[Bug] YouTube blocking ALL VPN IP's with new test/check (please #)

[mooleshacat]

Describe the bug

I hate calling this a bug it would be nice to have a category to report outages.

The other day I was noticing my private Invidious instance that uses a VPN was being blocked regardless of which VPN IP I was using. Just a note, I also have inv_sig_helper and po-tokens set up which do not fix the problem.

I closed the ticket after I found a workaround, by opening the browser over the VPN and going to YT. When I got to YT the website was basically blank where the videos normally appear, and there was a message to make a search so the algo could suggest things.

This never was a thing before to my knowledge, and only started happening recently. Once I did a YT search through a browser, Invidious started to work again. I assume when invidious went to the page to get videos, it was blank, and that caused the issue.

I also suspect the same thing happens when you go directly to a video URL without browsing the main YT webpage or making a search. Maybe Invidious needs to pass referrer URL's or there is some hidden code (like po-token) hidden on the page ? Just a thought.

This workaround no longer works (24 hours later)

I believe these are attempts to block VPN's using invidious where they will blanket a set of IP addresses and show a blank page to them, asking them to either search a video or #. Basically targeting VPN IP's with some sort of "test" or "check" to see if it is a "bot" (or invidious)

Now it doesn't matter which VPN IP I use, it says "please #" and even searching a video on the YT website in the web browser will not fix invidious. It will show the videos on the web browser, but invidious still gets the "please #" error.

I am not sure if this test/check is being done on ALL IP addresses or just VPN IP addresses. I am too afraid to have my naked IP banned to check if they are doing the same to residential IP's.

TLDR; it appears they have changed their test/block system to block invidious over VPN IP's and they could be testing it there to be used on ALL business/data center IP's which would affect the public instances in the same way.

Please note: This does not only affect people with Invidious instances running over VPN, this would also affect people who run FreeTube directly over a VPN (without invidious). In other words this will affect noob users who will just use FreeTube over a VPN.

Hopefully this is not affecting public instances (yet) and we can get ahead of YT and work around the issue before they apply it to all datacenter IP's.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Select a VPN server
2. Generate po-token and add it to Invidious configuration
3. Restart inv_sig_helper and Invidious
4. Open FreeTube and click on a video
5. Receive "please #" error
6. Change VPN IP ad nauseum and repeat steps 1-5

Logs

Screenshots

Additional context

I am using a VPN for invidious
I am using inv_sig_helper and po-token for Invidious
I am using FreeTube on Windows 10 which uses an Invidious instance ran on a Raspberry Pi 4 (Debian)

I certainly would tell you which VPN but as this is a public ticket and YT is watching I don't want to give away my VPN provider so that YT can block it more successfully.

I am about ready to abandon the VPN and just order a VPS to be used privately without the VPN however I suspect that this same issue will eventually start to affect data center IP's too

For now I have been using invidious to get links of videos I want to watch, then pasting them into Brave Browser (my backup for ad-free YT) which is a nuisance but it works as a temporary workaround.

[unixfox]

Same response as #4975 (comment)