and apps “redesigned” every few month, breaking the workflow they've struggled to learn (th…

Root it, install a dns level adblocker (either for their network or just the tablet), install appropriate apps for them (preferring FOSS when possible via fdroid) and relock the tablet before giving it to them. Oh, and run a backup of the whole device first.

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

#335

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.

I use medici.tv for Western classical music.

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

#336
post #46
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!

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."

[deleted]

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm so tired of tech people saying "it has to suck because the law requires it", when they clearly haven't read it. [..] The AVMSD isn't new, it was codified in 2010. It has a website[1] You know, if you were going to rant about people not reading things, you probably should have first validated your own assumptions. AVMSD was just updated ( https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/revision-a... ) which ju…

> if you were going to rant about people not reading things, you probably should have first validated your own assumptions I did, but I didn't stumble on this revision. Now that you linked it, I see hints everywhere that I should have noticed the first time around. Thanks for bringing it up. Although, I'm rather unhappy if my rant was taken to be about reading comprehension though. It really wasn't. I'm annoyed at pe…

> Even here, it only calls for age verification. Again, there's no requirement for checking credit cards or passports.

Age verification offline has always been done by checking IDs. Why would you expect anything different by shifting to online? The law demands age verification, and youtube delivered the de facto standard for age verification in the form of ID checking. That seems to be extremely cause & effect of the most straightforward variety. There's no reasonable expectation for anything different to have occurred unless those creating the law also outlined how to do this in a more privacy-sensitive manner. But they almost certainly didn't, so obviously tech companies would go with what's well established practice instead of trying to skate on legally thin ice to create new precedents for age verification.

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

#339

As someone else mentioned in the comments, the "get cookies.txt" [0] extension works to circumvent the age restricted measure and i have been using it with success for weeks now. get the extension, export the cookies.txt file to a folder, then run youtube-dl in that folder with: youtube-dl --cookies cookies.txt https://youtu.be/id it works as of right this minute [1] and in my experience that cookie continues to work…

But I don't want to use the cookies, I used youtube-dl exactly to watch age-restricted videos without signing-in. I don't want YouTube to track which videos I watch and make history-based suggestions so I never sign-in and reset cookies often. I occasionally stumble upon age-restricted videos and feel curious what's there but I don't want any of them to influence what does YouTube believe my interests are so I just u…

I'm born in whatever far back year forms will let me choose in most internet services, over a 100 years old in a lot of cases, I assumed everyone did this.

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Related anecdote: A few years ago, my father bought a android tablet to my grand parents (both 85+). After watching them use it for a few minutes, I realized how user hostile the technical world has become: tons of ads popping up and asking for your attention (“click me”, “download x”, “make your device run faster”, etc). This and apps “redesigned” every few month, breaking the workflow they've struggled to learn (th…

Root it, install a dns level adblocker (either for their network or just the tablet), install appropriate apps for them (preferring FOSS when possible via fdroid) and relock the tablet before giving it to them. Oh, and run a backup of the whole device first.

I can't believe it has to come to this to get a usable device for a growing segment of the population. Old people practically need their own IT department fighting for their best interests with how predatory tech companies have been towards them. They are SOL if their kid isn't a techie.
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