How To Check Youtube Region Blocking

May 31, 2023 10:32 AM

I occasionally see comments about youtube being blocked by region. There are ways for posters/commentors to check preemptively, or for the site to do so with some dev work.

It might be a good to include a FAQ entry on sites like https://unblockvideos.com/youtube-video-restriction-checker/ or https://watannetwork.com/tools/blocked/ that people could proactively check, but at the very least anyone reading this is now aware of them.

With Some Coding (Stack Overflow), this could be checked automatically with the youtube API when someone submits a post, with the person encouraged to provide an alternative option if possible.

also credit to @zachlipton who told me about the watannetwork.com tool.

posted by Chrysopoeia to Feature Requests at 10:32 AM (4 comments total)

We do have an FAQ entry for this sort of thing but it's likely out of date (I haven't checked it, just searched for it) and could be improved.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:42 AM on May 31, 2023

Hmmm. Given the reticence many people express in MeTa about posting FPPs, this feels like another roadblock that will reduce posting rather than make it fairer. Especially since the alternative is… keep hunting for another video? This moves stress, disappointment, and effort from the reader to the poster, which maybe isn’t the right move?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:54 AM on June 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

An additional complication in this is that blocks do vary over time, e.g. right now a lot of copyright owners are blocking Russia but that may change in a couple of years.
posted by Lanark at 4:40 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Perhaps just like we kindly include archive.is links from time to time, we might kindly include invidious proxy links. Not everyone's going to know an article or link or video they post is paywalled or region-walled if it works for them and we can extend grace when that happens. When folks suspect it might be an issue, they can chuck the proxy link in as they do today.

Maybe the problem is simply broader awareness of "fuck your paywall / region-wall" tools, not necessarily automated evaluation of the goodness of included links.
posted by majick at 9:08 AM on June 1, 2023 [4 favorites]