tried to open a YT link a friend sent me, and got greeted with this. Freetube and yt-dlp are also affected

Do you use a VPN? Because I have this all the time for me. No way I'm logging in do watch a video.

nope. mine wasn't on at the time. Just uBlock + Privacy Badger + Waterfox. Never had this happen to me before.

Happens to me regularly (using newpipe/tubular), they'll let you back in after a few hours

Happens all the time with me too, i just suffle my vpn until it works. I see you said you don't gave a vpn, but maybe if you shuffle one, it'll let you through.

It happens to me sometimes when I open it without being logged in. I usually close the video, it's not worth the effort to find it again on the logged in session.

I did try a VPN (selfhosted OpenVPN as well as one provided by my university), but those didn't work. I did try through invidious, and it worked.

YouTube bot detection has been aggressively over-tightening. The fact that established tools like Freetube and yt-dlp get flagged alongside actual bots shows the detection is catching way too many false positives. This is what happens when you let a platform that profits from watch time also decide who gets to watch.

Google's bot verification on FreeTube and yt-dlp isn't about blocking actual bots, it's about forcing users into their browser ecosystem where they can serve ads and harvest data. The verification triggering specifically when opening a shared link suggests Google flags any non-standard client as suspicious even when using legitimate API calls. This feels less like a security measure and more like another move to squeeze third-party access.