VPNs aren’t hard to detect, especially if you’re using a major service.
100% this, I work in cyber sec and it’s very easy these days for services to detect this.
What about TOR browser?
That’s even easier. The list of exit nodes is public.
Feel sorry for the guy in the datacenter using Netflix on his brake.
using Netflix on his brake.
Offering Xzibit some new ideas
Yo, we heard you like watching Netflix on your break, so we put big screen tvs on your brakes so you can watch Netflix on your brakes while on break.
Yo dawg, we heard you like Netflix so we put Netflix on yo brakes so when you brake you can watch Netflix, dawg,
Must be hard to see all the way down in the foot well.
That seems like a failure on their part. Buy more exit IPs.
There’s a lot more than just recognizing known raw IP addresses used as endpoints.
One method larger services with CDNs use effectively is to use DNS for blocking. When you try to access a site, your DNS request will resolve to a server close to you, with your location determining the domain resolving to a different IP. Then the platform just responds to those requests from outside their normal area with a consistent message. No need to know whether it’s actually a VPN or not, the traffic is acting like it is and doesn’t really have much of a reason to do that normally.
Well, you can put your DNS requests over the proxy as well, so kinda a skill issue. I don’t know if people do though - you’re the professional.
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.
But this is even dumber than before, you can’t even login to bypass. What about people living in a country where youtube is blocked. I guess Google just says “fuck 'em”?
What about people living in a country where youtube is blocked. I guess Google just says “fuck 'em”?
Yyep.
If you’re using a VPN, you’re likely anonymized and not directly making YouTube any money. Those are leeches, as far as a Google accountant is concerned.
They said logging in doesn’t make it go away. Being logged in means they can already track you, so this is pretty ridiculous of them tbh.
Being logged in means they can track what you watch. Being logged in via a VPN means they can’t track your location.
Literally valuable information.
I guess Google just says “fuck 'em”?
Yes, 100%, absokutely correct.
Google is a company.
Companies do not care about you. You are not a person, you are a number.
Google is a
companymulti-billion dollar corporation.CompaniesMulti-billion dollar corporations do not care about you. You are not a person, you are a number.(Well ok, there is plenty of small business who also don’t care about you, that’s not my point).
Trillion*
You can count the number of companies this rich on one hand.
I see. I havent had a Google account for like 8 years, so i didnt notice the difference.
Why is YouTube blocked?
Authoritarianism.
Probably part of the age verification bullshit
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.
disingenuously sound like they’re doing you a service
That’s the Google guarantee!
“This will allow Youtube to locate the best content” 🤡
It’s so insulting they add flavour text like this as if to call you a fucking moron to your face
“We know what’s best for you”
It seems like most people will believe any technical-seeming message shown to them.
But I don’t want the best content.
I want the old YouTube
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?
Yeah, it’s pretty trivial to do, and it’s honestly surprising it took YT so long to do it.
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Sure, but there are also lots of other ways around it. Non-chrome browsers (or Chromium-based browsers) still allow for good extensions that can block YouTube ads.
Firefox + uBlock Origin still works great, even when all the front-ends are broken.
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I encounter VPN blocks everywhere frequently. I usually just reroll my selected server until the block goes away
VPN ads seriously need to stop promising that you can get around content restrictions.
People should educate others on how to get content not available in their area for free without the hassle.
If media isn’t available in your area, then the company is telling you they don’t want your money. There is a $0.00 loss to them if you pirate it.
Unless you calculate it using the Nintendo formula, in which case you owe them $3 million.
Which is why there needs to be better pushback “Okay, so where exactly are you selling a functional SNES cart that I can plug into my SNES and play?” as an example.
What’s the lawyer speak for “Skill issue, just use a time machine” again?
I’m not sure how that pushback can be applied. It’s not a legal argument that I am justified in stealing something if you won’t sell it to me. Although, at the same time, I don’t know what basis they have for claiming damages.
