Problems with hyperlinks to youtube videos due to Embedded 'Safe Mode'

[useraaron321]

Hi everyone, we have an issue that has just started to pop up with hyperlinks. If we currently click on the a link to YouTube then it opens up and you get this message 'This video is unavailable with Safety Mode enabled. To view this video, you will need to disable Safety Mode'. We had not problems with this until recently so it must be something that Google has just decided to do with YouTube. I know its supposed to protect people by content filtering but no good if it stops the video from being played. You can still go on youtube but it just wont accept the links unless you have a youtube account but of course we cant expect every student to log into google everywhere they go.

 

Does anyone else have this problem recently and if so have you managed to fix this at all?

 

Thanks

[Kenny_G]

We have this problem. The only fix we have found so far is to sign into youtube.

[Tesla]

this has just cropped up here too :/

[machin05]

Same here. Really annoying as it has undone a load of work we did last year in enabling/forcing You Tube EDU for students.

 

We can add exceptions to the YouTube EDU http re-write in Smoothwall for videos we want students to be able to view but aren't classed by YouTube as Educational (film trailers for media studies, for example). We also block access to https YouTube to prevent students logging in to YouTube to bypass the EDU filter. However, now students can't disable Safety Mode without being signed in, which they can't do. So now all of the videos on our Smoothwall "Allow List" are blocked via Safety Mode.

 

Completely stuck now as we don't want to enable https, and in turn full, access to YouTube (goodbye bandwidth!!)- any ideas???

[machin05]

We've ended up removing "YouTube SafetyMode cookie" within Smoothwall's content modification policies.

 

The problem was that Youtube requires a login to disable it and we block https here to prevent students circumventing the YouTube EDU filter http rewrite.

 

With Youtube EDU in place and https blocked, we didn't need to enforce Safety Mode.

[Markopolo]

This has just become an issue here too. We only allow youtube for staff, but they aren't too happy about being told to sign into youtube everytime they want to show a video...

[LeMarchand]

Been getting that myself, though (surprisingly) not had any complaints from staff yet. The filtering seems a bit haphazard: I've had some perfectly OK trailers blocked while others that probably should be, aren't. Plus other uploads of the same video may not be blocked.

[AlexB]

Specific to Smoothwall:

 

We have safety mode cookie enabled and Google do seem to have taken the ban hammer to a ton of videos over the summer.

 

However, one thing we don't do is https inspection for staff, meaning that the cookie doesn't get applied to https traffic. We tell our staff to add the 'S' when they find a video they want to play and can't due to SafetyMode.

 

This has the added benefit of still preventing accidental playing of videos that might not be appropriate while providing a quick and simple way round it.

[KSPAdmins]

We've been having the same problem since switching to Smoothwall a month ago (the teachers have been going up the wall, bless 'em - seems they can't teach without YouTube these days). The HTTPS solution works a treat, thanks - the beauty of it being that the kids can't use the workaround

[ninjabeaver]

Same issue here. I thought it was my Smoothie playing up. The https:// fix works though, but not ideal.

[Love_Sausage]

Luckily, the Planet Estream system allows you to add Youtube videos which are then played directly from Youtube bypassing safety mode. Has saved a lot of grumbling and reinforced the use of the system at the same time.

[themightymrp]

We don't use Smoothwall, rather we have Bloxx. However we encountered this same problem at around the time this thread started. In ours we had to disable "Safe Search" on Youtube for the staff policy. Previously it was on Moderate but then it suddenly ceased to function as before :-/ Annoying!

 

EDIT - realised I hadn't mentioned it was the safe search for Youtube only - not in general