YouTube-dl can no longer download age-restricted videos
github.com
github.com
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!
The best UX in a Google apps seems to be Gmail, and that’s honestly not that good either.
Google is able to build insanely complicated infrastructure, design cool languages, they produced fantastic backend software and the they completely forget that people need to interact with it.
There is plenty of good engineers in Google and plenty of terrible engineers.
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.
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, maybe PeerTube. Admittedly, YouTube's network effects are disgustingly strong. I wonder what it would take to break them.
Having Android apps could help with people who use an Android device to watch videos on their TV. And if Google does not authorize these kinds of apps on the playstore I think it is more than time to start on an abuse of dominant position suit.
Issue thread is here.[0]
The only real solution is to move out of the walled garden alltogether. Peertube, anyone?
I deleted the app and now use Brave for YouTube watching on iOS. Clears most ads, and allows background playback if you full screen the video first.
I mean, I hate this age validation as much as everyone else, curbing advertising to impressionable kids doesn't sound too stupid to me...
If you legally require Google to act like a parent, they have to do it to everyone.
Personally i think age verification is good. This implementation is moronic, though. And all around it's very, very difficult. So difficult that it may never be useful.
We absolutely should. Thankfully it is already not enforced in a lot of places (such as in greece).
What should I do? Not allowing my kids access to the internet at all is a non-answer in 2020. Hell it was a non-answer in 1995.
So how does this help, anyway?
It'd be nice to be able to turn them loose on a YouTube that was just educational videos I've curated, no weird toy unboxing shit, without having to, like, maintain my own file server and streaming service.
Why not? Doesn't take that much to downlod the videos and let them watch locally - we are in a thread about youtube-dl after all.
Or anything else that doesn't fuck with my ability not to be tracked by google.
And a lot of what they want to watch is formally not for kids and you will be absolutely ok with them seeing it. Especially non English content.
And it's all in the name of "protecting" children. This isn't some future hypothetical - it has already happened. I've been barred from a whole slew of content on YouTube because of this.
Right now it's only used by Google. It's likely that in the future most websites will use this, because it's government regulation.
I don't see this as any different than a theater asking to see your ID before letting your buy an R rated movie ticket. I sympathize that it's annoying hell but you probably also don't want Google deciding for themselves what your age is.
The real answer is the behemoths are going to become irrelevant, being inescapably bound to government control and surveillance capitalism. The more hoops and restrictions they add, the more tech people will move to decentralized solutions that don't suffer such bullshit, and eventually the normies will follow. It's just a tragic end to the past few decades of revolutionary energy, pointlessly wasted on centralized dead ends. And in the short term, it's fucking frustrating when trying to get anything done.
If you want to control what your kids see, don't let them have internet access. This is simply reality. I know that from the time I got internet access, I began to see things that would horrify my parents on a semi-regular basis that they didn't know about. (I had an SA forums account.)
Libraries do restrict the materials that can be checked out by minors and I doubt that counted as supplanting parenting. How else could you give your kid any level of independence without the cooperation of other people?
You should control your kids device and make restrictions there, not place them by default on the entire internet.
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.
> What should I do? Not allowing my kids access to the internet at all is a non-answer in 2020. Hell it was a non-answer in 1995.
A non-answer is not allowing everyone else to surf the web without giving their credit card or ID to every website that hosts adult content. It would have a huge impact on privacy of the users and the freedom of the whole internet in general.
A parent should educate their children, but I know that is simpler to set a bunch of restriction, give to the children a computer, and let him sit hours in front of YouTube while you do something else.
Not all parents agree that this is the right thing to do.
And if you didn't know, children will eventually start using computers by themselves, probably before they are 12 (probably in first grade or kindergarten, I wouldn't be surprised). A huge portion of internet users are children. That's a fact. The reality is that a huge portion of children are online, and advertisers are specifically targeting children on youtube.
