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.


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 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.
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 :)
that isn’t far in the future where we will literally pirate youtube video to escape youtube’s paywall / login wall
Yeah, if the ad-block gets hard enough, people will use chinese HDMI splitters, stream recorders and a comskip project :)