7 ms·

Tell HN: YouTube is asking for age verification to watch Bret Weinstein's video

79 points by whitepaint 5y ago

I tried to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6AqKIxd94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6AqKIxd94 (the discussion between Sam Harris and Bret Weinstein about free will) and Youtube is asking for age verification (that can be done by submitting your ID or by using a credit card).

rvz 5y ago
And so it begins. Enforcing KYC to watch a video to verify your age. Won't be long until this become pervasive over all the major services and platforms and privacy will be totally and completely finished. Thank you YouTube and well done to everyone using it. /s
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  Ultimately YouTube are required legally to do this in much of the EU, and Australia. The privacy community bluntly completely got caught with it's pants down being angry about corporates and ignoring the huge lobbying from "child protection" groups in the last few years which is resulting in some horrendous legislation in much of the western world.
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    > YouTube are required legally to do this in much of the EU Citation needed? What constitutes adult content on youtube? Other than for actual online gambling I struggle to see age gates are a thing anywhere in the EU.
    - Mindwipe 5y ago
      Citation - https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/audiovisual-and-media-services https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/audiovisua... https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779?hl=en-GB#zippy=%2Cif-youre-in-the-european-union-eu-european-economic-area-eea-switzerland-or-the-united-kingdom https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779?hl=en-GB#... The Irish communications regulator, Comreg, determines categorisation for what is considered "adult" content on YouTube (well, or at least sets guidance, which YouTube somewhat clumsily implements, but the guidance is vague and crap). The Irish regulator is allowed to do it Europe wide, as under the Single Market YouTube's European operations are based in Ireland for tax reasons. The AVMS and DSA are going to force age gates in Europe to an unprecedented scale, as will the Online Safety Bill in the UK.
      - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
        This is insane. The only way to win really is not to play.
        rvz 5y ago
        Exactly correct.
thunderbong 5y ago
From my experience, this was always there for videos which have been considered inappropriate for younger people. Although, I don't have a clue why a discussion on free will would warrant that! It even says so at the bottom of the video - >> Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines)
- konschubert 5y ago
  I don't know Bret Weinstein, why would this video be inappropriate for younger people?
  - emerged 5y ago
    Because Google wants to ensure young people are indoctrinated according to the “correct” collection of information.
  - fuzzfactor 5y ago
    It's for mature audiences only. You're supposed to be over 41 to understand it.
    - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
      I wish they did that with the voting age.
  - zuminator 5y ago
    Fairly early on in the discussion, Harris is talking about how he supposedly never tells a lie, not even to his 10 year old daughter, although he does conceal facts from her that she doesn't need to know. For example, there exists a certain guerilla organization/theocratic proto-state that was known at the time for systematically carrying out horrific acts against women and children, She doesn't need to be burdened with that knowledge at that age so he withholds it from her. But see what he just did there? The very thing he said his own kid is too young to hear, he just blurted out. That would mean by his own standards their conversation is inappropriate for children. So perhaps he himself asked Weinstein to age-restrict the video so as not to be a hypocrite.
rayrag 5y ago
If you don't want to verify your ID use FreeTube (desktop) or NewPipe (Android). https://freetubeapp.io https://freetubeapp.io https://newpipe.net/ https://newpipe.net/
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  My first answer to "why do we need alternative app stores and sideloading on iOS" is always NewPipe.
- crocodiletears 5y ago
  You can't watch age gated content on newpipe, ime. Throws an error.
  - rayrag 5y ago
    I currently don't have NewPipe installed but from I remember age restricted videos are hidden by default. Go to settings and toggle show age restricted videos to see them.
    - crocodiletears 5y ago
      I have had this feature enabled. Age restricted videos don't load. (Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qWMcQfOCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qWMcQfOCc)
supernes 5y ago
I'm worried this and other recent developments signal that there will be a major push to practically end anonymity on the Internet over the next couple of years. Services like Stripe Identity that make it trivial to implement, age gating in the name of "protecting children" from harmful content, real-name policies at account creation time for fighting misinformation and abuse, and more. It's already here to some extent with the obligation to provide a phone number, but unlike a phone you can't just change your legal identity if you need to. Determined bad actors on the other hand will have no trouble farming ID docs from disadvantaged people to assume their identity online, through coercion or social engineering. And soon everything you do and say online will have immediate, real-world ramifications.
- 8458e112e7b2 5y ago
  Maybe. Maybe only on the big-tech "major" platforms. There will likely be a pushback, specially from the "blockchain/crypto" world on pseudonymity [0] [0]: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1249372482412273668 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1249372482412273668
  - kodisha 5y ago
    Ye, good luck trying to sell/trade your crypto without verifying your self with a photo of your face + passport or driver's license.
    - ixacto 5y ago
      Wonder if the is verifiers will be using a gov backend for identity verification? It’s kinda easy to photoshop an ID + passport so these systems can be abused. Could also use a convolutional neural network to generate a new photo.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 8458e112e7b2 5y ago
      There are ways around this too. [0] [0] https://bisq.network/ https://bisq.network/
alpaca128 5y ago
