Such as:

- I have a script that downloads my liked videos (in case they get deleted, which I’ve found out happens a fair bit)

- I also have a script to download my watch later videos (for sync to devices without YouTube Premium/Red/whatever)

Would you share those scripts?

Sure:

```bash

# !/bin/sh

cd /media/youtube-dl

docker-compose run --rm youtube-dl -v --cookies /etc/youtube-dl.cookies.txt https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=INSERTYOUROWNWATCHLATE... -o "watchlater/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s" --ignore-errors

```

That’s a bash script that runs via cron. One thing to note: this uses the cookies from a logged-in browser session because at some point YouTube blocked password log in from youtube-dl. This was is a bit of a pain to set up, and I wish it was not the case, but it mostly works.

So the theory is this has nothing to do with security, but is only used to break private video downloading of youtube-dl?

It blocks misrepresentation of agent, in general; automation is also blocked in general, but _especially_ for authentication.

Sure but if the goal was to block youtube-dl usage, wouldn't they target the vastly more common usecase without authentication?