All content on the internet should be freely accessible to everyone, but it hardly ever is. YouTube, the most popular video sharing platform, is no exception. Many videos and other data there are restricted.
Luckily, there are ways to unblock YouTube. The most universal and trusted solution to this problem is to use proxies. A bit of knowledge is required to use them effectively but don’t worry – we’ll cover the essentials here. The full potential of YouTube will be available to you in no time.
Why is Youtube blocked?
Various individuals and organizations might want to block your access to YouTube. Their reasons differ and it’s important to know them before you take up the challenge of unblocking. Let’s go over some of the main ones.
• Network administrators. Many workplaces and schools block the entirety of YouTube or some of the videos to increase productivity.
• Geo-restrictions imposed by governments. Due to various copyright laws, the audience for certain content might be limited. Sometimes this can manifest in more severe forms of government censorship such as in countries like North Korea, for example.
• Youtube limitations. Youtubers themselves can choose in what regions their content will be accessible. If you’re connecting from the wrong region, access to the video and its data will be denied.
These are the three main sources of restrictions to YouTube. But one additional type of blocking is worth mentioning also. Youtube has advanced methods for detecting scraping tools and bots visiting their website. If you use some of these tools, your account and videos might be removed.
For an aspiring YouTuber with good intentions or even a regular viewer, this is a huge hassle. You have to be able to manage your account effortlessly, collect various data and avoid bans at the same time. Fortunately, there is one solution fit for all types of YouTube blockage.
Ways of unblocking Youtube
There are various ways to unblock YouTube but most of them work only partially. For example, blocks from the network administrators form URL lists with firewalls or web filtering software. In these instances, unblocking can take as little as changing the URL from “HTTP://” to “HTTPS://”.
A drawback of such solutions is that they demand time to figure out why YouTube is blocked for your device. Even worse, they do not guarantee a block free experience every time. Using proxies is a different game. They will unblock Youtube, whatever the reason is.
Proxies are the universal choice for unblocking YouTube. Simply put, they are intermediaries between you and the website providing access. Instead of connecting directly to YouTube, you can first send your request to a proxy server. A proxy will then connect to the website and send you back the required data.
The crucial part here is that this process hides your original IP address. IP is like an internet passport that allows websites to know your online activity and location. While using a proxy, you avoid providing this information and without it, YouTube is unblocked for good.
Proxies for unblocking Youtube
Even though using proxies is quite simple later on, getting the hang of them might be a challenge. It requires a bit of knowledge to set it up and choose the best one for YouTube. Let’s start by covering what type of proxy is worth your time the most.
Most free proxies are public and used by many devices at the same time. This greatly impacts not only the loading speeds but their credibility as well. YouTube will know upfront that you are using a proxy and might block you right away.
Sure, you might be lucky to find a free gem once in a while but it won’t last for long. Even worse is that you might expose your device to malware and give away your personal data just to save a dime. Free proxies are a risk not worth taking.
Another distinction to make is between residential and datacenter proxies. The latter ones are generally faster, but their connection comes from a cloud server. This origin reflects in their IP’s, so it will be easier for YouTube to know when you are using a datacenter proxy and block you anyways. For this reason, I recommend using private residential proxies.
Although slower than the datacenter, they might get quite fast. When you use a trusted provider, speed is not an issue. More importantly, their IP’s are tied with real locations and come from an internet service provider. Private residential proxies are best for use with YouTube for their speed and credibility.
A good provider of such proxies is Metrow. They provide unlimited access to a large pool of IP’s, and you can target any number of websites. Different locations are not a problem also – every corner of the world is covered on a city level. Oh, and there’s no need to commit from the start – there’s a free trial for first-time users.
As you now know what proxies to look for and where to find them, the next step is to figure out how to use them. There are a couple of ways to do so:
• One way is to set up a proxy in your operating system parameters. This option will route all your connections through a proxy server. In Windows, you can find proxy settings from the search bar.
• Another option is to configure a proxy connection in the browser settings. This way you use proxies only for the needed websites, and that’s usually the case when unblocking Youtube.
• The most convenient solution is to use a browser extension because it allows more functionality. You can create multiple profiles with different locations and rotate your IP’s for the chosen duration.
Conclusion
Unblocking YouTube has never been so simple. The hardest part is to know which solutions work, and we have already covered this. If you use proxies, restricted content on Youtube will be the thing of the past. Unleash the full potential of Youtube – this is the way it’s meant to be used.