I've never had trouble downloading age-restricted videos using youtube-dl. So it's worth a shot using it to access the video that way. I think with mpv + youtube-dl you can alternatively watch the video directly.
- aaron695 5y ago
  This no longer works. Discussion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27353917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27353917
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Just tried it since youtube-dl is updated every so often, and yeah that's quite unfortunate. After the latest brew upgrade: youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6AqKIxd94" [youtube] id6AqKIxd94: Downloading webpage [youtube] id6AqKIxd94: Downloading embed webpage [youtube] id6AqKIxd94: Refetching age-gated info webpage ERROR: This video may be inappropriate for some users.
  - npteljes 5y ago
    And the embed trick doesn't work either. It just tells you to go to YouTube to watch the video.
new_guy 5y ago
I think people forget that youtube is just one of literally hundreds of tube sites out there. There's a lot of exciting innovation in the space and every day there's more and more niche orientated sites. Bitchute, WTV, Rumble, Odysee, Joshwhotv, brandnewtube etc etc. If Youtube wants to enforce this everyone will migrate to other services.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
Let's stop calling this process "age verification" and use the proper name, "identity verification".
- rootsudo 5y ago
  This, 100%. There is no need to know the identity of who you are. That flag, that index, that registry that records the timestamp of when you saw this content, from what location, from what region.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    Depends on the regulation. Often the law says that just asking for a date-of-birth is insufficient. I've written software in which I want nothing to do with PII but am forced to collect it due to short-sighted laws.
TechBro8615 5y ago
I had to do this too (I didn’t do it obviously), despite the fact that my Gmail account itself is 17 years old
- cygned 5y ago
  YouTube asks me to verify my age for some videos despite me paying for Premium with my credit card every month.
machinehermiter 5y ago
I mean clearly youtube has poor control if a group of some sorts does an attack on a specific user to lower views. With that said I just watched Timothy Nguyen's video about Eric Weinstein this weekend and it just confirmed everything I suspected about Eric. I didn't realize he even put in his paper he is not a physicist but an "entertainer". I think Eric gained traction and brought Brett in on this. They are doing a new form of science fiction IMO. It doesn't really work though if they break character. The occam's razor between two brothers who have had revolutionary ideas in physics, economics and biology all shelved by an establishment vs two brothers who are podcasters creating content is pretty straight forward. I am not sure restricting the age like a rated R movie is the worst thing with what they are doing.
- cdot2 5y ago
  "I just watched Timothy Nguyen's video about Eric Weinstein this weekend and it just confirmed everything I suspected about Eric." That's quite the sentence
aaron695 5y ago
They have a pandemic vaccine discussion here (the video is pre-covid, technically it came out the day of the first documented COVID-19 hospital admissions) https://youtu.be/id6AqKIxd94?t=12000 https://youtu.be/id6AqKIxd94?t=12000
8458e112e7b2 5y ago
There are easy ways around this (for now). Youtube-dl, Newpipe (on Android).
foolzcrow 5y ago
Censorship is never used by the good guys.
cpach 5y ago
[deleted]
- evv555 5y ago
  Consider supporting Bret. He is already broadcasting through alternative channels. The stance against youtube is deliberate and principled.
  - cpach 5y ago
    I support free speech, but I will not endorse him or donate any money to him.
jasode 5y ago
If there's an automated algorithm that determines the prompt for "Sign in to confirm your age" ... it's has strange false positives. Here's a video that requires age-confirmation: "Weed Identification of Cool and Warm Season Weeds in the Lawn" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znCi9lpIy60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znCi9lpIy60 His channel is just typical lawn care stuff: https://www.youtube.com/c/bluecreel/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/bluecreel/videos Maybe that's happening with Bret Weinstein's video.
- jareklupinski 5y ago
  ... it can't be just because of keywords like "weed" can it (a lot of his videos mention weed/s)
jazzyjackson 5y ago
I am pretty tired of websites flagging content for "Community Standards" (more like corporate standards amirite) and then not telling me which standard has been violated. YouTube just links to [0] guidelines that cover all of your typical stuff, except I did learn that you're not allowed to contradict the World Health Organization on YouTube when it comes to COVID [1], but this video is from 2019 so that's not it... Edit 1: Maybe their Hate Speech policy is a little wide by including "statements that one group is less than another, calling them less intelligent, less capable, or damaged" [2], as the last half hour or so engages in a bit of religion-bashing. Not saying the restriction is appropriate, just wondering what quote could possibly register as inappropriate. Edit 2: Age restriction can be self imposed by a creator, it doesn't appear to me there's a way to tell if the restriction is from the user or the platform. [0] https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/community-guidelines/ https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/community-g... [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en&ref_topic=9282436 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en&ref_... [2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801939?hl=en&ref_topic=9282436#zippy=%2Cother-types-of-content-that-violates-this-policy https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801939?hl=en&ref_...
- Trias11 5y ago
  That's their platform and they could do all kind of nonsense to users. This of course gives users permission to use their platforms in any ways users see fit, including suggesting them to shove theor TOS down their bottoms.
xyzzy21 5y ago
YouTube is doomed - they are already a zombie - already dead but doesn't know it. I'm pretty much off YouTube at this point.
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
The funny thing is they do this even when you're already logged into your account, where they have all sorts of data, including postal address and land line. Just not your mobile number. Why is that? One hand not knowing what the other does, or what? I noticed that with several other totally harmless videos over the last months.

