First time this happens to me. With a German protonvpn server.
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I don’t believe anyone mentioned this yet so… here goes nothing, there is a suspicion that this is due to A/B testing
This is a bug report from the Invidious project; this is back in June 6 (so four months ago), but the hoster of a fairly large instance noted a very bizarre error message on the Invidious project…
Conclusion is that Youtube is very likely rolling out A/B testing of requiring all clients to login before viewing videos
Refreshing will probably work considering this is most likely result of an A/B test, but unfortunately I don’t see a way of this problem going away
Invidious public instances have been completely blocked by this, it’s no longer AB testing. IDK exactly what triggers it but, too many requests from the same ip is going to show this now… maybe OP vpn exits with an ip shared by too many…
“Protecting our community” isn’t even a good excuse, you can’t leave comments without an account…
Protecting our
communityprofits
Bots can’t watch videos anymore? Anti-droid discrimination
This has always gone away for me when I change my location in my vpn.
Oh that’s how they broke invidious
Try clicking the sign in button, then navigating back to the video without actually signing in. Seems to work every time I’ve tried it so far.
Been seeing that a fair bit too lately. Freetube, Grayjay, and Newpipe seem so sometimes get around it, even if the error is in the browser the video will sometimes load in those apps from the same IP. If you get lucky and find a working invidious/piped instance that might work too.
Otherwise, turning on a VPN and switching between servers will usually eventually lead to a working one. That, and if you’re up for it, check to see if your favorite creators are on places like Peertube, Odysee, or Rumble that don’t block IPs like YouTube does.
It’s a VPN thing. I have a work VPN that gives me the same error on piped API front ends like piped.video
If I use my regular device without a VPN the alt front ends work fine.
This can be a soft limit where Youtube limits the connection rate so that artificially inflating view count becomes more costly. There are inexpensive ‘services’ especially in India or Pakistan where you can buy human (like a whole internet cafe) view times to your scam video to make it float in suggestions and to promote a channel.
I don’t work for youtube so it is just a guess.
SmartTube, my go-to way to watch, is having issues again today too. I presume it is to make people subscribe to YouTube premium but my first thought was to use Nebula instead.
Sometimes I get that prompt while on vpn. After refreshing the page, I’m able to see the video.
I get why I got downvoted for having posted a YouTube link on !oshi_no_ko@lemmy.ml
You’re on Android use NewPipe and it’s forks, personally I prefer Tubular and PipePipe.
Periodically YouTube will break, but both of those forks, as well as new pipe prime, update fairly quickly.
GrayJay is interesting… It has different feel and feature set than newpipe, but it’s worth using. I will say I get more login errors with GrayJay, but closing the app and reopening it resolves them immediately.
All the piped apps will be in f-droid/droidify, you can download GrayJay directly, or just scan the QR to add the repo to a FOSS repo manager.
You will have the same issue with NewPipe.
I use both of them everyday. I’m using one of them right now.
Haven’t had that issue.
They are right. If you have that problem, the reason is that those fuckers at Google block your VPN. It will not help to use an alternative app.
Afaik grayjay has some blocking circumvention.
And personally FreeTube worked from the same IP, when regular youtube wanted me to log in.
YouTube doesn’t like VPNs. Harder to track you (and sell/monetize your data) if they can’t tell who you are.
I go the other way. My youtube account is used across my family. My recommendation is a fucking mess.
My wife and I have our own. We use hers for the kid and mine for the dog. So, hers is beauty gurus and baby shark, and mine is Sarah Boone coverage, old computers, and 10 hour videos of squirrels.
So, the home page includes Peppa pig videos alongside with gruesome skateboarding accident compilations. Something for everyone!
You’re on Android use NewPipe and it’s forks, personally I prefer Tubular and PipePipe.
Periodically YouTube will break, but both of those forks, as well as new pipe prime, update fairly quickly.
