[traceroute66]

YouTube have also become very aggressive in forcing you to have a Google account and to watch videos to allegedly "help protect our community".

I avoid YouTube like the plague, but sadly there are lots of people out there who don't know anything other than YouTube exists and so they post their videos there (e.g. conference presentation recordings etc.).

[khurs]

If you use DuckDuckGo and use the video search, you can watch many YouTube vids embedded

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rickastley&ia=videos&iax=videos

Fun fact: some countries have no YouTube ads, so if you use Tor/VPN to change to an ad free country, then can watch ad free without an adblocker.

[traceroute66]

Yeah, I find it intermittent as to whether it works or not. I'm guessing YT are playing whack-a-mole on that one.

[account42]

It's particularly sad when its institutions doing that who should really have the capability to host their own videos.