sometimes youtube believes I’m a bot and won’t allow downloading stuff from them with yt-dlp 2026.07.04 on debian 13.6.

I could torify the whole computer, so next time I open a terminal and execute yt-dlp it uses tor by default. Sadly, I don’t know how to do that.

Another way would be to torify only yt-dlp, but neither do I know how to do that.

Changing the mac address and hostname did nothing.

Can you help?

  • vas@lemmy.ml
    1·
    2 days ago

    I’ve noticed that *not using* youtube for a while gets you ublocked, too. Which is only good, if you think about it. Most often (even if not always), your days will get a bit healthier, and the lifting of the block is only a bonus when you really need that rare video, too.

    I haven’t found other solutions or tricks; nor have I tried after I’ve realised that this one works. I take it as a “hint” from google, to get away from the screen (YT) for a few days.