There's some stuff we can do with content that is targeted at kids, I don't think those laws are inherently bad. Although... last time we tried to expand laws around advertising in content directed toward kids, that resulted in a huge number of game streamers and animators getting demonetized, to the point where Youtubers were doing wild things like swearing more in their videos so they could prove that they weren't targeted at kids. We seem to have a lot of difficulty articulating legally what the difference is between "kid appropriate" and "kid targeted" is, particularly when it comes to stuff like video games or "wholesome" (for lack of a better word) content.
To me, it's very much a "who's going to bell the cat" policy. I don't want kids to be subjected to so much advertising, it's a great policy. In theory. But I have not so far seen any practical implementations of age restrictions online that haven't either been completely worthless or really problematic for both privacy and free expression.
Also, there’s much more content on YouTube that most parents would absolutely not want their kids seeing than a battlefield trailer.
My exploration online was effectively unrestricted while I was growing up. The internet had far more objectionable content back then that was easily accessible. I don't feel that it had any real negative effect on me. Why would I worry myself sick over my kids seeing it?
Also, even if there is more objectionable content than a Battlefield trailer, the Battlefield trailer is restricted by the same rules. And if everyone else in your kids' friend group is talking about Battlefield then you'd be excluding your kid from it by limiting access to that. And if you don't limit access to it, then you get all the other 'objectionable' content too.
And perhaps it shouldn't; America's prudeness around sex but glorification of violence has had an effect around the world through Hollywood for years. Adding that morality to the flow of information might not be what we want.
All this is either EU lifers keeping themselves busy to justify their existence to themselves, MEPs wanting something to grandstand on, or something equally vapid. A much better approach would have been to keep the age prompt and leave the rest up to the parents, ie, to do nothing.
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.
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).
Is that the basic pay (£79,936; €92,584) or the basic+entitled pay (£155,376; €179,968)? (via https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...)
https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/uncheckable-4000-eu-officia... suggests that only 3-4000 (10-13%, not exactly "many"?) are PG13 or above which would be €196,305 (£169,481) - above UKPM.
As a raw number, sure, 4000 is "many" but 10% is not really "many of whom" (which is what GP said) - for me, obviously; other people's interpretation may vary.
(e.g. If I said "there's some cats outside; many of them are blue" but only 10% are blue, I would expect people to query the "many".)
I tend to interpret many as a relative term, meaning "a high number relative to what you're probably expecting". The dictionary is no help here as it just defines many as "a lot", but that in turn is also a relative term.
I think if you want to argue with this point, a better tack would be to argue that the British PM is underpaid and EU staff are what "normal" compensation should look like. Quibbling over whether 10% of them being paid more qualifies as a lot isn't that worthwhile.
Being in the situation of currently enjoying* the UK PM's leadership, I'd be more inclined to argue the other way.
(Although, in a more serious tone, I would argue that long-term high level civil servants probably do deserve a higher wage than transients like PM, President, Cabinet Minister, etc.)
I don't see why YouTube should ask your ID where most sites that host adult content doesn't.
Or.. companies being obtuse with their implementation of the law, as they often are with the cookie/GDPR laws.
Take this as an example. The AVMSD isn't new, it was codified in 2010. It has a website[1], and on that website you can read the rules (they even simplified them for us). The rules about minors are pretty relaxed[2]. For non-linear content (such as on-demand video) the law requires that content which "might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of minors" wont "normally" be seen/heard by kids. Nowhere does it say that YouTube has to require a National ID to show a video of a zombie. It's all interpretation, because that's how we do laws.
It's true that YouTube said that it's "in line with AVMSD"[3], but it's a lazy excuse to shove in a feature.
[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/archives/information_society/avpolicy/r... [2]: https://ec.europa.eu/archives/information_society/avpolicy/r... [3]: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/using-technology-more-c...
[0] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/revision-a...
[1] https://www.obs.coe.int/en/web/observatoire/avmsd-tracking
When the law is "you have to verify a meatspace user's age before showing them content that could arbitrarily be considered 'adult' by some group of lawmakers who most likely have different and more puritan values than you," yes, it does require your implementation to suck, because that law sucks by definition.
