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Youtube seems to be blocking access to a seriously large amount of publicly listed videos (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I dont know what to think, really.

The Dekaif channel has 434 videos, but YouTube is only showing 275 to clients, whether logged in or not, whether yt-dlp or official access.

This isn't the first channel I've witnessed this, and weirder stuff, on. Another example is this video - "Belt" meme - it is accessible on Grayjay, yet not on YouTube, meaning (I think) that publicly shared videos are being deindexed, and yet they are still hosted.

You used to be able to take the video code from the URL (everything after '?v=' and before '&') and get the exact video in search results. Not now. The second YouTuber, Sparky, has 35 uploads, only 9 of which are visible. And I can attest that at least one of the remaining 26 is hosted, but invisible. I don't even know how it came up using Grayjay but not YouTube or Revanced.

Basically, there's a TON of shady underhanded shit happening at YTHQ and everyone needs to jump ship to Odysee, Peertube or some platform that won't be clogged with AI. This is bad for everyone.

I'm posting it here mainly because I verified my findings with yt-dlp, and this new bs is successfully thwarting my attempts to archive.

3rd Oct edit: I am seeing massive differences in indexed videos versus archived videos. I am currently aggregating but the definitely affected videos range from 10% to 50%

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[-] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 days ago

You’re certain that these videos haven’t been unlisted by the uploader themselves, right?

[-] Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'm not, but the sheer amount (nearly 50% in some cases) is suspicious. Save getting answers from the creators themselves, best I can do is keep collating data. Some of the affected channels' videos have no harmful content and millions of views per.. But I don't fully know yet.

[-] Hegar@fedia.io 17 points 2 days ago

Save getting answers from the creators themselves

Is there a reason you're not doing this? If I made income from you tube I'd want someone to draw my attention to this.

I'd think that a "hey, I noticed this weird thing, is that you delisting or is yt being shady?" type communication would be appreciated and help flesh out the picture.

[-] Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 day ago

I am not an established researcher, so I believe I have no legacy to justify a response from busy folk. I was referring less to myself not reaching out, and more to the unlikelihood of any responses. I am absolutely messaging creators who I see have a significant disparity between published and indexed videos.