Are you still looking for ways to bypass blocking to watch videos on YouTube? Is it necessary to bypass the blocking itself?
You can block the Internet for certain people indefinitely. You can block the Internet for everyone for a while. But you can’t block the Internet for everyone indefinitely.
This article contains only ideas, but does not describe mechanisms. Because… Remember the recent story with Discord, when “schoolchildren did…” (hereinafter the name of one very famous company, which is better not to mention at all). What did this office do? A couple of days later I blocked the schoolchildren, because there was no point in them sitting on Discord; it would be better for them to go on with their homework, do their homework, sign up for clubs, and not “go around on the Internet.” This material is intended for those who, by the nature of their work, monitor foreign technology innovations, watch educational videos, read habr and, suddenly, still live in Russia.
So what do we have? There are some resources that suddenly and, naturally, due to some misunderstanding, became inaccessible to the public. What did advanced Internet users do? We purchased VPN abroad. Correct, but not true. Simply because a VPN connection is difficult to find, but easy to lose (you look for a service provider, pay him a year in advance at a freely converted rate – and you are blocked for no reason after a month). The right question is: is it possible to do without a VPN at all and download videos from YouTube completely free of charge?
Let’s imagine the ideal end result: we are sitting behind the “Iron Curtain” (this is not an ideal situation, but “introductory ones”), access to YouTube is tightly closed – let alone watching a video, it’s impossible to open the page, but nevertheless we can download a video from YouTube to watch at home with a cup of coffee. What do we need for this?
Find pages with videos we'd like to watch
Download from these pages the video that is contained there (the page can be a playlist, so you may have to download not just one video, but several at once). You need to download in very good quality, at least FullHD (I watched and will continue to watch videos on YouTube about working in software that has a small interface, and even at 720p quality the letters become blurred to the point of being completely illegible).
Perhaps get a translation (at least text) of these videos
Pull these videos past the all-seeing eye so that it does not get excited and cover up the already dried up flow of information.
So, the search engine will help with the first point – we indicate to it what we are looking for, where we are looking (video), and we get a list of treasured pages – there, of course, not everything will be there, but it should be enough for a seed, in the end: if you don’t like the results – changing the search query!
The second point is solved by the latest version of the yt‑dlp program, of course you will have to tinker with it, and almost blindly. The fact is that this program has existed for a long time and is written by enthusiasts who want to download videos from YouTube without advertising, Google knows about it very well and regularly puts spokes in the wheels, however, the program imitates the work of a legitimate browser, so to successfully combat it Google will have to close your YouTube, no less. Therefore, at the very least, at a speed of 50 kbps, but this program will download videos from YouTube, and by default it is set to maximum quality. By the way, this program can also download translations (subtitles in the desired language).
Now the most interesting thing: how to sneak all this into your room without attracting the attention of the orderlies? What do they (DPI black boxes) pay attention to? To the site address, to the packet headers, to the encryption in the end… In general, you shouldn’t have this! How so? It's simple! The current generation does not remember (does not know) this, but earlier, in the last century, it was possible, for example, to play chess with a foreigner – by mail! You send a letter or postcard where you inform your opponent that, for example, White moves d2-d4, after which you wait for an answer where the next move will be written, and so on. In general, the easiest option is to cut the video into pieces and send it to yourself by regular email. The main thing is not to write in the letter itself that this is a video from YouTube.
There is, of course, another option – buy disk space on any domestic platform that has access from abroad, and upload videos there (in Linux you can even “pervert” and mount a remote folder into a local file system, and do this in such a way that if there is a connection with the remote folder, the system sees the files in this folder, if the connection is lost, the system would see other files, which would be a flag for it notifying about the problem). You can come up with a lot more. Video doesn't work? We’ll archive it, turn it into an ISO, cut it into pieces, compress it, dilute it with water, add salt and sugar, turn it into a set of pictures and an audio file, create and publish a torrent (which, after successful downloading, we’ll also update, replacing all the files in it), in the end – we will send home not the entire video, but only a text transcript… there can be a wide variety of solutions, acceptable for some and unacceptable for others. But at least this is better than nothing at all. You see, we are no longer talking about ease of use – we are talking about the very opportunity to receive up-to-date information (yes, to save that same child that some “mother” managed to throw out with the bath water).
The only problem with this solution is that to implement it you will need not only a remote server (located in a neutral or friendly country, where access will not be blocked by IP), where you yourself will install the Linux operating system and support it, but also good such remote administration skills this same operating system, which not everyone has either. As they say, “learn the hardware” – study Linux administration, writing bash scripts, installing and configuring programs, and, ultimately, Internet protocols and more…
And two more important points. Firstly, the tool you create cannot be replicated – it must be more or less unique, because blocking a powerful flow is easy and simple, but looking for droplets in the sea in order to block them without blocking something important – it’s difficult and expensive, and you can hope that no one will look for droplets. Secondly, a bottleneck has appeared in the information transmission channel. If your job (profession) depends on keeping up-to-date information about new technologies, band together to share knowledge with those who need it. There's nothing wrong with communities of interest where people share the latest information with each other – but be smart and say hi to Comrade Major when the opportunity arises.
It will be good if those who read the article can solve their problems. It’s bad if these people, on the contrary, create new problems for the domestic Internet community. Let's hope for the best.
I have everything. Don't thank me.
