You are spot on. The CDN simply has authentication functionality. (Or the app generates a temporary CDN URL that you’ll use)
Comment on Google has been blocking many tools/IP ranges that try to synchronize with YouTube
hangonasecond@lemmy.world 1 month agoNot the OP, and I don’t actually know, but paid streaming services differ from YouTube in that everyone who accesses the content is paying for the service. On one hand, you can validate that everytime a video is served, it’s served to a paying user. On the other, you are receiving revenue directly from consumers to fund the infrastructure to store and serve the videos.
YouTube, on the other hand, stores significantly more content, for free, and can be accessed for free, without being signed in.
x00za@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
nafzib@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The “without being signed in” part of YouTube is now no longer completely true. I tried to watch a video tutorial at work the other day and it wouldn’t play because I wasn’t signed in and so “they couldn’t be sure I wasn’t a bot”. I’m not signing into any personal stuff on my work computer, or wasting time creating a “work” Google account, so I guess YT can no longer be a place where I can get helpful programming info.
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 1 month ago
That might have been because of your IT team. You can absolutely watch YouTube videos without being signed in. I do it all the time.
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 1 month ago
YT likely recognized the IP as belonging to a commercial entity and threw up the block, due to bot concerns, over that .
TachyonTele@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Possibly yeah