I'm glad YouTube implemented it this way, so that the pain of shitty laws can be felt instead of being allowed to proceed. Maybe people will actually try to push back against overzealous Internet regulation at some point.
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 just recently went into effect. The updated law requires online video platforms to age gate content for children. How, exactly, do you propose they do that with an implementation that doesn't suck?
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 people blaming laws for poor implementation.
To tackle the revision though, lets looks at the revised text. It's kind of hard to get a hold of, since the EU document database is apparently down, but i managed to find a copy[1]. The relevant text seems to be:
establishing and operating age verification systems for users of video-sharing platforms with respect to content which may impair the physical, mental or moral development of minors;
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.
[1]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TC1-COD-2016-0...
[2]: https://www.eu.dk/samling/20161/kommissionsforslag/kom(2016)... Page 20 around the middle of the page.
So you don't even have any idea what a better implementation might look like, not even a completely technically infeasible one? And the thousands of smart YouTube engineers, whose jobs revolve around making access to content frictionless to the point of being accused of making it addictive, just haven't thought "we should make this not suck?"
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.
We should be somewhat sympathetic that non-experts may not know the difference between a possible and an impossible technical goal, and we have to accept that for a politician there isn't much electoral advantage to be gained from trying to explain the difference to their voters.
However, each time I hear an impossible goal proposed, I can't help imagining the politician saying "We managed to land people on the Moon and return them safely, so surely we can do the same with the Sun now."
(as it happens, that's the premise of a Soviet political joke from the Apollo era)
Like many things relating to space travel, I'm prepared to believe the Soviets came up with it first.
[0] https://www.mic.com/articles/80001/did-north-korea-really-cl...
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.
The main path I can see around this is if the government/some company became accepted standard place for basic profile information. But that's just another id except a digital one. You can probably make a digital id system with good way of specifying which fields you grant to another company. The actual digital id when created will still need a physical id/government check though.
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?
This is kind of an excuse though, because I have never seen an implementation of an age gate online that isn't kind of awful. You either make something that is trivial for kids to bypass, or you make something that is invasive, like Youtube's system.
So we get these laws that say, "solve the problem", and there isn't a way to solve the problem. But criticism of the law or criticism of the law's outcomes aren't allowed because the law doesn't technically require that your solution to be terrible. It just asks you to do something that's impossible to do well without violating someone's privacy.
In the US (at least for a while) this was solved by pretending that self-reported ages are an effective way to protect kids. And we pretended that would at least reduce exposure to this kind of content, even though in practice it has basically no impact at all. But if the law doesn't care about effectiveness, then why have the law in the first place? So we raise the standards a bit so that the law has some teeth. But again, nobody has ever in any context demonstrated a working age gate to me online that doesn't involve violating someone's privacy or collecting identifying information about them like a credit card or ID.
So it doesn't actually matter whether or not the law says the solution has to be terrible. The only outcomes that are possible from these laws are either ineffective solutions or invasive solutions. If there is only one method to accomplish an outcome, then requiring the outcome is effectively the same as requiring the method.
To give another obvious example of this pattern, there's "Make a crypto system which only lets the good guys in, not the bad guys".
In both cases, there's a "think of the children" imperative attached, but at least with laws about age restrictions there's more of a chance that the politicians' true goal isn't mass surveillance.
I'm not sure why exactly that has an age restriction, or why I'd give Google some ID to watch a vintage Youtube meme. I presume it's because their ML detected 'fuck' in the audio.
Note to Google: Ah fuck, I can't believe you've done this.
Now I'm shopping for some storage to keep seventeen years of emails etc. so I can do a quick Takeout so that I don't lose access to all my data when I inevitably get unfriended and blocked by them for not being sufficiently compliant.
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 another, Google already has a lot of peoples' credit card numbers by way of Google Pay. Does this expose those people to any more risk?
Just give them a virtual number and then disable it right after registering. Then have your free trial, and only if you decide to actually subscribe, change it to a credit card number that is active.
