YouTube expands age verification to more users. Several users are reporting on Reddit seeing new restrictions being applied to their accounts.
One more reason to use an alt front-end, and clear/disable your watch/view history and not log into YT directly anymore, at least while you still can.
What alt front ends are there? How would you bypass the age check? Back in the day I didn’t have an account and you could get around it using third party sites but those don’t work anymore as far as I know.
Invidious mainly, and that doesn’t use any YT accounts, it’s the equivalent of watching YT logged out.
Also, Grayjay lets you log in through it but that probably doesn’t bypass the age check if you’re KYC’d.
If you’re an active creator yourself though or even if you only have a few vids you made years ago that are still up, I’d set up PeerTube, Odysee, or both, and post those there while you still can, though.
Presumably once YouTube finishes rolling out age verification, all these age restricted videos will require logging in to view them and anonymous front end apps will be locked out.
Age-gated vids have been login-walled for a while now, non-age-gated stuff is still viewable while logged out and through alt front-ends, for now.
I won’t put it past Google to fully login-wall YT at some point in the future though, or even worse, put DRM on it so that it’s only watchable through Chrome on Android, or Chrome or Edge on Windows, and non-Android and non-Windows OSes, and non-Chrome/Edge browsers are blocked, as well as alt front-ends and downloaders, and even mirroring to competing platforms.
Not unless they’re complete boneheads (which, admittedly, is not impossible). If they do that, they effectively lose embed-video-in-external-sites functionality, and that might just be enough for unpaid content creators to dump the platform en masse and cause their effective monopoly to crumble. The content creators who are actually making decent money may never leave entirely, but if another viable platform comes into existence, I bet most of them would mirror to it.
Assuming mirroring isn’t borked by that aforementioned DRM.
honestly I didn’t know invidious was still around. last time I tried to use it it was broken
There’s only like, one viable instance though: inv.nadeko.net.
Getting GrayJay was the best decision I made. However much the one time license was, I have 0 regrets.
Yeah they still rarely work but I’d rather deal with intermittent inoperability than log into a YT account and use their absolute atrocity of a UI.
Also worth noting that paying for premium does not give you any more control over this waterfall of forcefed garbage.
I swear to god Google I will delete my account and use a front end for every single time I see a video on your platform, so help me God.
peertube
sigh
Can those affected by the now policy use Grayjay (https://grayjay.app/) to bypass it?
I guess reVanced will remove this shit
I don’t understand why people are so afraid to ditch YouTube
A lot of creators I watch are YouTube exclusive with their content.
If they were on Peertube, I’d delete YouTube in a heartbeat.
But I also understand that a lot of them make their living off ad revenue, so I don’t blame them for staying.
You can also check out nebula. A good chunk of them are there.
Why commit to them instead of finding alternative creators on a different platform?
There is no substitute for Hank Green.
Fine. Name alternatives for what YouTube is mostly used for and I’ll be the first to take your advise.
We are talking vlogs on huge amounts of topics, product reviews and unboxings, reaction videos, how-to tutorials, gaming videos (walkthroughs, live streams, etc.), ASMR and relaxation content, educational and explainer videos for science, history and finance… and so on.
There’s simply no true alternative.
What are you into?
The above.
My circle of family, friends and others will extend the list to music videos, health care (mental health and wellness, for example), the shorts, movie trailers, even Hallmark movies.
There is no platform other than YouTube that combines all this crazy amount of content.
There’s PeerTube with notoriously difficult onboarding for the average user and limited content, there’s Loops with extremely limited content… I really wish it were different.
Maybe one day existing platforms will rise. Looking at you, VIMEO, Kick, DailyMotion, DTube…
In the meantime, lets utilize other sources of videos like those at our local libraries, public domain hosts, archive websites, and open source federated video sharing platforms
Name one
What are you into?
Doesn’t matter. Name a single FREE alternative to YouTube with content worth watching.
Depends on the content you’re wanting to watch.
See, you can’t even just name something. Because it doesn’t exist.
How about mtg gameplay, video game speedruns, beat battles, and vtubers? That’s pretty much all I use YouTube for these days, but I’d love to drop it completely.
Photography, Star trek, fountain pens
Photography, check out pixelfed
Star trek, check out https://www.trekbbs.com/
Fountain pens, check out https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/
Forums like the fountain pen one and and the photography one you suggested are a Reddit replacement. However, sometimes you want to watch a video though. So they’re not good YouTube replacements in my opinion.
Pixelfed is great as an Instagram replacement, but again no videos.
I do cosplay, dollhouses, and dioramas, and peertube is pretty dead on that front.
Not “afraid” to “ditch” a monopoly. It’s a monopoly.
If you want to transfer every video to a different service, be my guest.
I mean, it gives you tools to export your videos out.
Cool. You should probably get started. There’s a lot of videos.
I don’t have any youtube videos to export. Do you want me to export yours?
And everyone else’s. People don’t go elsewhere because the creators they like are on YouTube. Speaking as someone with Peertube and Nebula.
Well we can start looking for creators that respect privacy and freedom of their viewers, ig
You’re asking them to put their livelihood on the line for your privacy. They’re gonna choose the thing that pays their bills every time.
no. just start at the frontpage and continue from there. let me know when you’re done, I got some videos on my todo list
Nothing on the front page though
If you would, thank you. Here’s the list:
www.youtube.comNot seeing any videos there.
deleted by creator
