[dleslie]

It allows one to download private videos that your account can access.

[joshspankit]

Such as:

- I have a script that downloads my liked videos (in case they get deleted, which I’ve found out happens a fair bit)

- I also have a script to download my watch later videos (for sync to devices without YouTube Premium/Red/whatever)

[mattl]

Would you share those scripts?

[joshspankit]

Sure:

```bash

# !/bin/sh

cd /media/youtube-dl

docker-compose run --rm youtube-dl -v --cookies /etc/youtube-dl.cookies.txt https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=INSERTYOUROWNWATCHLATE... -o "watchlater/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" --ignore-errors

```

That’s a bash script that runs via cron. One thing to note: this uses the cookies from a logged-in browser session because at some point YouTube blocked password log in from youtube-dl. This was is a bit of a pain to set up, and I wish it was not the case, but it mostly works.

[dmoy]

So the theory is this has nothing to do with security, but is only used to break private video downloading of youtube-dl?

[dleslie]

It blocks misrepresentation of agent, in general; automation is also blocked in general, but _especially_ for authentication.

[dmoy]

Sure but if the goal was to block youtube-dl usage, wouldn't they target the vastly more common usecase without authentication?