79 points by whitepaint 5y ago

rvz 5y ago

And so it begins. Enforcing KYC to watch a video to verify your age. Won't be long until this become pervasive over all the major services and platforms and privacy will be totally and completely finished. Thank you YouTube and well done to everyone using it. /s

Mindwipe 5y ago
Ultimately YouTube are required legally to do this in much of the EU, and Australia. The privacy community bluntly completely got caught with it's pants down being angry about corporates and ignoring the huge lobbying from "child protection" groups in the last few years which is resulting in some horrendous legislation in much of the western world.
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  > YouTube are required legally to do this in much of the EU Citation needed? What constitutes adult content on youtube? Other than for actual online gambling I struggle to see age gates are a thing anywhere in the EU.
  - Mindwipe 5y ago
    Citation - https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/audiovisual-and-media-services https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/audiovisua... https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779?hl=en-GB#zippy=%2Cif-youre-in-the-european-union-eu-european-economic-area-eea-switzerland-or-the-united-kingdom https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779?hl=en-GB#... The Irish communications regulator, Comreg, determines categorisation for what is considered "adult" content on YouTube (well, or at least sets guidance, which YouTube somewhat clumsily implements, but the guidance is vague and crap). The Irish regulator is allowed to do it Europe wide, as under the Single Market YouTube's European operations are based in Ireland for tax reasons. The AVMS and DSA are going to force age gates in Europe to an unprecedented scale, as will the Online Safety Bill in the UK.
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      This is insane. The only way to win really is not to play.
      - rvz 5y ago
        Exactly correct.

