cjwebster93

Honestly, it was the safeguarding lead's decision and you raise a very good point. If I had to give them an excuse, I'd say with the other content modification and HTTPS inspection we've got a fairly good grasp on YouTube already (as far as that can be said) so I think it might be the fact that the shorts endless-scrolling page adds a bit of anonymity with what content is actually being viewed. ...but I'm making an excuse for them at this point. I was told to block, went looking for a solution, found one, and shared.

I've just had a crack at this and managed to break the "shorts" button on the homepage by adding "www.youtube.com/youtubei/v1/reel" to my blocklist (Smoothwall on-prem with HTTPS Inspection on for all Pupils) Also blocked http://www.youtube..com/shorts first to break direct URL access. The above sufficiently breaks the navigation from the homepage.