I’ve been having some weird issues over the last few days with not being able to search for things in YouTube when I’m logged in via SmartTube account.

So I decided to try accessing it directly. Well guess what? It looks like YouTube now requires age verification in AU.

Sorry Google… I’m not uploading my passport, drivers licence or govt id to watch your shit. I am however now very incentivized to use Tube archivist and Jellyfin, plus cron job to scrape your shit with gleeful abandon.

EDIT: Rather than removed about it, I did something and made Smarttube work without a google account. If that floats your boat, have at it. It supports direct import of your saved playlists via Google Takeout ZIP file, subscriptions etc without needing a youtube account.

Also, remember the excellent TubeArchivist exists if you want even more control.

  • SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zoneOP
    3·
    23 hours ago

    Yep, that’s a good point. I actually have a battle plan in place (if it comes to that) using a mixture of 540-720p videos (to reduce download sizes) and then AI upscaling as needed using an NVIDIA shield or on site compute.

    They really, really don’t like it when you don’t log in, huh? 🤣

    Fun game of cat and mouse aside, if it all ever goes to shit…I’ll miss niche YT channels but there are other alternatives.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      6·
      22 hours ago

      Would be cook if tube archivist was decentralized, so when one person downloaded the video, others could do a peer-tube style p2p on it.

      • SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zoneOP
        2·
        10 hours ago

        That sounds like PeerTube with extra steps :) I’m down for it.

        I’ll probably end up using Pinchflat over Tube Archivist myself (a bit lighter to keep running as always on service on my Raspberry pi) but p2p seeding should work just the same.

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          9 hours ago

          Peertube would be fantastic, except you’re exposed, hanging in the wind. we need some kind of abstraction. If google connected up a client and saw all the ips hosting, they’d immediately block us all :)

      • bruh@thelemmy.club
        2·
        18 hours ago

        Would be cook if tube archivist was decentralized, so when one person downloaded the video, others could do a peer-tube style p2p on it.

        that isn’t far in the future where we will literally pirate youtube video to escape youtube’s paywall / login wall

        • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
          2·
          15 hours ago

          Yeah, if the ad-block gets hard enough, people will use chinese HDMI splitters, stream recorders and a comskip project :)