thunderbong 5y ago

From my experience, this was always there for videos which have been considered inappropriate for younger people. Although, I don't have a clue why a discussion on free will would warrant that! It even says so at the bottom of the video - >> Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines)

konschubert 5y ago
I don't know Bret Weinstein, why would this video be inappropriate for younger people?
- emerged 5y ago
  Because Google wants to ensure young people are indoctrinated according to the “correct” collection of information.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  It's for mature audiences only. You're supposed to be over 41 to understand it.
  - dennis_jeeves 5y ago
    I wish they did that with the voting age.
- zuminator 5y ago
  Fairly early on in the discussion, Harris is talking about how he supposedly never tells a lie, not even to his 10 year old daughter, although he does conceal facts from her that she doesn't need to know. For example, there exists a certain guerilla organization/theocratic proto-state that was known at the time for systematically carrying out horrific acts against women and children, She doesn't need to be burdened with that knowledge at that age so he withholds it from her. But see what he just did there? The very thing he said his own kid is too young to hear, he just blurted out. That would mean by his own standards their conversation is inappropriate for children. So perhaps he himself asked Weinstein to age-restrict the video so as not to be a hypocrite.

rayrag 5y ago

If you don't want to verify your ID use FreeTube (desktop) or NewPipe (Android). https://freetubeapp.io https://freetubeapp.io https://newpipe.net/ https://newpipe.net/

smnrchrds 5y ago
My first answer to "why do we need alternative app stores and sideloading on iOS" is always NewPipe.
crocodiletears 5y ago
You can't watch age gated content on newpipe, ime. Throws an error.
- rayrag 5y ago
  I currently don't have NewPipe installed but from I remember age restricted videos are hidden by default. Go to settings and toggle show age restricted videos to see them.
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    I have had this feature enabled. Age restricted videos don't load. (Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qWMcQfOCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4qWMcQfOCc)

supernes 5y ago

I'm worried this and other recent developments signal that there will be a major push to practically end anonymity on the Internet over the next couple of years. Services like Stripe Identity that make it trivial to implement, age gating in the name of "protecting children" from harmful content, real-name policies at account creation time for fighting misinformation and abuse, and more. It's already here to some extent with the obligation to provide a phone number, but unlike a phone you can't just change your legal identity if you need to. Determined bad actors on the other hand will have no trouble farming ID docs from disadvantaged people to assume their identity online, through coercion or social engineering. And soon everything you do and say online will have immediate, real-world ramifications.

8458e112e7b2 5y ago
Maybe. Maybe only on the big-tech "major" platforms. There will likely be a pushback, specially from the "blockchain/crypto" world on pseudonymity [0] [0]: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1249372482412273668 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1249372482412273668
- kodisha 5y ago
  Ye, good luck trying to sell/trade your crypto without verifying your self with a photo of your face + passport or driver's license.
  - ixacto 5y ago
    Wonder if the is verifiers will be using a gov backend for identity verification? It’s kinda easy to photoshop an ID + passport so these systems can be abused. Could also use a convolutional neural network to generate a new photo.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 8458e112e7b2 5y ago
    There are ways around this too. [0] [0] https://bisq.network/ https://bisq.network/

alpaca128 5y ago

I've never had trouble downloading age-restricted videos using youtube-dl. So it's worth a shot using it to access the video that way. I think with mpv + youtube-dl you can alternatively watch the video directly.

aaron695 5y ago
This no longer works. Discussion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27353917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27353917
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Just tried it since youtube-dl is updated every so often, and yeah that's quite unfortunate. After the latest brew upgrade: youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id6AqKIxd94" [youtube] id6AqKIxd94: Downloading webpage [youtube] id6AqKIxd94: Downloading embed webpage [youtube] id6AqKIxd94: Refetching age-gated info webpage ERROR: This video may be inappropriate for some users.
- npteljes 5y ago
  And the embed trick doesn't work either. It just tells you to go to YouTube to watch the video.

new_guy 5y ago

I think people forget that youtube is just one of literally hundreds of tube sites out there. There's a lot of exciting innovation in the space and every day there's more and more niche orientated sites. Bitchute, WTV, Rumble, Odysee, Joshwhotv, brandnewtube etc etc. If Youtube wants to enforce this everyone will migrate to other services.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

Let's stop calling this process "age verification" and use the proper name, "identity verification".

rootsudo 5y ago
This, 100%. There is no need to know the identity of who you are. That flag, that index, that registry that records the timestamp of when you saw this content, from what location, from what region.
- aeternum 5y ago
  Depends on the regulation. Often the law says that just asking for a date-of-birth is insufficient. I've written software in which I want nothing to do with PII but am forced to collect it due to short-sighted laws.

