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.
choose how to verify your age
use your credit card
huh? why credit card?
I’m pretty sure my original Google account is over 18 years old. How is that not considered proof of age?
Always a bit amusing of steam sometimes still requiring me to enter my birthday on some store pages, when my steam account is 23 years old
A static image doesn’t bypass this. Vendors want a real-time selfie–access to a internet-connected camera responding to prompts in real-time, such as “turn your head to the right,” or “open and close your mouth”. It would be trivial on a libre-system to send it a simulated-feed of a puppet-ed prop in such a way that would be indistinguishable from a real human head–if you had capable hardware. This is what intelligence agencies do now, but it’s possible on high-end consumer hardware too. For the modest computer user it would be viable to feed it a simplified–but still meeting the criteria of a “face” as deemed by the computer–puppet, akin to what vtubers use. That’s on a libre-system. A system that obeys the user and that can not be tolerated, because users lie.
They give you a QR code to scan with a mobile-computer, because mobile-computers are the least free of all computers. The majority of mobile-computers are Google’s Android mobile-computer. Google redirects you to a computer that is entirely controlled by… Google. Surprise!
The boot-licking continues. This isn’t something forced on Google by authoritarian, nanny-state governments. This is Google’s will. Google is an authoritarian corporation that profits via surveillance-capitalism. Keep licking their boots and defending them. How dumb can you be?
Google wants to verify your ID.
Google redirects you to a Google Android slave-computer via a QR code, precisely because there’s too much freedom on traditional desktop-computers and outputs can be trivially simulated.
Oh, poor Google for…
…what? Collecting even more data about internet users? This is their bread and butter: surveillance-capitalism.
The unique thing about the Australian-context is that the liberal party began a project: to create a facial-recognition system that would underpin a virtual market of “identity providers”. From my perspective this is fraud, because underneath each identity provider was this governmental-department that would send a “yes” or “no” in response to a query: does this face belong to Johe Bloe. Their system doesn’t even deserve a critique because it’s from the party of blatant grifters and looters, but it’s now what we have and things don’t just disappear, especially when it’s a system that’s been in the works for decades and with bipartisan ‘support’.
Google is an upstanding corporate-citizen providing identity services in a free-market. It’s just capitalism, folks.
Like usual the morons will loudly blame Labor when the fruits of the liberal party turn rotten. The wider, global context is rising fascism which creates an environment where obeying remote prompts to wiggle your tongue and open and close your mouth is deemed ‘expected’ behaviour when all you want to do is watch cat videos on the internet.
Liberate your computers. Hack your mobile-computers and send dummie feeds. It only gets harder from here on. Push back now. It’s rather easy too: don’t use Google. Actively avoid it.
So we got to torrent our YouTube videos soon? EU is pushing for this too
Probably. I’m going to fork Smarttube and set it up so it works with local user account, keeps playlists local and just accesses youtube for the vids. PipePipe already does that…it just has a horrible 10 foot UI for TVs. The only thing that breaks smarttube right now is needing Google account. So, I will rip that out.
Ultimately tho…yeah, p2p (peertube) might end up the way to go.
I used a sample id from the WA DoT that had a picture of Mr bean and the name “Sam s sample” on discord and it worked perfectly. Didn’t work for Reddit, but I’ve stopped using Reddit anyways. VPN works for porn.
What happens when you send a selfie of Jeffrey Epstein?
Depends, does the camera point at him or the kids on his lap
Activation requires using a QR code, which requires access to live selfie cam
About a year ago I bypassed YouTube’s facial recognition by using a YouTube video and just taking a photo of that. So many big youtubers just talk directly to the camera and that made it pretty easy
Could we use AI to gen a fake ID ? Using their own weapon against them ?
You would need likely a paid AI service, the free ones I found were way too low detail. I got like 800x800 images, but a 4k YouTube video is way better
I was just thinking about using a picture or a video found online. Nice to know it works.
I imagine it works “for now”. I can see this becoming “verified govt id only” soon enough. There’s precedent for that IIRC
When that happens, it’s going to be a great day to de-google permanently.
There no time like the present
There is no time but the present 😉
Best time was 15 years ago, second best time is now.
Well, you must have got in before the new faceID scan. Trying now redirects you to a QR code, which only works on phone. Which then very politely asks to use your selfie cam / won’t accept camera roll.
Use your selfie camera to take a photo of a computer screen in highest quality you can. 4k recommended.
Oh wow. That’s annoying. Could also be a regional thing though.
