First time this happens to me. With a German protonvpn server.
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…
YouTube doesn’t like VPNs. Harder to track you (and sell/monetize your data) if they can’t tell who you are.
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)
It’s a gigantic money sink, it’s going to be extremely hard to come up with a profitable (or break even) alternative.
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
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.
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.
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 agree. We just haven’t gotten to the point quite yet. Where the creators revolt. But that stage should appear somewhat shortly.
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.
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.
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.
This helps protect our
communityrevenue.Bots can’t watch videos anymore? Anti-droid discrimination
“Protecting our community” isn’t even a good excuse, you can’t leave comments without an account…
Protecting our
communityprofits
I get why I got downvoted for having posted a YouTube link on !oshi_no_ko@lemmy.ml
Yea, been having this BIGTIME. Even occurs on grayjay, and pipe apps (newpipe, etc.) Its aggravating. Can’t even download vids either, and the ones u have downloaded are held ransom until u turn it off too 😂 at least in my case. Fuck google.
Oh that’s how they broke invidious
As much as it isn’t preferred, I can usually bypass the sign in shenanigans by going directly to the website to watch something without signing in. I usually only get the login prompt when going through my browser or a search engine.
I got it on an embedded video for a news site. VPN on of course.
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.