Last week I tried to watch the “Shut the Fuck Up PSA” from the National Lawyers Guild, and it was age blocked. I did try to log in, but now you have to VERIFY your age too (obviously I clicked off that shit).
But honestly, alternative frontends like Freetube and yt-dlp might not make the cut anymore:
Mpv crashed, and Invidious instances keep saying “video may not be age appropriate”
Edit: My state is soon to perform age verification on social media sites, so this is probably the cause. I’ll just have to VPN to other states or countries until VPNs fail/are blocked.
It’d be nice if those companies used their millions of lobbying dollars to tell lawmakers just how stupid this shit is.
They won’t, though, because knowing exactly who you are and then verifying it via government documents or biometrics is way more valuable than the users lost who won’t verify.
They “don’t want it”, but they actually do.