YouTube won't let me watch this video with my VPN on. Is this a new thing?
Likely depends on your VPN. I use Proton and it’s fine.
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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Privacy
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They're killing third-party client access, limiting adblockers, blocking VPNs, and forcing sign in more and more. I sincerely hate it but this was inevitable. They have their monopoly, this is just the "abuse that position and enshittify for more data and money" stage. I hope an alternative takes off because I refuse to play by their rules.
The day the finally kill adblockers and third party clients I'll stop watching and I started to think I won't miss it at all after barely open it in a week.
Agreed. I hate the direction this is going towards but I'll just find other avenues.
I use MullvadVPN and i have never encountered this issue before. Hopefully won't need to either.
I'll tell you another weird detail I found out today.. A lot if my coworkers had their uBlock terminated by the chrome browser. I use Ubuntu with chromium because reasons and somehow, my uBlock is still active and working o.o it has not been terminated and I still get rid of those nasty YouTube ads.
I use Mullvad but get a "confirm you're not a bot by signing in" message occasionally. All I do is switch servers and clear all history/cookies/etc. It works 95% of the time.
I use MullvadVPN and I almost always encounter this issue.
It probably depends on which server(s) you're using.
It does, I've found Albania, Estonia and Nigeria skip the issue at least. If anyone else got server recommendations that work feel free to drop! I should probably clarify that my Mullvad connection is a barebones Wireguard one running on top of Tailscale
Sometimes the more commonly used servers like UK start working for a few hours/days but that never lasts. The 3 listed are basically bulletproof in my experience though
And yea, using a frontend will not bypass this. Unless that frontend is an online downloader like Cobalt.tools or amp4.cc. Or Invidious I guess but that... Has its own issues
This maybe affects Mullvad so strongly cause they never bother hididng/swapping their server IPs and don't have a particularly large plethora of them unlike competitors?
Switzerland as an exit Node!
It's ok, YouTube, I don't need the best content, just give me the okay content, it's fine.
Try the Freetube or Grayjay client, they work for me with VPN.
If you are using a Free VPN, the would be A LOT of users using that server, so it looks like a denial of service attack from the server's POV.
Even when I used a paid VPN, I still have to try many servers before there is one that works.
When I used ProtonVPN, it was like 50/50 if it worked or not.
When I switched to Mullvad and now to IVPN, who have much less servers to choose from, I have to try like 7 servers before I found a working one, and so far it's been working fine for like the past week.
Its not a new thing. I've noticed it since last year (when I started using VPNs).
Proton always works for me. I use it to get around geo blocking.
I use windscribe and I never really have issues.
But I had little issues with windscribe,
Proton is better
It's a relatively new thing. i was watching YT for years with Mullvad with no issues then late last year started getting blocked. Right now I can only watch on either NewPipe or on the official web client while logged in.
Try a less popular VPN server by your provider. Sometimes I have to use Uzbekistan to get Reddit and other sites to allow me on
Wow, this is sad!
Dude my van has been breaking a ton of websites lately. I had to turn it off to check the tracking on a package from USPS yesterday. Any time a website is sending me to a broken page, I turn off my vpn and it works immediately.
I was going to ask because I’m somewhat new to vpns, but I just assumed it was one hassle for privacy. Is this a new occurrence?
There always have been some sites blocking VPN traffic but it became widespread last 2-3 years.
Ooh, of all the possibilities I didn't have that one on my bingo sheet. I guess we'll be Torrenting YouTubers sooner than later.
No torrent needed, yt-dlp has you covered.
YT-dlp is about an inch away from being wiped out by them. All you need is the gaze of sauron. Forced logon and remove cookies in lieu of browser storage would set us back ages.
At some point they're just going to embed the commercials in the video stream or worse yet picture in picture them like broadcast TV did.
If you happen to be on an IP address Google likes.
All you have to do is change severs sometimes a few and refresh. Then it can flag your browser. It's a pain because people get severs blacklisted that and Modern sites like Google and YouTube and others use AI to detect unusual traffic patterns.
Sucks but once you find a good server remember the number and use it until it's burned takes some time months even then move on again. They are trying really hard to dox all users and make it hard for privacy minded folk.
It could be some AB testing
Try different locations.
swap proxies I have this problem from time to time with mullvad.
Where does the "learn more" go to?
Straight to Google Re-Education virtual classroom
Are you on Chrome?
I've had a different but similar issue. I have a VPN I log into so I can remotely access my work computer. If the VPN is on, YouTube won't show me specific content that I know is usually there. It doesn't tell me I can't watch anything or tell me to turn it off, but some content is just missing 🤷
Just an obligatory Grayjay plug.
Grayjay is great but I wish it was fully open source
I think its better to leave it Closed Source, otherwise, YouTube team will be able to see how it works and how they circumvent their efforts on blocking 3rd party clients.
Alternatively they could decompile it
Yeah. Agreed, however in this landscape, I’m not in a hurry to make an enemy of good.
I understand using VPN to circumvent region blocking. But for Youtube?
Aah, for that situation with some US-providers selling user data?
there are no ads if you tunnel through albania.
Some regions do have Youtube blocked tho
Just use one of the FOSS front-ends: https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends?tab=readme-ov-file#youtube