Businesses should not be unscrupulously trying to make money off people who forgot about the product during their free trial.
I went to set up a privacy.com virtual card for a semi-sketchy site, only to have privacy deny the charge as it was for a "high risk" site.
Yeah, I KNOW, that's why I wanted to use a virtual card. That ended my brief foray into privacy.com
We were previously told that it was advisable to use YouTube under an alias, and that other personal information such as phone numbers would be used only for account verification.
Those policies were rescinded or proved to be lies.
Google have no credibility here.
Actually wouldn't be surprised if the newly acquired CC number appeared right away as a new means of payment in Google Play.
An alternative would be entering your passport or something which would be even crazier
How do they know it's false? And if they know it's false why do they ask for it, they already have the right one.
Great question. It seems like it's being used as authentication, rather than authorization, in that it's meant to prove that you are who you say you are.
Google is the only company that started to implement this. To me it's not required by law but they decided to do so to get more user data. Also because having a credit card doesn't confirm nothing about your age. I use a credit card to buy things online since I'm 13, you can have a credit card even if you are not 18, simply your parents need to sign for it, but then it can have your name on it.
Edit: Looks like it might be an EU thing?
> In 2019, the Government of the State of New York sued YouTube for violating COPPA by illegally retaining information related to children under 13 years of age. YouTube responded by dividing its content strictly into "for kids" and "not for kids". This has met with extremely harsh criticism from the YouTube community, especially from gamers, with many alleging that the FTC of the United States intends to fine content creators $42,530 for "each mislabeled video", possibly putting all users at risk.[58][59][60] However, some have expressed skepticism over this, feeling that the fines may actually be in reference to civil penalties, possibly intended for the site's operators and/or warranted by more serious of COPPA violations or specific cases of "mislabeling videos."[61][62][63] As of July 2020, nobody has got the $42k fine.[64]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Online_Privacy_Pr...
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 create a new username/nick.
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.
that's the point parent was making; Apple made a decision about such things when allowing an app within their ecosystem that makes such choices (Skype, in this case).
On major mobile networks in the UK, SIM cards/data plans by default have an adult content internet filter enabled. Blocks stuff like pornography (obviously) and even some other various adult age-focused content like gaming websites. (I've seen the EA Battlefield/Call Of Duty websites blocked before)
Usually if you try to access, say, pornhub.com, it'll redirect (ala. WiFi captive portal style) to an internal network page and you have to enter a credit card to disable it on your account. A debit/bank card won't work. I'm over 18 now but at the time I came across this (also over 18) I didn't have a credit card but I ended up bypassing this with a Curve (Fintech 1->many card thing) card which seems to identify as a credit card on the network's system.
Alternatively, if you don't mind never seeing the assistant again (jk.), you can go into one of the network's shops and ask the assistant to turn it off by providing some ID like a passport/driving licence.
> Attention Londoners: Big Bobby is watching. That's the message of posters plastered along London's bus routes earlier this week to assuage riders' crime fears.
> But the posters are having the opposite effect on privacy advocates, who say the artwork is creepily reminiscent of the all-seeing authority described in George Orwell's 1984.
> The posters show a red double-decker bus crossing a bridge as four floating eyes stare down from the sky. The eyes' pupils are the symbol of Transport For London, the city's mass-transit provider.
> "Secure beneath the watchful eyes," the poster says. "CCTV and Metropolitan Police on buses are just two ways we're making your journey more secure."
[0]: https://www.wired.com/2002/11/londons-privacy-falling-down/
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/lgbtq-...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/4/17424472/youtube-lgbt-demo...
On the upside, following UK police twitter accounts can be sorta hilarious in a sad way, because they regularly post stuff like this: https://twitter.com/MPSRegentsPark/status/974645778558980096...
All that said, it's not really totalitarian. A police state for sure, and an authoritarian uber nanny state, but totalitarianism is a whole different ballgame.
