[tor-talk] Revisiting youtube blocking TBB, virtually all 1st attempts to load YT

[joebtfsplk@xxxxxxx]

Problems with TBB & YouTube were recently discussed on tor-talk.  Things
have changed fairly quickly.

Something new has developed for me.  1st, I don't visit YT daily or even
weekly, depending.
Until maybe 10 days ago, the site (often, not always) presented a
message about excessive traffic from the current IPa.

Before, for me, just getting a new circuit - maybe 1 to 3 times, made
things right.

Suddenly, that no longer worked.  Even if I forced using only U.S. exits
via torrc.
It appears the country location of exit being used isn't YT's only issue.
I started requesting new TBB identities & that worked on the 1st attempt
(most times) for 1 or 2 weeks.

Then getting new identities started failing to load the site.  I've also
recently seen a noticeable increase of other sites, large & small, that
refuse to load in TBB.  Allowing 1st party cookies or 1st party scripts
doesn't seem to matter for the majority of sites that won't load.

It's unclear if the exit relay's country was / is a factor - too little
testing by me to be conclusive.
But, I found that manually clearing TBB's cache in about:preferences,
THEN restarting TBB worked a high percentage of attempts.  Just getting
new identities was no longer enough; at least forcing new identities 6+
times, on a number of days.

It could be there are SO many Tor exits, in many countries with lots of
users doing things that YT considers abuse.  If that theory is correct,
YT's "issue" with TBB changed very suddenly - for me.

It makes me wonder if other recent changes in TBB, Tor or NoScript,
etc., is a main factor.
From a simple probability stance, it's unlikely that for a few yrs, my
TBB was assigned only exits that YT considered good.  Then quite
suddenly, YT has a problem with dozens of exits in dozens of countries,
including U.S.

YT / Google could also have changed their policy - again - how they were
going to treat TBB or changed their definition of "abuse," so now there
are many more sites meeting their criteria of abusive. I also wonder if
Mozilla Fx changes on things like resisting fingerprinting are major
factors in more sites blocking TBB.



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