GrayJay it’s interesting. It has different feel and feature set than newpipe, but it’s worth using. I will say I get more login errors with GrayJay, but closing the app and reopening it resolves it.
All the piped apps will be in f-droid/droidify, you can download GrayJay directly, or just scan the QR to add the repo to a FOSS repo manager.
I desperately want a viable alternative to come along. There’s a lot of great content on YouTube, but the platform is increasingly being enshitified.
Pornhub.
They have the technology and many of the features in place.
Now if only you could hide the pornographic stuff to not accidentally see disgusting nudity.
There’s nothing “disgusting” about nudity. You should shake off those preconceived cultural biases, you’ll be a better person.
I don’t feel anything abut nudity being posted somewhere and people enjoying it… I just don’t want to see it myself because it’s disgusting for me)
There’s platforms like Nebula that noticed the decline and also wanted to give creators the freedom to create without needing to deal with an ever changing algorithm
LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP $300
I’m inclined to buy that just because it exists. I hate subscription services so, so much!
This is the best option if you think you’ll use Nebula for more than 5 years.
I’m still on the 30$ plan, 300$ makes more sense when it’s 60$/y (which it is now)
I’ve considered Nebula a few times. That could absolutely be the alternative I’m looking for if they keep adding creators and topics and variety.
They seemingly are adding more creators. At least the ones I’ve followed. I recently just started contacting creators to ask if they’ve even heard of it and willing to contact so ppl can support them that way.
Patreon is cool but I don’t want to have a subscription for every creator I like and decide on the amount.
None of the creators I follow have LiberaPay or crypto as an option either. I don’t want to pay on a proprietary platform.
I think patreon recently add an option for creators to make a free tier. Which on one hand could work, but on the other - we’d be constantly bombarded with “to see this video upgrade to the $10 or more tier” which would personally bum me out
Thanks for doing the legwork, I appreciate the initiative :) I’m guessing that I’ll end up with a Nebula subscription, I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
If you want, I can give you a guest pass (one week for free). Just DM me an email address
Thanks for the offer, but I’ll support them from day one when I decide to subscribe :) I already know that several creators on Nebula make good content.
Third party app without an account maybe? Freetube on the desktop and newpipe on the phone is what I like to use. There’s stuff like grayjay, tubearchivist, and pinchflat as well. Or just go straight yt-dlp.
I agree. We just haven’t gotten to the point quite yet. Where the creators revolt. But that stage should appear somewhat shortly.
It’s a gigantic money sink, it’s going to be extremely hard to come up with a profitable (or break even) alternative.
Youtube does a ton of evil stuff, but this one is more tame. I suspect the VPN was used to bot and got banned, so the sign-in is required to better target where the traffic is allowed to go, instead of blanket banning everybody using the service.
I suspect the VPN was used to bot
There are plenty of sources, including even in this thread, indicating that that this is not the problem. Quit making excuses for them.
uhhh… what?
It’s not just you. I’m tired of the whole team of people who are always standing by to bring out similar excuses any time someone decides that in their quest to stop invidious from existing — or whatever google is actually aiming at — it’s acceptable to just mass-block all the VPN users as collateral damage.
It’s not an excuse though. It’s right there in the error message.
Where are people getting the impression I think google is some kind of saint who can do no wrong? I don’t even see the “proof” that is being used to say I’m coming to google’s defense. Just a few anecdotal theories… just like I provided.
Ah, so it’s not you coming up with the stupid excuse that they have legit reasons to think the user might be a nefarious “bot”, you’re just passing along the stupid excuse as you interpret it from the meaningless message direct from Google. That explains where you got the idea that “viewbots” had anything to do with it, I guess.
So what they can bot with VPN without signing in?
Bot can automate views. It’s why Youtube keeps trying to move towards “engagement”. Comments, likes, etc, all require an account, which is an extra hurdle for bots.
Then I will they just doing half the work. They can just get the site account walled for that goal, not a half patch work of blocking VPN users.
This helps protect our
communityrevenue.
