Embedded Youtube videos, "video unavailable"

[csdude55]

I've had people embedding Youtube videos on my site for years. They simply provide the link, and my script automagically embeds it.

Suddenly, about 90% of my embedded videos simply aren't embedding; they just show:

Video unavailable
Watch on YouTube

This is the exact code I'm using, which is identical to what I see when I view the video on Youtube then Share > Embed:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EwKc05_6ItY?si=THVh7s4Xg_zfQ5fa" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I had someone in another state verify that they're seeing the same thing, so it's not my computer or home internet provider. I tried disabling Cloudflare, too, and that had no impact (although I didn't change the DNS to block proxying).

Any thoughts?

[csdude55]

For the sake of posterity, I figured out the problem! When I un-proxied Ezoic and Cloudflare, the videos immediately started working again :-O

I haven't figured out a way to fix the problem yet while having the sites proxied, but at least I have somewhere to start. I'll update again if I figure something out.

[tangor]

Please let us know what you discover on this great adventure!

[csdude55]

Update: a guy on Reddit discovered that the issue is related to Ezoic pushing a "same-origin" Referrer policy! Which YouTube doesn't like, because it keeps them from seeing where the video is embedded.

I manually added this meta tag to the header, and it fixed the problem immediately:

<meta name="referrer" content="no-referrer-when-downgrade">

For future readers, here is an explanation of the different policies:
[developer.mozilla.org...]

[tangor]

Thanks! I always like to see these problem posts end with real solutions!

[engine]

I've also seen many more "not available in your area" responses on sites with embedded YouTube videos.

[mack]

Glad you were able to get this resolved!

I will add this in case anyone later finds this post and is looking for a possible solution. Within YouTube Creator Studio there is an option to disable embedding. If a creator has this unwittingly set it would also cause the video to be blocked from playing.

Mack.