YouTube Education redirect loop

[Mako]

Good morning,

 

Just a shout to see if anyone else is having this issue.

 

We use YouTube Education, which has been working up until yesterday. Students and staff now receive a "too many redirects" page on Chrome, IE just tells the user that the page cannot be displayed.

 

We use Smoothwall and have the header modification.

 

I thought I was alone in the issue as nobody on El Geek has said anything, but this is exactly the experience we're having: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-education/2yVgzwYM2hE.

 

As stated in that forum, the issue seems to be that youtube.com/education is now redirecting to youtube.com/channel/UC3yA8nDwraeOfnYfBWun83g, then the header modification attempts to take the user back to youtube.com/education and the loop continues.

 

If you click a link of an authorised video, it takes you straight there and plays fine. The same seems to be for any channels that are authorised, it's just the home page that isn't working. We can access our school's channel and access our videos fine. It also works in the staff room where YouTube does not receive the modification.

 

Looks like YouTube have changed something. This post is either to make you aware or let you report your experience.

Edited February 13, 2014 by Mako

[Chris_]

I noticed the same problem today when using the Smoothwall BYOD Radius authentication.

[molinetech]

Same here. We are new to YTS and it was working fine last week, but just yesterday we noticed that the ChromeBooks were throwing errors (The app is currently unreachable). Students can bypass altogether by visiting https://www.youtube.com and have the full site available. We are using the Cymphonix (now Untangled) web filter.

[molinetech]

If I change the YouTube filter ID to UC3yA8nDwraeOfnYfBWun83g, then it works for students. However, they can bypass it by going to https://www.youtube.com.

[molinetech]

Even further, when I do change to this YouTube ID, as a student, I can get to comments, which did not happen before. The comments are the only thing I really want to filter.

[SchoolsBroadband]

YouTube and Google changed the way everything works. It's also affected our lightspeed cluster although lightspeed are creating a new patch to fix it which we will apply pretty soon.

[free780]

The ssl thing has been a issue for ages. Some players and the official app require ssl connections.

[free780]

OK fun and games. It works fine on our desktop pcs. We have been trying to get a android tablet to play nice with it. So https://youtube.com is blocked for obvious reasons (see above). So the app does not work. Also authentation against the proxy only happens in the browser so the app is out of action. Nice testing google.

[jdlee00]

The Youtube for EDU redirect should be fixed as of today

[molinetech]

The redirect is working, except the https:// url is still allowing full access to YouTube. So, when a student searches for a video on Google, they are getting to way more than just educational videos. Hopefully that fix is soon behind the recent one.

[free780]

Well the ssl issue has been their for 6 my months at least. I think because the http header is encrypted your filter can't affect it. Unless you have a filter that uses ssl man in the middle decyption. Google do seem to be a bit hippie/ linux/free spirited when it comes to messing with ssl connections. We do however live in the real world and needs fixing. Even if you have to push out a cert to each pc. Google seem bad at not communicating changes as well.

[free780]

Is it still broken for mobile devices? Its fine on the desktop.

[Mako]

Thanks for the replies @ all, good to know it wasn't me and it's now working.

 

Is it still broken for mobile devices? Its fine on the desktop.

 

Yes, it seems to be. Tablets want to take you to m.youtube.com, then the redirect kicks in to take you to the Education, which detects you're on a mobile, taking you back to the mobile version and an endless loop occurs.

 

Anyone have YouTube Education working successfully on Mobiles?

 

As an aside, no https issues here as Smoothwall is set to inspect YouTube https requests. At the moment if you try https, we get a security message which leads to a Smoothwall notice, which takes you back to regular http YouTube. No bypasses.

[free780]

Android tablet here now goes to mobile site using chrome/firefox/dolphin.

[Mako]

Same, but we don't want it to do that. As we're using LearnPads, it has a built in browser that is pretty inconfigurable.

 

On the tablet's Chrome I can set it to force desktop version, which then works with YouTube Education, but it's obviously slower and not a real solution. Also the fact that I can't change the default browser to Chrome due to how LearnPad works.

 

Using a YouTube app also doesn't work as there's no way to set proxy authentication, so it won't load any videos.

 

Getting to be a real headache. LearnPad allows the adding of links, their support site suggests altering the URL to force an embed and to disable related videos. Which does work, quite nicely infact, but then requires staff to alter URLs quite specifically which can only go wrong.

 

I would just like YouTube to provide a solution for mobile devices.

[free780]

Well you can use drony to authenticate a proxy though it doesn't seem to work with ntlm :-( (if the youtube app works with the edu filter). Or set a proxy in the wifi settings (if unauthenticated). I've not used learnpads.

 

On the tablet's Chrome I can set it to force desktop version, which then works with YouTube Education

 

Does it still do the loop if you turn the desktop setting off?

 

Google really need to:

 

1. Communicate changes through a blog/email/twitter. And progress on ongoing issues.

2. Fix the ssl issue.

3. Support proxies with authentication on android devices and support logging off.

 

Though unfortunately a lot of schools/colleges etc are buying tablets and IT have to make them work even if its insecure and/or can't log user web activity.

[Mako]

Does it still do the loop if you turn the desktop setting off?

 

Yes it does. This is a ridiculous issue.

 

You can set a proxy in an android tablet, but not an authenticated proxy. Which is part of the issue with the app, as SmoothWall requires user authentication in order to allow/deny content. LearnPad allows a proxy to be entered, which is for its own browser, but the YouTube app does not use this, it uses the tablet's proxy... which does not have any authentication. I have looked at Drony but I don't want to go down the route of setting this up each and every time.

 

Regardless, I don't think the YouTube app is an appropriate solution so I'm not investigating that any further.

 

I just want them to fix point 3.