Comment on This whole "Sign in to prove you're not a bot" thing is pissing me off
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is this new? Perhaps geographic testing in certain areas? I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen that on youtube. Just curious, what happens for you if you open a browser in Incognito go to youtube and without logging in to youtube, go to the video you want to watch?
Limonene@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In incognito or private browsing mode, you are way more likely to be blocked or forced to fill out a captcha, because the site won’t see any tracking cookies you would otherwise have.
To Google, preserving your privacy looks the same as being a bot. Using a VPN, clearing cookies, using private browsing, being signed out of a Google account, are all things that improve your privacy but look like bot activity. Google can use the excuse of blocking bots when their actual goal is tracking.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I use youtube almost exclusively in incognito and I never get the captcha. The only negative consequence is no suggested videos show up. It looks like this:
Image
However, as soon as you watch even a single video, it gives suggestions based upon that. As soon as you close all your incognito windows, it wipes the slate clean and opening a new window and going back to youtube just gives you the screenshot I linked here. I don’t have a youtube “feed” and I like that. Again, zero captchas.