If the all-powerful, authoritarian UK police and the (currently underground) Sharia courts ever collide or end up working together, that’s going to be one hell of a totalitarian trip. Not good at all.
Though France has similar religious demographics, I think France might at least stand a better chance of holding back the influence of Islam, given the country’s strong and storied secular tradition.
Although the questions were a lot harder back in 1991 when the Internet was not at your disposal.
This and apps “redesigned” every few month, breaking the workflow they've struggled to learn (they usually needed to follow the hand-written note, they had taken when I showed them how to do).
They've used it a bit more than a year, with occasional breakage, and they now have stopped completely.
It's incredible. Personal computing is well and truly dead for the "consumer."
They're not valuable because of any service they provide.
Even then, ask yourself: Why do so many people pay $800 for an iPhone instead of $200 for some Android?
They didn't become #1 by selling $99 developer accounts.
Because Apple has managed to make their mass produced commodity products be a status symbol.
I don't understand the comparison you're making, because both kinds of phone are available in a wide price range.
This is why my 90++ old completely non-technical mother has been using Linux since the 90s. I set up a very customized fvwm environment with mutt (also customized) and emacs (same) and helped her learn it. The beauty is that nothing has changed at all in over 25 years!
I hate both, but this is purely a function of terrible regulations
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, as was my first phone. Seems like a case of an absurd and harmful default. Anyway, the only way to convince them I’m in Australia is to add a billing method. Nope. I’m not giving them billing details. (Now if only the telco would unlock it, as their support staff said they were working on, never mind that the whole process takes less than five minutes and I gave them the help page over a month ago. Or better still, if the telco would just provide a web interface like literally everyone else does, rather than just Apple and Google Android apps. Sigh. If only they weren’t the cheapest for my needs by a large margin.)
Also related to the whole age thing, I just started the Google Settings app half an hour ago for other reasons and it triggered a notification asking me to enter my birthday “to help us comply with the law”, expressed even more strongly on the page the notification takes you to as “Your date of birth is missing. This info is needed to comply with the law.”, with a “learn more about why Google asks for this info” link to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1733224?hl=en-GB, where the only sort of thing that they could conceivably be referring to as a legal compliance matter would be the minimum age of 13, and… I’ve been using that account for longer than that anyway.
I mean, I get it, but it still feels ridiculous.
Its a poor product naming with google. I'd imagine that's going to make for some consternation.
(I have no credit card. I approach 6 decades in age.)
If you have no debit or credit card, why would any for-profit enterprise want to interact with you in the first place?
Plus this gives them your identity, which is relevant because their business model nowadays is based around tracking people.
But I guess, google still wants to make the check passable.
from YT: An error occurred. Please try again later. (Playback ID: 5sTGvTkd9YkomV3x) Learn More
from YT-DL:
$ youtube-dl https://youtu.be/ZIrmxOBnKcs [youtube] ZIrmxOBnKcs: Downloading webpage [youtube] ZIrmxOBnKcs: Refetching age-gated info webpage WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 174, in _run_module_as_main "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code exec code in run_globals File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/__main__.py", line 19, in <module> File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 475, in main File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 465, in _real_main File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 2069, in download File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 808, in extract_info File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 815, in wrapper File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 836, in __extract_info File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 534, in extract File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 1502, in _real_extract File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/compat.py", line 2644, in compat_parse_qs File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/compat.py", line 2614, in _parse_qsl AttributeError: 'bool' object has no attribute 'split'
the 404 looks like a take down? or a hug of death?
They found out when they found a nintendo portable full of games in his closet.
He was about 12.
EU citizens needs to convince their government(s) that these age restrictions are not acceptable or live with the status quo.
I got the same thing and it left a bad taste in my mouth -- it felt to me that it was just Google's excuse to hoover up more information about me.
No, Google, I am not going to give you my credit card of government issued ID.
With all the privacy-invading data google and youtube collect on me, surely they know that I'm old enough to watch whatever I like on youtube. But there's no way I am using either of the available methods to verify my age. I'd rather just not watch stuff on youtube.