Possible…though it could just as easily be a test case. AU and UK first…not sure what happened to US
https://gamerant.com/youtube-new-age-verification-feature-id-recognition/
I guess they’ll start with the countries that require age verification. It’s gotta be extra hassle for them as well, so they won’t do it unless it’s absolutely required by the local government.
youtube is the only thing I still have of theirs, maybe that is 1 too many.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting with alternate video sites such as Odysee, PeerTube, and Nebula. I think I might manage without YT. There’s plenty enough to watch elsewhere. Haven’t made the switch yet, but I feel well prepared.
I have looked at other video sites in the past and never found one that ticks the boxes, things change though, and there really does need to be other options.
Yeah, I know what you mean. This stack of sites doesn’t cover everything I use YT for. Regardless, I think they can tick enough boxes to form a viable option for me. It’s not perfect, but it’s usually good enough.
I’m using pipepipe on my phone, it’s okay for what it does, I would rather be signed in to like and comment, but I’m not doing ID crap for that.
Enjoy it while it lasts. I have a feeling that YT is going to take the FB approach of slamming a login wall to your face at some point.
Lol - tell me you used Mr Beast or the like for that.
I used Evan edinger, he has high quality talking face videos. Hardest part was lining up the selfie camera on my phone with my laptop
I love when I get that final push to leave a garbage service behind.
I watch far more on Nebula than I do on YT anymore. I prefer the model without comments, upvotes/downvotes or any of that garbage. That and supporting creators much more directly is a super win. And no ads at all. And it’s cheaper by far than YT premium.
^ Exactly that.
Really not Google’s fault. Talk to your local representatives. And all these people complaining about Meta and other social platforms “harming children” instead of just harming fucking everyone . Well how is Google going to protect the children without knowing who they are?
Yes, it’s all performative nonsense but talking to govt reps is a long wait for a bus that never arrives.
So - as usual - sailing the high seas will be the solution.
Frankly, i’m thankful for the enshittification. As of right now, we can still access YT fully (search etc)…so long as we’re not logged in. It boggles my mind how that makes any sense.
Not logged in? Sure, watch whatever you want.
Logged in, want to access your saved play lists, search etc? Papers please.
deleted by creator
talking to govt reps is a long wait for a bus that never arrives.
That may be true but the point is they’re the only ones with the power to change that.
That hasn’t been my experience. About half the time YT will block me from accessing videos without being signed in “to make sure I’m not a bot”.
Oh, lovely :/. I do hope that starts to happen here too. Gives me an excuse to hyper focus on an over engineered solution.
No better fuel then spite.
Thank you for joining us Anthony Albanese, but many of us are aware that is bullshit, and that if you wanted to protect people, you would be doing a lot of things very differently.
I don’t know who that is or who you think I am but I certainly don’t control any of that.
Albo is our prime minister. That commenter is sarcastically suggesting that you’re quoting the party’s talking points.
Wouldn’t the prime minister be the one responsible for that legislation? Wouldn’t the party’s talking points be “yes we did that?” All I know is it’s not Google. Meta, surely, but ultimately the buck stops with the politicians.
That was the point, the post is about how it is in Australia “AU”
…what was the point again? That you agree that it’s not Google?
Go back to the beginning and understand the thread is about Australia, and that Anthony Albanese is the Australian prime minister, the leader of the government that introduced a ban on under 16 social media access, and wants ID for all online usage.
My mistake, hello donald trump
Its working for me on android with pipepipe, but often these things are rolled out incrementally.
Smarttube is an odd duck in that it has both a local cache and hooks into Youtube account…but doesn’t accept direct CSV (like Pipepipe does) via Google takeout download. I’m going to look to see if I can scrape my own subscriptions etc and convert them into a format that smarttube understands as local only playlists. After that, I will look towards mirroring the actual vids locally.
Australia is all poo poo now
vpn is the way around that… for now
Grayjay?
Last I checked that didn’t work so well on SmartTV. Will check again…though am tempted to get ChatGPT to generate a fake image for facial recognition. More delicious - make shit fight shit
I’d ditch YouTube entirely but it has some stuff I share with students on there, plus my kids like watching old duck tales cartoons. The latter can be neatly addressed with Stremio / CloudStream but the former is a pain in the ass to work around.
complain about things being shit and then use chatgpt, well done champ.
Fire with fire, champ.
more like urine with urine
Shit with shit.
Interestingly, their faceID thing now requires that you use your phone with a live selfie, so the ChatGPT idea is a bust.