TechBro8615 5y ago

I had to do this too (I didn’t do it obviously), despite the fact that my Gmail account itself is 17 years old

cygned 5y ago
YouTube asks me to verify my age for some videos despite me paying for Premium with my credit card every month.

machinehermiter 5y ago

I mean clearly youtube has poor control if a group of some sorts does an attack on a specific user to lower views. With that said I just watched Timothy Nguyen's video about Eric Weinstein this weekend and it just confirmed everything I suspected about Eric. I didn't realize he even put in his paper he is not a physicist but an "entertainer". I think Eric gained traction and brought Brett in on this. They are doing a new form of science fiction IMO. It doesn't really work though if they break character. The occam's razor between two brothers who have had revolutionary ideas in physics, economics and biology all shelved by an establishment vs two brothers who are podcasters creating content is pretty straight forward. I am not sure restricting the age like a rated R movie is the worst thing with what they are doing.

cdot2 5y ago
"I just watched Timothy Nguyen's video about Eric Weinstein this weekend and it just confirmed everything I suspected about Eric." That's quite the sentence

aaron695 5y ago

They have a pandemic vaccine discussion here (the video is pre-covid, technically it came out the day of the first documented COVID-19 hospital admissions) https://youtu.be/id6AqKIxd94?t=12000 https://youtu.be/id6AqKIxd94?t=12000

8458e112e7b2 5y ago

There are easy ways around this (for now). Youtube-dl, Newpipe (on Android).

foolzcrow 5y ago

Censorship is never used by the good guys.

cpach 5y ago

[deleted]

evv555 5y ago
Consider supporting Bret. He is already broadcasting through alternative channels. The stance against youtube is deliberate and principled.
- cpach 5y ago
  I support free speech, but I will not endorse him or donate any money to him.

jasode 5y ago

If there's an automated algorithm that determines the prompt for "Sign in to confirm your age" ... it's has strange false positives. Here's a video that requires age-confirmation: "Weed Identification of Cool and Warm Season Weeds in the Lawn" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znCi9lpIy60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znCi9lpIy60 His channel is just typical lawn care stuff: https://www.youtube.com/c/bluecreel/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/bluecreel/videos Maybe that's happening with Bret Weinstein's video.

jareklupinski 5y ago
... it can't be just because of keywords like "weed" can it (a lot of his videos mention weed/s)

jazzyjackson 5y ago

I am pretty tired of websites flagging content for "Community Standards" (more like corporate standards amirite) and then not telling me which standard has been violated. YouTube just links to [0] guidelines that cover all of your typical stuff, except I did learn that you're not allowed to contradict the World Health Organization on YouTube when it comes to COVID [1], but this video is from 2019 so that's not it... Edit 1: Maybe their Hate Speech policy is a little wide by including "statements that one group is less than another, calling them less intelligent, less capable, or damaged" [2], as the last half hour or so engages in a bit of religion-bashing. Not saying the restriction is appropriate, just wondering what quote could possibly register as inappropriate. Edit 2: Age restriction can be self imposed by a creator, it doesn't appear to me there's a way to tell if the restriction is from the user or the platform. [0] https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/community-guidelines/ https://www.youtube.com/howyoutubeworks/policies/community-g... [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en&ref_topic=9282436 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9891785?hl=en&ref_... [2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801939?hl=en&ref_topic=9282436#zippy=%2Cother-types-of-content-that-violates-this-policy https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2801939?hl=en&ref_...

Trias11 5y ago
That's their platform and they could do all kind of nonsense to users. This of course gives users permission to use their platforms in any ways users see fit, including suggesting them to shove theor TOS down their bottoms.

xyzzy21 5y ago

YouTube is doomed - they are already a zombie - already dead but doesn't know it. I'm pretty much off YouTube at this point.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

The funny thing is they do this even when you're already logged into your account, where they have all sorts of data, including postal address and land line. Just not your mobile number. Why is that? One hand not knowing what the other does, or what? I noticed that with several other totally harmless videos over the last months.