I got hit with it too. I even have a youtube premium subscription - they already have my card on file.
Google is so incredibly evil.
Edit: especially since it's US age ratings which have no connection to EU age ratings. I ran into it while trying to view some collection of every time Samuel L Jackson says "motherfucker" in a movie. For example Pulp Fiction - which is one of the movies - is rated 18 in the US but ... 12 to 16 in various EU countries?
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 even if you log out of your account in the browser and log back in etc
i'm trying to imagine a way to have a more permanent solution, maybe if youtube-dl provided some kind of login prompt type thing to enter some your credentials to virtually log in, although i imagine that would start to be another cat and mouse game of it working and then not working.
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/get-cookiestxt/bga...
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl#authentication-option...
But as of a couple days ago it wasn’t working for age-restricted videos.
Doesn't that only work if you a) are in the EU and have verified your age or b) outside the EU?
And by the way, I always mostly used random birth dates whenever registering anywhere because I consider that personal information and don't want to share it. I don't even know what birth date did I set when I got my GMail back in the days it required invitations.
I don't feel like watching an age-restricted video ever again if this actually requires identification and leaves no workaround.
UPDATE: I'm actually surprised this gets down-voted.
I know I've had google accounts that didn't require any re authentication in the way of phone numbers for going on years so you can likely discard the number after you show you are human.
The church finally has a solution to their clergy loss. ;)
I guess this means I watch less YouTube, which is probably better for me in the long run. But like hell I'm signing in.
cookie: CONSENT=YES+cb.20210328-17-p0.en+FX+203You are being downvoted to suppress your well thought out information. It would be nice if HN had a public ledger of who up or down voted a post. You would click on the post and could see which usernames voted and which way. It would bring much needed transparency to combat these information suppression abuses.
"I think the site should publicly post a list of users who upvoted and downvoted comments that I feel were wrongly suppressed."
I had to read your comment multiple times to determine whether it was intended to be sarcastic or not.
Yes, and I want a pony. We can absolutely discuss how useful or harmful age verification on the internet is, (and your points about tracking are certainly valid) - but fact is that Google implemented it.
It is not youtube-dl's job to circumvent that. Their responsibility is letting me download the videos to my hard drive that I can already view in my browser. They never advertised themselves as a tool to circumvent access restrictions.
If the new age verification broke youtube-dl in such a way that you couldn't download the video at all, I think the outrage would be justified - but that isn't the case.
Nothing Google does will make me want to create an account.
Honest question: Should logging out invalidate the cookie for future use. If one of these cookies falls into the wrong hands it grants "evergreen" access to the account. No password needed. I have noticed this behaviour with both Gmail and Facebook. These evergreen cookies makes it very easy to check FB and mail using shell scripts without logging in, which is nice, but it seems like it should be a security issue.
Yes. The act of logging out implies that you want the session terminated.
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 favorite videos will be there forever, but this is just not the case. Removing the comments on music videos already hurt a lot.
You should consider using PeerTube instead, which is federated.
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?
Let me introduce you to the concept of RSS and news/feed readers: https://aboutfeeds.com/
That’s ironic because YouTube beat Viacom in 2013 because “this content should belong to everyone” not us so you can’t sue YouTube go sue the users.
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 am paying. I bought the additional hard disk to store this on. In addition to my time and effort to collect the files. In the future I would pay some amount each month to stream what I have if it gave me access to everyone else's (essentially staking my video files).
I don't mind paying for a good peer-to-peer service. In fact I feel that I am losing a lot more by staying with a legacy system. Hence backing up the videos I like even though I have no method of distributing them.
This has both good and bad sides to it. On the good side, it means people can make money as YouTube creators. This subsidizes the enormous volume of content that makes the creators no money.
On the bad side, you have a SPOF, and those failure modes can be many and varied. In this case its unwarranted age restrictions, but more usually its fraudulent DMCA take downs, various algorithmic shenanigans, and of course censorship (which can be good or bad, actually).
