Some time ago Google made some changes to age verification, and now you can't watch age restricted videos without logging in, which means you can't watch them using NewPipe. It also means you can't watch them without handing over your phone number to Google, because it seems it's no longer possible to create a YT account without a phone number.
This whole thing makes NewPipe a lot less useful than it used to be.
On top of all this, being logged in is not enough. I just checked right now. You have to verify yourself using either a credit card, or submitting an image of a valid ID, such as your driver's license or passport (I have neither, FWIW).
NO THANKS.
I cannot tell you just how much I hate this kind of bullshit. This is becoming increasingly common. Call me old and grumpy, but I would much prefer to go back 10-20 years. The web was a symbol of freedom, decentralization, and so forth. Now we have major websites that you can count on one hand that makes up the Internet. Along with their fucking shitty, severely restricting or limiting systems.
On the other hand, they might be successful in reducing my Internet consumption. :)
Twitter won't let you browse more than a handful of tweets before blocking the service demanding you login.
I was trying to read an article about gpt-3 and the author had decided to embed tweets with pictures of text on, so not only could I not read the text without right-clicking the image to view on its own then zooming and panning but after a while Twitter would just prevent me from reading any further without logging in.
Twitter won't let you create an account without a phone number and, like most services that want to harvest your data like a Dementor from Harry Potter, they want to push you towards an app.
Tiktok is pretty hostile towards desktop users too. I refuse to install it on my mobile and why should I anyway?
And then there's the many iot devices that don't give you an interface at all if you don't have a phone. Ridiculous.
Use nitter, libreddit, invidious, bibliogram (is that one dead?) and others.
It's a shame that these big companies seem to suck at making usable websites. They probably chase "conversion" to new accounts at all costs. And that probably works (A/B tested).
> It's a shame that these big companies seem to suck at making usable websites.
The Reddit and Twitter web apps are actually great on mobile, but they lock you out after a few minutes. I used to use both all the time until three or so years ago when the constant app pushing made both unusable.
The websites are extremely slow to load on my phone (galaxy s4 with lineageos 17.1). Using midori in a private tab:
- Time to load a twitter link: 14s (20s to display a preview of the picture).
- Same link on a nitter instance: 5s, page fully loaded, with replies.
Also, less than half the page is dedicated to content, I have:
- a search bar
- log in/sign up
- Cookies notice
- "Twitter is better on the app" "Not Now/Switch to the app" (that one takes a lot of space).
All of the above keeps floating above the content, so I can only scroll through a tiny window. The content is lazy-loaded, which makes scrolling annoying. A lot of space is wasted with buttons that are only useful if you're logged in.
The experience is terrible on mobile, and it's mostly the same for reddit.
They blocked my account and refused to unblock until I verified myself through phone. I got my account unblocked because I found a workaround for it. It was not supposed to unblock me or let me off the hook, but it did. Screw them. :D I rarely use it anyways.
FWIW, I feel like this--age verification for age restricted videos--is probably caused by either a regulation that already happened or a regulation that was threatened and which Google felt safer to define the boundaries of for themselves (not that I think that often leads to sane outcomes).
It is, it's a requirement of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive in the EU, and in particular the UK and Irish regulators implementations of it. Especially the Irish one, since YouTube EMEA is based in Ireland and effectively make the regulatory decisions for the entire EU under the AVMS.
I feel like we all desperately took our eye off the ball when that was passed.
You are right. They are too big, and are at the crosshair of the Government. They must obey. I am pretty much against both in these cases, to be honest.
> Now we have major websites that you can count on one hand that makes up the Internet.
No they don't make up the Internet. We have a couble big sites backed by megacorporations that have taken over the majority mindshare, but there are still plenty of smaller sites left. Don't give in and pretend that Google et al have won. Find traditional forums for your interests and participate in them. Start one if needed. Subscribe to individual blogs via RSS. Consider hosting your own. Want to share your creations? Create a website for them instead of just putting them on the most convenient social media platform. The independent web is not lost until we all agree that it is.
These seem to be requirements in certain jurisdictions and not universal. I have never been asked to verify myself for YouTube, or for my phone number, and yet I am an admin for four channels. Maybe it's because Google already has those for my other accounts (Playstore, Gmail, and Pay).
Unless things changed in the past year or so, i remember creating a google account without a phone number.However you might be right, because they recently stated they want to start forcing people info 2FA.What is more interesting(especially for people who don't understand how google operates behind the scenes) is that the markers they use for requiring phone numbers/id verification/etc is to train their bot detection.I remember about 2 years ago,on a 10yrs+ old google account, I had recently been required to verify my age(through an ID) for a video which did not require my age verification on a dummy account which was about 2 years old(so very new by comparison).
They might have introduced now mandatory age verification on per-video instead of per-account basis, but the stages they use are very questionable.Besides, YT is such an unusable platform these days one has to use NP/Vanced to have the same experience of youtube pre-2012, and still: back then there was less spam and phishing going on.
> Unless things changed in the past year or so, i remember creating a google account without a phone number.
I believe you can create a Google account without a phone number by setting it up on Android's (stock ROM) setup screen. This won't bypass YouTube's nagging though, sadly.
I don't log in into YouTube, even on phone, so NewPipe was an improvement for me. I can bookmark videos and subscribe channels in the app. I could do that with bookmarks in the browser but this is more convenient.
Instead of using bookmarks, you could subscribe via RSS. Sometimes the link is not easily found, except if you use a reader that will "auto-find" the URI for you (I use Brook [1]).
I haven't done the age verification in my youtube account, so I avoid those videos too and I don't think there are so many of them fortunately. The more established channels will avoid it to not lose viewers.
Actually there is a toggle in the settings (under content) to bypass this, seems like this is an issue that Piped avoids as well which I wholehearted recommend for desktop or browser use.
How does age restriction work? I wanted to watch a video (I forgot which one and no, it was a normal video.) But I got an age verification in my face. I'm 27 years old.
Freetube can play age restricted videos (it has worked for me so far). I'm not sure how they do it, I suspect it has to do with the Invidious API somehow.
You forgot that invidious still lets you watch videos age blocked fine. Gokunaru for instance just made a q & a a few days ago and I watched it on invidious
This whole thing makes NewPipe a lot less useful than it used to be.