The pushback would be when they cry about monetary losses for something they literally don’t even sell anymore. Is this not why they’re always trying to take down ROM sites?
Yeah the damages don’t make sense. They might be able to press other changes.
The law isn’t about what makes sense.
Yeah they need to start rotating egress ips regularly. It’s a cat and mouse game
Or they need to do a better job at getting around content restrictions
The “best content” being ip-located ads, probably.
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.
Understanding is the first step to fighting draconian policies.
Yeah, detecting the VPN isn’t really difficult at all. VPN providers sometimes try to cycle through IP addresses to make it harder, but there’s only so much they can do.
This isn’t really noteworthy, especially when you consider how many services require a sign in when you’re on a VPN anyways. It’s shitty, but not really surprising; They want to be able to tie your traffic to you, not just to a random VPN server. Hell, even without signing in, they probably have your browser fingerprinted. If you’re privacy focused, you probably have a lot of privacy based extensions, in a privacy based browser. And that makes you easy to fingerprint.
Many websites now just block a large range of cloud and VPS services in order to reduce DDOS from AI crawlers. For youtube and reddit you can still access if you are logged in though.
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.
Excellent advice. It’s a game of cat and mouse (or whack-a-mole, whatever metaphor works…).
Sites that want your data for whatever reason hate VPNs, so they identify exit points and blacklist traffic from them. VPN providers know this so they spin up new exit points with different IP.
Just try a different server. Sometimes it’s a regional ’rights’ issue, so pick another server that is in the same jurisdiction, for instance in the case of streaming.
If only you don’t serve ads containing literal porn to my face with my VPN off 😡😡
😮 you use a vpn to avoid porn? That’s a novel use case.
I block porn with my firewall so I have to VPN to get around it.
My state requires an ID to view porn so it’s all blocked for me!
Weeeee
Just hold your driving license up next to your face so we know who’s watching gay porn in a world increasingly intolerant to gay people. No problem there.
Try xvideo
Thanks! Yeah it works. So so dumb.
Couldn’t you just use uBlock and/or NextDNS/PiHole to avoid porn ads rather than use a VPN?
This is for the mobile app. I already use uBO on all my browsers.
Well, they need to make sure the right people are watching the right propaganda.
They lobby both parties, people are just talking about the Trump donations now as he is currently in power
That only covers political donations, not outright payoffs.
If money is speech, what is a company “saying” when it donates to both parties?
It’s just lobbying to get their interests. They aren’t specifically pro rep or pro dem they are pro google
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.
Why would your ISP do that?
They’re 5g based, so I suspect it’s within the terms of service somewhere that they can limit the streaming quality? Historically I’d only ever noticed deprioritization, never a hard bandwidth limit.
Rip net neutrality
to save bandwidth
I wonder if there’s any workaround besides VPNs like changing DNS or something?
Phone->revanced
Smart tv->smart tube next
I don’t ever watch YouTube on my laptop but I’m sure there are utilities available.
I prefer NewPipe to Revanced.
So long as you’re denying Alphabet the ad revenue, then you are doing the right and just thing.
Revanced is only in android right?
I think so. Only apple product I ever had was an iPod, so I’m extremely unfamiliar with their ecosystem.
I use 1.1.1.1 so I don’t think it’s easily ignored by changing DNS. But interestingly while using Revanced and NewPipe on my phone I don’t have any of the same problems. Maybe my computer is ignoring my router’s DNS? Maybe mobile YouTube is delivered from a different server? I wish I knew but ultimately using a VPN still works for me and is a very low effort fix.
What I don’t get is why it’s only YouTube they choose to throttle. I’ve never noticed any issues on other streaming websites and fast.com which literally uses Netflix servers is also full speed.
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
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 thise alternative platforms to grow.
I am with this, tired of using a yt frontend to watch videos (sometimes real website), and no reuploads nor have alternatives.
I vote for all of what you said