But you can't have one property (value producing artificial scarcity) without the other (a central point of failure).
The real question is: can content creators host their own content such that they can derive value from it? Will users consume that content, and pay for it, somehow? Theoretically it's possible, but the technical barriers are quite high. YT has capitalized on massive economies of scale to reduce the technical barriers to hosting and monetizing content to zero. This same pattern is repeated again and again: connect computer to the internet, then specialize that computer's software to do one thing really well, attract users/makers, use your control of the platform to extract value from users (inject ads, membership fees, data brokers, etc), profit. The hope is that the value to society outweighs the cost, and honestly I think that's actually the case! I just hope more people get clear-eyed about the trade-offs for-profit internet services make to be viable.
Patronage or crowdfunding can work even if the content is released publically.
Soon after they'll turn it on for all videos, making it nearly impossible for normal people to save any videos and making it illegal to do so in the US.
If there's anything you care about seeing in the future, proactively download it now at the highest quality while it's still possible to do so.
youtube-dl https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/VIDEO_ID_HERE
As an anonymous user I keep seeing different behaviours with both 'forcing' embeddded links and also normal mobile links with latest ublock origin. (On Android with FF + ublock)
youtube-dl can no longer be used to bypass youtube's age verification checks
... assuming that you have provided YouTube with a scan of your ID card to prove that you are 18+ ...
I expect that at some point you'll have to prove your identity to use youtube at all, because its in Google's interest to know as much as possible about its users.
Youtube will also probably turn in to a pay-to-view service at some point. They already dominate the video space, and their network effects are enormous, and a huge number of people will pay to continue to get access to that.
Such requirements are being driven by governments who don't care at all about user convenience, only extending their control over people whilst blaming the private sector for "making" them do it.
You can see the status for each EU member state here:
I don't have a problem with Google providing parental controls, if I as the parent am in control. But Google have unilaterally decided that for us. Never buying any media from Google (or any other large tech company again). Reverting to second hand DVDs and putting them on Plex.
Actually I'd be very, very surprised if this was even in the jurisdiction of the EU.
So I gather you don't have any source either then.
Google even says so: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779?hl=en
>The Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) is an EU-wide coordination of national legislation on audiovisual media – both traditional TV broadcasts and on-demand services. Recently, AVMSD was revised to extend certain rules to video sharing platforms (VSPs).
>In line with AVMSD, you may be asked to re-verify your date of birth when watching age-restricted videos. Follow the prompts to submit an image of a valid ID or credit card.
As far as 'views', in reality the vast majority of Youtube channels also get very few views. You can advertise/promote the Peertube instance just like you would promote a Youtube channel.
Another alternative is to just have Peertube mirror your YouTube channel and link to the instance in every video.
It really depends on the type of content you produce and how your content is 'discovered' but unless you are on the winning side of the Youtube algorithm, peertube isn't that worse.
given enough time and sufficient numbers of toddlers chewing on keyboards one of them will out of chance alone create a google account
I assumed it was a legal requirement, and basic intuition and common sense aren't relevant. Much like the immigration form that says "Are you a terrorist".
I'm not sure how that isn't soundcloud/spotify.
While this is admittedly rather handwawy, even outside of this I have the impression that there must have been some lengthening: It feels like basically every Rock & Roll song from the 50s/early 60s mostly is around the two minute mark and very rarely even approaches three minutes. Afterwards however, three or four minutes doesn't seem that unusual to encounter, never mind those really long songs, too.
Not sure how it is implemented. It seems to just identify and catalog all of the videos uploaded to normal YouTube where the audio track consists of a single continuous musical track. It's not official music videos.
I strongly suspect that at least part of the reason for these is to discourage people from using Google's properties with browsers other than Chrome (whether it was the reason for creating them, or just noted as a benefit for refusing to fix them once they were identified).
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.
Also, yt-dl doesn't like yt-dlp to be mentioned on their issue tracker from what I hear.
