Mildly Infuriating

I guess I'm lucky that this ain't happening for me at least

They always could, they're just more confident these days.

"This will allow Youtube to locate the best content" 🤡

I'm so damn tired of corporations telling me what I can and can't do.

Listen at this point, we either re-upload our favorite creator's content to other platforms. Convince them to join alternatives or help out *their replacements" on those alternative platforms to grow.

Either way I do not respect content-creators that do not support alternative platforms (& decentralization) on principle

VPNs aren't hard to detect, especially if you're using a major service.

I mean... detecting (some) VPNs is as trivial as

fetch('https://github.com/NazgulCoder/IPLists/raw/refs/heads/main/output/vpn-ipv4.txt').then( res => res.text() ).then( res => console.log( res.includes( "1.2.3.4" ) ) )

thanks to https://github.com/NazgulCoder/IPLists/

FWIW though I did try, connected via a random VPN from ProtonVPN from Argentina... and it wasn't in that list. So it's not perfect. Also ProtonVPN has apparently today 13K servers according to https://protonvpn.com/vpn-servers

That being said I can imagine that Google, which is literally built on crawling the Web, has all the infrastructure and expertise needed to have such lists and up to date ones.

I'm not justifying blocking VPN here, only trying to clarify that unless you self-host in a rather specific setup (i.e. not relying a popular cloud provider but truly self hosting) it's technically not hard to block VPNs.

They always could. What appears to be happening is that channels now have the option to turn on "a switch" so that content wont play if a VPN is detected. Most VPN ip addresses are well known, because they arent a secret. Everyone who uses the VPN goes through it.

If you come across the above message, its because the content creator turned it on. I had it come up with "stick to football". Its the only thing that it comes up with. I just unsubbed and wont watch anymore. Im not turning off my VPN for anyone or anything. Id rather just go with out. I encourage all of you to do the same.

This isnt new. Its been happening for years. There is a post about this on lemmy every few weeks. It just doesnt happen consistently, so people always think that they "discovered" this for the first time.

You will definitely get the best content in the countries where YouTube is blocked /s

The real highlight is the contradictory text.

To continue, turn off your VPN/Proxy. This will allow YouTube to locate the best content".

"We refuse to serve you anything other than the best 'located content'."

A fat lie. Combining refusal with the completely unrelated supposed service improvement of location-based content. To disingenuously sound like they're doing you a service.

When I see content blocks like that anymore, I just leave the content behind and go elsewhere. Malicious companies will not get my clicks. They can fuck right off.

Good sign though, means they are getting desperate. It is our duty to starve them of traffic.

The "best content" being ip-located ads, probably.

This will allow Youtube to locate ~~the best content~~ and spy on you more easily

FTFY

I encounter VPN blocks everywhere frequently. I usually just reroll my selected server until the block goes away

Oh, so what they’re really saying is that a platform owned by GOOGLE has trouble FINDING the best content?

Everyone knows.

Well, they need to make sure the right people are watching the right propaganda.

This happens via simple lists of IP addresses, no? I.e. the VPN has a limited number of exit IPs and once it's known who they belong to, they're easy to block?

VPN ads seriously need to stop promising that you can get around content restrictions.

It's time to switch to Newpipe or Invidious, YouTube clients focused on privacy, without adverts and without Google's clutches.

My ISP has started throttling YouTube to ~2mbps when viewed from desktop. Using a VPN gets around this and lets me watch in HD. Luckily I've not encountered this error yet, but if I do I guess it's no more YouTube for me, 480p is just way too blurry to put up with.

As someone who uses multiple VPNs daily I have a suggestion. Try to locate a different server and connect to it. See if there’s a drop down menu in your VPN app. Sometimes a particular IP on one of those servers flags websites’ fraud detection. Sometimes I can switch servers on my VPN and refresh the page and it loads just fine.

That's probably not too hard to detect based on IP. They only do it for some content though. The only content I watch that has this block is official Formula 1 content on YouTube. It's probably something that creators can enable when they want to region lock content or something

If only you don't serve ads containing literal porn to my face with my VPN off 😡😡

I'm surprised it took so long, I've not been able to watch Channel 5 for years.

Anyhow, I love Revanced.

Sure, there's big lists of them right here.

https://github.com/az0/vpn_ip

Hardly a secret.

I have a Tridactyl rule to rewrite YouTube URL to youtube-local (repository https://github.com/user234683/youtube-local/ ) e.g. https://www.youtube.com/ becomes http://localhost:9999/https://www.youtube.com but as others have suggested, I do my bet to avoid YouTube entirely, because Google is bad, Big Tech is bad.

Tip: Peertube Companion is a good extension for directing you to duplicates of the video you're trying to watch if it can be found elsewhere.