Bots will use VPN nodes as cheap proxies. They will abuse it until google bans the IP for abuse. The bots rotate to a new node and continue. Real users are also banned from that node as well until google forgives it.

Google eventually get savvy to it. Your options are try again without a vpn, try with the session cookies from a logged in session, or wait until yt-dl patch whatever fresh hell google are doing to block you

well, try --list-impersonate-targets then, what've you got

I'm not sure what the best solution will be for you. I think you can enable a 3rd-party repository that contains the most up-to-date version of yt-dlp.

It's been discussed in the Mint forums, but they block my VPN from accessing the site :)

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=450307

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=440928

If you are curious, this is how I use yt-dlp. Effort-post incoming, beware, and bare with me. It might seem complicated but I tried my best to simplify.

When I run echo $PATH on my system, I see this:

username@somepc:~$ echo $PATH
/var/home/username/.local/bin:/var/home/username/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin

Your PATH might look more like /home/username/.local/bin.

* If it does not include a /.local/bin, maybe send me your $PATH and I can recommend a substitution instead.

What this means, is that any EXECUTABLE inside these directories will be executed if typed from the command line.

So in order, you do this (yes, literally, $HOME, the terminal will convert that to your home directory):

• python3 -m venv "$HOME/.local/yt-dlp-venv" (create a virtual space for python3 outside of apt)
• source $HOME/.local/yt-dlp-venv/bin/activate (toggle the virtual space for python3 for the duration of the current terminal window)
• python3 -m pip install yt-dlp (install yt-dlp module inside the virtual space)

nano $HOME/.local/bin/yt-dlp, paste this inside:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

source $HOME/.local/yt-dlp-venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade yt-dlp
yt-dlp "$@"

You can use CTRL+O and CTRL+X to save and then quit.

• chmod +x $HOME/.local/bin/yt-dlp (give yourself permission to eXecute the command)

Now any time you run yt-dlp from the terminal, it will search all of those directories inside $PATH until it finds yt-dlp. It will find your custom script, and correctly run the python venv's version of yt-dlp with any of the arguments you supplied.

If you noticed and are curious, yt-dlp inside of $HOME/.local/bin/yt-dlp doesn't cause an infinite loop of it calling itself over and over again. Why? Because when you do source $HOME/.local/yt-dlp-venv/bin/activate, it changes your $PATH!

(yt-dlp-venv) username@somepc:~$ echo $PATH
/var/home/username/.local/yt-dlp-venv/bin:/var/home/username/.local/bin:/var/home/username/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin

Because the real yt-dlp exists inside $HOME/.local/yt-dlp-venv/bin, it finds the executable first instead of the one inside $HOME/.local/bin