./yt-dlp.sh "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR8s72aouNE"
[youtube] rR8s72aouNE: Downloading webpage
[youtube] rR8s72aouNE: Refetching age-gated info webpage
ERROR: Sign in to confirm your age
This video may be inappropriate for some users.
EDIT: From an EU ip.
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY4Gz_Axpew [youtube] oY4Gz_Axpew: Downloading webpage [youtube] oY4Gz_Axpew: Refetching age-gated info webpage WARNING: unable to download video info webpage: HTTP Error 404: Not Found Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 174, in _run_module_as_main "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code exec code in run_globals File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/__main__.py", line 19, in <module> File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 475, in main File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 465, in _real_main File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 2069, in download File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 808, in extract_info File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 815, in wrapper File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 836, in __extract_info File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 534, in extract File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", line 1502, in _real_extract File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/compat.py", line 2644, in compat_parse_qs File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/compat.py", line 2614, in _parse_qsl AttributeError: 'bool' object has no attribute 'split'
very interesting
ID is out of the question, credit card seems more plausible. However, i wonder what happens when you give the number. I don't want that it sticks after validation...
Getting a legit card like that could be possible, but I don't think its worth of hassle and possible costs. Some companies practically throw these cards on you, but usually there is a catch.
>Important: If you enter your credit card info for age verification, Google will retain this data as necessary to meet legal and regulatory requirements.
Must be because of audit laws relating to processing credit cards.
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/10071085?p=age-ve...
Both viewers and producers are heavily dissatisfied with Youtube. Time to move on.
YouTube actually allowing adult videos is not something to diss. The fact that they need age verification is the price for it, the alternative is removing all those videos.
What's the behaviour on Invidious instances presently?
For example I've worked in medical devices, I had to watch a lot of different types of surgical procedures for a specific application.
A lot of surgical content gets tagged as 'adult' even though it has nothing inappropriate as such.
Sadly, the authors need to do this preemptively to avoid getting flagged and potentially taken down.
Needless to say, I was using ytdl to bypass the limit, and I won't be able to watch these videos anymore. I'm not going to log in or give my ID to google.
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.
0: https://github.com/zerodytrash/Simple-YouTube-Age-Restrictio...
F-droid and Aurora (oss google play store client) have most of the apps you'd need, and most work well enough w/o google play services.
actual rendered title == [YouTube] Age verification issues - Can't download video. #28578]
apparently this issue was closed
>> Suika commented Mar 29, 2021:
You are probably connecting from EU, right?
A change to YT was announced ~4 month that there will be extra steps for age verification in EU, iirc.
If you connect from outside of EU, it should work.<<
Under account settings, it only lets you opt out of publishing your birthday to your contacts. There’s no opt out for marketing / sharing it with their business partners, etc.
Scumbags.
I feel like these platforms like YouTube are an addiction. We know they have problems but we just can't shake them. I felt this way about Windows and Microsoft on general 15 years ago. I went cold turkey and stopped using those products back then and I've been very happy ever since. But things have become too easy and I've become complacent. I think it may be time for me to shake another addiction.
It was accepted automatically within a few seconds. Can't really complain.
I tried with several north american VPN nodes and it's blocked as well.
This means that any consumer of Youtube should expect that eventually Youtube may stop working for them -- and perhaps all the content they love on Youtube will eventually become unavailable.
can't remember which
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/28578#issuecom...
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/28578#issuecom...
> it's not about the issue not related to the US, it's that youtube won't allow access to the video when you're accessing a non-embedable age-restricted video from the EU with passing the new age verification requirement, youtube-dl can't simply bypass this condition.
>> I just connected to a US server using VPN, and this is the report i got:
> you didn't pass the cookies.
and fosam amplified[2]:
> If you connect from the EU and have not verified, there is no way without the VPN. If you have already verified your account you can just pass the cookies and download.
[1] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/28578#issuecom...
[2] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/28578#issuecom...
First step towards automatically stop using youtube. It their choice really.
It doesn't work.