Why use proxy for such a popular and widely available site as YouTube? It seems absurd for most users with unlimited Internet access from home. But the reality is often surprising. Sometimes using a proxy for YouTube watching is recommended, and sometimes necessary. Let’s see the potential reasons why one does not simply walk into youtube.com.
Is YouTube Legal in Your Country?
Though YouTube is considered the main video hosting in the world, in certain countries it is completely blocked. The list of these countries includes:
· China – as a part of The Great Firewall. And still, it’s the 11th in Chinese site rankings.
· Iran and South Sudan. The formal reason is the controversy around the famous Innocence of Muslims that was uploaded to YouTube.
· North Korea, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan – for security reasons by their authorities imposing severe censorship.
· Eritrea. The real reason may be national problems with bandwidth.
Maybe by the moment you are reading it, YouTube is also blocked in Russia and Belarus. Other countries may ban certain videos or even channels on it. The reasons may be political, religious, or simply commercial.
Is YouTube Allowed in Your Company?
Sometimes, employees want to relax or distract themselves at the office. But corporate networks may be configured to restrict YouTube from them. Should you be content with watching it on your smartphone on 4G? No, but you can try using a proxy. If your OS settings are locked, you may want to use Firefox or another browser with built-in proxy functionality. Or use a web proxy that doesn’t require fiddling around with settings but is available through an URL. There are such services, though they are usually full of ads. In addition, they are often rather slow, so you will have to wait until the video is fully cached (which may take long).
Of course, it’s a rather rare case, because there is often a situation when an employee indeed needs some instructional video on YouTube. On the other hand, video streaming services distract the employees from their duties and consume numerous gigabytes. It’s often logical for companies to ban YouTube.
Is the Content on YouTube Restricted?
Due to copyright or legal issues, some content on YouTube is available for certain countries only or, on the contrary, is blocked in certain countries. The most famous story of this sort is the dispute between YouTube and GEMA, the German performance rights protection alliance. Because of this dispute, many music videos have been blocked on YouTube for German users. And how do you think they worked around this? Bingo.
Anything Else?
There may be other reasons why you may want to use YouTube with a proxy. The most obvious: you need to see how the video looks from another country. For example, if you run an international ad campaign, you want to check whether your ads are targeted right and are shown before related videos. If it covers several countries, you’ll need more than one proxy for your YouTube research.
Another reason is your wish to hide the fact you have watched (or rather uploaded) a certain video. You can later remove it from your history, but your ISP can save the link and then, say, provide this information to the authorities if they request it. If you want to avoid it, a proxy is a must rather than an option.
Finally, you may want to increase the number of views for your videos with bots. But, as YouTube does not count multiple launches from the same IP, you will have to change it with dynamic proxies to benefit from automation. This is a separate form of promotion, though, and we don’t find it suitable to discuss here. We just admit that it exists as a reason to use proxies with YouTube.
How to Choose a Proxy for YouTube
Will any proxy do if you need to watch YouTube with it? No, not all of them are created equal. There are several criteria that your perfect proxy for YouTube should comply with. The criteria include:
· A solid data plan, especially if your aim is watching and/or uploading videos. YouTube is voracious for megabytes, so you’ll need lots of them.
· Changeable locations. Especially for promotional purposes.
· Residential IPs if available. Otherwise, anti-bot protection may stand in your way.
· Affordable price. No need to explain. But don’t fall for free ones, as you for sure want your privacy protected, and free proxies can be far from the optimal choice when it comes to privacy.
You choose the crucial criteria according to your needs. If you need a YouTube proxy for automatable tasks, data volume is not crucial, but the IP pool is. For uploading or watching videos, one shared IP is enough, but megabytes matter. In the end, there is always the right proxy for your YouTube activity. Pick the right one and do your thing surely.
